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A young cook enters Asteria, a living culinary VR, to reclaim his family's ancestral recipe after corporate theft threatens his stall. In a world where taste is tracked and provenance is currency, he must learn game mechanics, gather allies, and win a tribunal to restore what was lost.
Night in Harbormouth comes folded into the ribs of steam and neon. Kai Ember smelled of it all the time — star anise and old oil, the damp of the harbor that climbed through cracks of the stall like a small, stubborn tide. Ember Wares was a single room pressed between a laundromat and a pawnshop, a row of glass jars rimmed with chalk labels and a ledger that had the texture of a memory. Kai rubbed at a stubborn ring of grease on the counter, listening to the city breathe around the metal shutters.
The jars were arranged not by color but by habit: cumin ... bay leaf ... anise that had once belonged to his father, whose hands could make broth behave like music. Kai set a small bowl of broth on the counter and watched the surface settle into a mirror. There was an ache in his chest that had nothing to do with hunger; it was the ache of knowing how little the city noticed the small things that kept its flavor alive.
'You closing early tonight?' Mina's voice came like a knife-edge of practicality. She moved behind him with the efficiency of someone who had learned to carry her hopes in tote bags. Her eyes were bright, the kind of bright Kai counted as courage. 'The notice said a compliance audit tomorrow. If we don't register with Asteria's guild conduit, they'll slap fines until the doors go rusty.'
Kai tightened his hand on the cloth. 'We don't have the credits. We barely cover the shipments.' He could hear the ledger's pages shiver in his mind — recipes in uneven scrawl, a recipe stamped with the sigil of his grandmother and the faint thumbprint of his father. That sigil had been good for more than sentiment; city law had begun to treat culinary heritage like property.
Outside, a drone threaded light across the street and the laundromat's humming washed into the shop. The city had grafted the virtual onto reality — guild scores, apprenticeship tokens, license ribbons all carried in digital ledgers that could kick a family out of business with the same cool efficiency as a driven nail. Kai ran a thumb over the ledger's spine. 'If I could get a guild apprenticeship — one of those golden tokens — we could register. We could save this place.'
Mina studied him for a long beat, then said, 'Then you better win one.'