The mana-tram to the Dungeon Sector left from Platform Six at Ironhold's eastern gate, and it smelled like every other tram Jace had ever ridden - recycled air, ozone, and the faint chemical sweetness of mana-battery discharge. The difference was the company.

  Torrin took up a seat and a half, his shoulders wider than the molded plastic bench was designed to accommodate. He sat with his hands on his knees, watching the city scroll past the reinforced windows with the quiet attention of someone who'd grown up in mountains and still hadn't fully calibrated to flatland sprawl. Mara had the window seat across from him, her nose pressed close enough to the glass that her breath fogged it in little circles. She'd been talking since they boarded - a running commentary on the districts they passed through, half of it medical trivia she'd absorbed from her mother's letters.

  "-the Thornwall Clinic, see, the one with the green cross? My mother trained there before she moved to Silverhaven. They do more limb reattachments per year than any facility outside Aethelburg. The trick is getting the mana-channels to re-knit within the first four hours, because after that the spiritual imprint starts to-"

  "Mara," Elara said, without looking up from the leather-bound notebook she was annotating. "We're going shopping. Not touring surgical facilities."

  "I'm *contextualizing*."

  "You're nervous."

  Mara's mouth opened. Closed. She turned back to the window. "Maybe a little."

  Jace leaned against the pole by the door, the Subway Fang hanging from his belt in a scuffed leather sheath he'd borrowed from the academy's lost-and-found. Eighty credits sat in his pocket like a promise and a joke. Eighty credits in the Dungeon Sector wouldn't buy a Rare-tier anything. It might - *might* - buy four Normal-tier students enough Common gear to stop looking like they'd wandered in from a refugee camp.

  The tram rattled through the Midway checkpoint - a brief pause while the security runes scanned the car, pale blue light sweeping through the windows like a lazy searchlight. Two Iron Legion soldiers in mana-plated armor stood at the checkpoint entrance, rifles slung, faces bored. One of them had a scar that ran from his temple to his jaw, a pale river through dark skin, the kind of scar that said *something tried to eat my face and I'm still here.* Jace watched him until the tram pulled away.

  "He was at least Epic-tier," Elara said quietly.

  Jace glanced at her. "The soldier?"

  "The scarred one. His mana signature was... dense. Layered. Like looking at a lake and realizing it's a hundred meters deep." She tapped her pen against her notebook. "I've been practicing my passive reads. The Conclave teaches a variant of mana perception for academic purposes - identifying enchantment potency, estimating artifact tiers. It translates to people, if you know how to look."

  "And you know how to look."

  "I'm learning." A pause. The faintest ghost of a smile. "Your [Mana Sense] is better for active reads. Mine is better for... texture."

  Jace filed that away. Everything Elara said was worth filing.

  The tram descended from the elevated track into the Dungeon Sector proper, and the world outside the windows changed. The Midway district had been residential - apartment blocks stacked like mana-batteries in a charging rack, balconies draped with laundry and ward-charms. The Dungeon Sector was commercial, loud, and alive in the way that places built around controlled violence were always alive. The streets were wider here, designed for the passage of laden pack-beasts and armored transport vehicles. Shop fronts blazed with enchanted signage - runes that shifted color and crawled across awnings, advertising wares in scripts that ranged from common trade-tongue to Conclave arcane notation to languages Jace didn't recognize at all. The air tasted different: metal, leather, the sharp herbal bite of alchemical reagents, and underneath all of it, the dense ozone pressure of multiple Stable Dungeon entrances warping the ambient mana into eddies and currents.

  They disembarked at the Dungeon Sector central platform and stood on the street for a moment, four students in Trash-tier academy gear, eighty credits and pocket change between them.

  "Right," Jace said. "Ground rules. We need armor, not fashion. Common-tier minimum, nothing that only works for one of us. We pool credits, we prioritize survival gear, and nobody buys anything shiny just because it glows."

  "That was directed at me," Torrin said.

