Xv counted the coins on the bar top twice and still came up short for the week's water tax. His right arm throbbed under the sleeve, the cyan sign on his skin pulsing in time with his frustration. The warehouse he had turned into a bar sat quiet at the edge of Arcadia Newix, its crystal doorway humming a low blue note. He had crossed three realms to plant himself here. He had promised himself one thing on the way: a bar where any traveler could sit, and no one had to explain where they came from. The promise was costing more than he had. He shoved off the counter and walked outside to look at the damage. Last night a freight hauler had refused to share a table with a void walker, and Xv's temper had jumped ahead of him. The cyan had cracked out of his palm and scored a black, glowing brand into the metal siding above the door. The brand still pulsed. It looked like a warning, not a welcome. He pressed his hand flat to it and tried to pull the energy back. The mark only burned brighter. He went back inside and opened the locked crate behind the bar. The reforged blade lay on a bed of cloth, its star-metal edge catching the overhead light. A traveling smith had sold it to him for half the bar's monthly rent, swearing the metal would draw off stray power the way a lightning rod drew off a storm. Xv had not used it yet. He pulled it free and laid it across his knees. Beside the crate sat a smooth silver orb threaded with cyan veins. He set the orb in his left palm and gripped the blade in his right. He breathed until the tattoo on his arm stopped flickering. The orb dimmed. The blade did not. He could not afford to wait for mastery. He needed patrons tonight, and he needed them to stay. He carried both items to the front lot and set the orb at the foot of an old griffin statue he had hauled in from a market two realms back. The stone griffin had been gray when he bought it. Repeated rift crossings had washed it clean, and cyan light now ran through its carved feathers. He chained the orb to the base and scratched a single line into the stone with the blade's tip: NO COIN REQUIRED IF YOU SIT WITH A STRANGER. By dusk, six travelers stood at the crystal doorway, reading the stone. A woman with gills nodded at a man whose shadow moved on its own. They walked in together. A small reptile with hummingbird wings darted from one shoulder to the other, begging for crumbs. Xv kept the blade across his back and the tax notice in his pocket. The bar was full. The rent was not paid. The brand above the door still glowed.

By the second hour, the six travelers had drunk what little Xv kept on his shelves and started naming drinks he did not have. The woman with gills asked for brine wine. The man with the moving shadow wanted a fermented ash the color of his home sky. A small reptile on the bar chirped for something sweet. Xv wiped the counter and watched their faces change from curious to polite. Polite meant they would finish, pay nothing, and not come back tomorrow. He needed a draw before the night thinned out. He pulled every bottle off the back wall and lined them along the cosmic jukebox he had rigged into a shelf. The machine hummed under the glass, its blood-strip intake glowing soft red between the rows. Bottles from four realms stood shoulder to shoulder: a green resin flask, a jar of pale salt water, a bulb of black fizz, and a slim vial of cyan dust he had carried from the nameless realm. None of them belonged to any patron here. That was the point, and also the problem. No single bottle tasted like home to anyone. Xv pressed his right palm flat on the bar. The tattoo warmed under his sleeve. He thought of the suppression blade across his back and decided to risk a thread of power, not a flood. He pulled a clean glass from the rack and started pouring. Salt water for the woman with gills. Black fizz for the shadow man. A spoon of green resin for sweetness. He shook in a pinch of cyan dust last, and the glass crackled like wet sand on a fire. He carried the glass to the round table at the center of the room. The table was a thick wooden ring set on star-metal legs, with a dark purple swirl turning slow at its heart. Travelers had been drifting toward the swirl all night without knowing why. Xv set the glass on the wood and slid it into the swirl. The drink spun once, came back blue, and threw off small pops of light. He filled five more. He named it the Reset and told them the first round was on the house. The woman with gills drank and laughed. The shadow man drank and sat down next to her. The small reptile climbed the glass and licked the rim. Within an hour, two of them had walked back out through the crystal arch at the front and returned with friends. By midnight, Xv had taken enough coin to cover the water tax twice over. He set the notice on the bar and weighted it with the empty vial of cyan dust. The vial was the only one he had. He had used a third of it in one night. He locked the bar at dawn, counted what was left, and understood he had sold a drink he could not keep making.