Rain returned to the valley like a long-forgotten visitor. Not heavy, not threatening — just persistent. The kind of rain that softened footsteps and made secrets easier to carry.
Marcos stood beneath the overhang of the drying shed, watching the raindrops tap rhythmically against the barrels. He wasn't looking at the water.
He was watching smoke.
Or rather, the lack of it.
That morning, Élio had tested the first signal variation from the system blueprint. Instead of wood or charcoal, he used a mixture of dried moss, salted sawdust, and crushed green leaves — a concoction that released short puffs of thick gray smoke without actual fire. Just heat and chemical reaction.
It didn't rise high. It didn't smell strong. But from the hills behind the clay house, Tobias had seen the signal and returned within minutes.
Three puffs. One pause. Two more.
"Status green. Operation completed. No trail left."
Marcos had recorded the result in a fresh notebook marked only with a wax seal: a triangle with a finger missing from the right side.
The Nine Fingers continued to evolve, but slowly.
Élio took over surveillance. He didn't talk much, but he mapped people in movement. Who left early. Who returned drunk. Who went into the woods and came back without what they carried in.
Tobias handled messaging, now equipped with a miniature coded wheel Marcos had crafted using brass buttons. He couldn't read complex language, but he memorized symbols and their meaning like patterns in dirt.
Their third member hadn't been formally recruited — not yet.
But Marcos had his eye on a woman named Vicência.
She was a healer by trade, unmarried, and rarely seen in public. Most thought her strange. Marcos found her observant. She gathered herbs at night. She never asked for payment in coin, only in useful trade. She watched with still eyes.
More importantly, people talked near her without realizing it.
Because who fears a widow with ash on her hands?
He'd test her soon.
Meanwhile, Ana remained at the surface of the operation, unaware of the full extent of what Marcos was building underground. She had begun experimenting with paper, drying thin bark and mixing it with pressed sugarcane fiber. It wasn't quite parchment — but it held ink.
"We could sell it to the notary," she suggested one afternoon.
Marcos smiled. "You're creating literacy with your hands."
She didn't understand what he meant, but she liked how it sounded.
The system chimed two days later.
[Mission Completed: Seed Internal Networks]
✔ Three informants positioned (Tobias – runner, Élio – eyes, Vicência – ear)
✔ First smoke signal test successful
✔ Communication latency below 10 minutes
Reward Unlocked: Blueprint – Low-Heat Clay Kiln (Portable, Concealed)
Marcos reviewed the blueprint by lantern light. A mobile clay oven, small enough to be carried in a wagon, designed to harden items like soap, paste, or even emergency ink blocks. Low smoke. Minimal smell.
He could now produce on the move.
Another piece in place.
Another step ahead of suspicion.
But even as he expanded in secret, the surface business grew too.
ShadowMarket was now known in three villages. Marcos didn't advertise. He didn't need to. The strength of his network, his consistency, and Ana's intuitive sense of how to frame each product gave him reach.
Their newest item was simple, but critical: Oilcloth.
Made by soaking coarse linen in boiled linseed oil, it became water-resistant. Farmers used it to wrap tools. Hunters used it to protect powder. Even merchants began lining the insides of their chests with it.
Ana suggested selling it in small folded squares, like handkerchiefs.
Tobias thought it was just "fancy rags."
Marcos saw it as insurance.
One night, Gaspar — the silent guard — entered the barn after hours.
He rarely spoke. But when he did, it mattered.
"Two men asking about your shipments," he said.
"Where?" Marcos asked.
"North road. Tall one smelled like coal. Other had a cane but walked fine."
"Guild?"
Gaspar shrugged. "Could be. Or worse — could be someone you made irrelevant."
That night, Marcos updated the wall map again.
Two red pins. One at the north road. One just outside the town perimeter.
He stared at them for a long time.
Then he whispered to himself:
"Let them look. They won't see what isn't lit."