  "That was directed at everyone."

  "It was directed at me." Torrin's expression didn't change, but something around his eyes shifted in a way that might have been humor on a more expressive face. "I like things that glow."

  "I know. That's why I said it."

  Mara had already unfolded a hand-drawn map of the Sector she'd traced from an academy reference guide. "There are three gear districts within walking distance. The Strip is the main commercial avenue - high traffic, marked-up prices, tourist traps. Anvil Row is where the independent smiths work - better quality, worse selection, and they don't like browsers. Then there's the Underbazaar." She pointed to a cross-hatched section of the map that descended below street level. "Second-hand gear, dungeon salvage resale, and - according to two separate upperclassmen I asked - the best deals in the Sector if you don't mind negotiating with people who might also be fencing stolen goods."

  "Underbazaar," Jace and Elara said simultaneously.

  Torrin shrugged. "I like things that glow. I don't care where they come from."

  * * *

  The Underbazaar occupied a pre-Unveiling parking structure that had been swallowed to its second sub-level by the Mana transformation. The concrete ceiling was low enough that Torrin had to duck at the stairwell, and the lighting came from strings of mana-crystal lamps that cast everything in a warm amber that was either atmospheric or cheap depending on your perspective. Stalls packed the space wall to wall - tables of salvage, racks of used armor, weapon stands organized by type and tier, bins of loose enchantment components, and at least three vendors selling street food that smelled aggressively of garlic and something Jace couldn't identify.

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  It was loud. It was crowded. It was the most alive place Jace had been since leaving the Rust Boroughs.

  He felt a knot in his chest loosen that he hadn't realized was tied.

  They moved through the stalls methodically. Elara took point on appraisal - her [Scribe] class gave her a natural affinity for reading enchantment quality, and her Appraisal skill, while not formally combat-relevant, could distinguish genuine Common-tier gear from Trash-tier junk with a cosmetic rune slapped on top. She ran her fingers along a leather chestpiece, closed her eyes, and shook her head.

  "Fake enhancement. The durability rune is decorative. It would crack on the first solid hit."

  The vendor - a wiry man with an eyepatch and the calloused hands of someone who'd spent decades working dungeon salvage - scowled. "That's genuine Deepstone leather, girl."

  "The leather is genuine. The enchantment isn't. The mana threading terminates at the second layer - there's no anchor glyph. You'd need an anchor glyph for structural reinforcement. Without one, the rune is wallpaper." Elara opened her eyes. Her expression was perfectly neutral. "I'd pay Trash-tier pricing. Not Common."

  The vendor stared at her. Then at the rest of them - four teenagers in academy practice clothes, one of whom was wider than his stall table. His gaze lingered on the academy insignia on Jace's tunic, calculating.

  "Thirty credits," he said. "For the leather. No enchantment claims."

  Elara looked at Jace. He shook his head slightly. They moved on.

  It took two hours to find what they needed. Two hours of Elara's quiet appraisals, Mara's anxious budgeting on a scrap of paper, Torrin's silent evaluation of every piece of armor he picked up - testing the weight, the flexibility, the way it sat on his frame - and Jace watching all of it while keeping one eye on the crowd and one hand near the Subway Fang.

  The Underbazaar wasn't dangerous, exactly. But it was the kind of place where a group of underequipped students could attract the wrong attention if they looked like they didn't belong. Jace kept his posture loose, his stride unhurried, and his expression set to the default Rust Boroughs mask: *I'm not worth the trouble, but I'll be trouble if you try.* Streetwise wasn't a combat skill. But it kept you alive in places where combat skills couldn't.

  They found their gear at a stall run by a retired [Armorer] - a heavyset woman named Greda whose left arm was mechanical below the shoulder, mana-tech joints clicking softly as she moved. Her stock was organized, cleaned, and honestly labeled. Common-tier, all of it, sourced from dungeon runs and decommissioned adventurer kits.

  "Academy kids," she said, looking them over. Not a question. "Sophomore?"

