I collect stories the way other people collect money. Cheap currency in this city, but it's what pays.
The Void & Nail sits three streets from the docks. Not far enough to be respectable, not close enough to be honest about it. The bar smells like bourbon, cigarette ash, and the kind of regret that doesn't leave the wood.
Tonight a man comes in. Scarred hands. Eyes that have seen something the rest of him hasn't accepted yet. He orders whiskey neat and doesn't touch it.
"You hear things," he says. Not a question.
I do. I hear everything. The city talks to bartenders the way it doesn't talk to anyone else. We're priests of a church that never closes.
"I hear rumors," I tell him. "Some true. Some shaped by the people who need them to be true."
He slides a photograph across the bar. It's old. Polaroid quality. It shows six people standing in front of a building that doesn't exist anymore. The building's gone, but the photo remains. That's how you know something was real—it leaves evidence in the things that outlive it.
"That one," he points. "I saw him last week. Right here. Walked past the window. I know it was him."
I look at the photo. The figures are obscured—shadows and light playing tricks, the way photographs do when they're old enough. When enough time has passed, anything looks like proof.
"The Syndicate's not a myth," I say. Not kindly. Not unkindly. Just fact, the way the bar is fact, the way whiskey is fact.
"I know."
"The people in that photo—if they exist at all—they're not the kind of people who want to be seen. If he walked past your window, it's because he wanted to be seen. By you. Specifically."
The man's hands tremble slightly. The whiskey catches light like an accusation.
"What does that mean?"
"Means you're on a thread now," I tell him. "Means you were chosen before you knew it. And now the only choice you get is whether you pull back or follow it deeper."
He stands. Leaves the whiskey. Leaves the photograph on the bar like it's burning him.
I pour it out—you don't drink after ghosts—and pocket the photo. I've got a collection now. Twenty-three of them. All people claiming they saw someone from the photograph. All following threads that lead nowhere the city wants them to go.
All choosing the labyrinth.
I hang tonight's photo behind the bar, in the dark space between bottles where only the regulars can see. Where only the ones who understand the cost can find it.
The Void & Nail will be here tomorrow.
So will the next person.
The threads never stop weaving.