The elderly man tumbled down the last three marble steps, his wooden appraisal cane clattering across the polished white floor.
He was thin, frail, and dressed in a patched gray linen robe worn smooth at the elbows. Over his milky, unseeing eyes rested a pair of cracked glass spectacles held together with copper wire. His fingers, covered in fine stone dust and old calluses, trembled as he tried to push himself up from the cold stone.
Above his white hair, his moral integrity score shone with blinding, pure emerald brilliance: 95/100.
It was Master Jian, a legendary stone appraiser who had served the Citadel for sixty years.
Stomping down the stairs after him was Third Star-Prince Kael. The young prince wore golden dragon-scale armor, his jeweled scabbard clinking against his thigh, his moral integrity score festering at a rancid 8/100.
“Blind old beggar!” Prince Kael snarled, his face twisted in vicious fury. “You dare question the authenticity of royal merchandise?! That orphan girl was about to pay three million coins for my Celestial Heart Star-Jade! You told her the star-jade was counterfeit and hollowed out!”
Beside the staircase, a small, tearful orphan girl in rags held a crumpled pouch of hard-earned copper notes to her chest, her eyes wide with terror.