  "That obvious?" Jace asked.

  "You're wearing practice boots in a dungeon district. That's either brave or new." She leaned on the counter. "Budget?"

  "Tight."

  "Always is." She studied each of them in turn - the way a [Restorer] assessed injuries, clinical and quick. "Big one needs reinforced plate. Partial coverage, no full suit - it'd lock his joints and he's already slow." She looked at Torrin without apology. "Am I wrong?"

  "No," Torrin said.

  "The healer needs something that keeps her alive while she works. Light, mana-conductive, doesn't restrict hand movement. The reader-" she nodded at Elara "-needs the same, but with better enchantment conductivity. And you-" she looked at Jace. Her eyes narrowed slightly. "What's your class?"

  The pause was brief. Jace had learned to navigate it. "Nomad."

  Greda's expression didn't change. No pity. No amusement. Just a recalculation. "Versatile loadout, then. Nothing too heavy, nothing too specialized. You need gear that doesn't get in the way of whatever you decide to be on a given day."

  Something about how she said it made Jace like her immediately.

  They spent an hour at Greda's stall. She pulled pieces, had them try things on, adjusted fits with quick mechanical fingers, and quoted prices that were firm but fair. Elara verified the enchantments - genuine, clean, functional Common-tier work. Nothing flashy. Nothing named. The equipment equivalent of a reliable tool: it wouldn't impress anyone, but it wouldn't fail you.

  When they left the Underbazaar, blinking in the late-afternoon light of the Dungeon Sector, they were wearing:

  Torrin: a reinforced leather-and-iron partial breastplate that covered his chest and shoulders without restricting his arms. Common-tier, with a minor Fortitude enhancement woven into the chest plate. It fit his frame like it had been made for someone almost his size. The vendor had called it "Holdfast Plate." No other history. It sat on his shoulders like it belonged there.

  Mara: a padded healer's vest, Common-tier, with mana-conductive threading along the forearms that would marginally reduce the cost of channeling healing energy through her hands. Light enough to move in, sturdy enough to absorb a glancing blow. She kept touching the threading, running her fingertips along the silver lines, feeling the warmth.

  Elara: a similar vest, but cut for inscription work - wider cuffs, a reinforced inner lining treated with reagent-resistant coating, and subtle enhancement to INT-based skill clarity. She'd examined it for twenty minutes before approving the purchase. The highest compliment she could pay to a piece of equipment was silent acceptance.

  Jace: a fitted leather jerkin, Common-tier, with minor enhancement to stamina recovery. Not enough to offset his [Wayfaring] penalty - nothing at Common-tier could do that. But the difference between recovering 1 SP per minute and recovering 1.3 SP per minute was, over the course of a fight, one more [Footwork: Evasion]. One more dodge. Maybe one more second of staying vertical when his body wanted to quit.

  The four of them stood on the street in gear that actually fit, that actually worked, that had been chosen for who they were instead of pulled from a lost-and-found bin.

  They'd spent sixty-seven of their eighty pooled credits. The remaining thirteen wouldn't buy dinner for four in the Sector, but Mara had packed sandwiches - thick-cut bread and salted meat from the academy mess, wrapped in waxed paper - and they ate on a bench overlooking the Dungeon Sector's main avenue, watching parties of veteran adventurers pass in armor that cost more than Jace's mother made in a year.

  "We look like real adventurers," Mara said, sandwich in one hand, the other resting on her new vest.

  "We look like real adventurers who shop at the Underbazaar," Jace corrected.

  "That's still real."

  Torrin adjusted his breastplate. The Holdfast Plate creaked softly, settling into its new owner's shape. He looked down at it. Then at the rest of them. Then back at the plate.

  "Good iron," he said.

  From Torrin, that was a love letter.

  Elara ate her sandwich in precise, measured bites and said nothing. But she hadn't taken off the vest. She'd put it on in the stall and she hadn't taken it off, and that was enough.