For weeks, Marcos had pushed forward like a man digging through time with his bare hands.
Production had tripled. Soap, cloth, the cleaning paste known now as Barro Negro — they all moved faster than expected. But while the numbers in his ledger increased, something else rose with them:
Attention.
Not the kind shouted in markets or etched in tavern gossip.
The quiet kind.
The kind that sits behind half-closed windows and waits.
It began with small changes.
The butcher, who used to wave with greasy fingers, now only nodded stiffly. The priest skipped their house when making his usual monthly visits. The owner of the grain mill started charging Marcos five réis more per sack than before.
Nothing official. Nothing direct.
But it was a language Marcos understood.
And it told him one thing: his success was no longer invisible.
That afternoon, Marcos was in the main barn, showing Tobias how to store the soap bars for humid weather when Ana walked in holding a piece of parchment.
"Um… someone left this at the market table," she said.
Her voice was uneasy. Not scared — just unsure.
Marcos took the paper.
The handwriting was sharp, deliberate.
"We see your mark. You trade fast, speak smooth, walk strange.
Be careful where your boots step. This is land, not invention."
He folded the paper, placed it in his coat, and said nothing for a few seconds.
Ana shifted on her feet.
"You think… someone's mad at us?"
Tobias snorted. "Jealous, maybe. We sell faster than anyone. And that fat merchant from the tannery? He lost half his clients."
Marcos sat down at the table.
"They're not mad," he said quietly. "Not yet. They're watching. They don't understand me, so they think I'm dangerous."
Ana looked confused. "But you only sell soap and cloth… how's that dangerous?"
Marcos gave a slow smile.
"In their eyes? I sell the future."
Tobias blinked. "…the what?"
"Never mind." Marcos stood. "We stay the course. But we begin the next step."
The next day, Marcos visited a property outside the village — a simple, unused clay house with a covered shed behind it. It belonged to a mason who had moved away after a flood.
He purchased it in silver.
Within a week, the building became ShadowMarket's first private site — a small production center hidden from the public eye. Inside, Marcos installed larger soap molds, deeper vats, and separated storage shelves for herbs, fat, and lye.
It wasn't a factory.
But it would become one.
Meanwhile, Tobias and Ana adjusted in their own ways.
Tobias, still rough around the edges, now handled delivery routes with a sense of pride — even if he didn't understand much of what Marcos said. He still scratched his head when Marcos spoke of "weight ratios" or "flow control," but he followed instructions to the letter.
He remembered faces, shortcuts, and prices like no one else.
And he never asked questions he didn't need answered.
Ana, on the other hand, was clever — but rooted in her world. She didn't grasp the logic behind Marcos's record books or why he organized coins by decimal brackets. But she memorized numbers, names, and the rhythm of customer habits.
She once told Marcos:
"I don't know why you count things the way you do. But when you tell me what to look for, I see it."
That was all he needed.
At the edge of all this progress, the threat continued to simmer.
Marcos hadn't seen Jerônimo Guedes in three weeks.
They hadn't argued.
But the man who once welcomed him now avoided eye contact.
He'd heard whispers: that Guedes was meeting with a man from the city. That someone from the Brotherhood of Tradesmen was asking questions about new sellers and price changes.
And then came the third note.
This one was pinned to the barn door with a rusted nail.
"You speak better than you should.
You sell faster than you ought.
You forget: this land has rules."
No signature.
No name.
Just threat, cloaked in poetry.
Marcos pulled the nail slowly.
Behind him, Gaspar, the hired guard, stood with arms crossed. He didn't speak much. Never asked questions. But when Marcos turned and showed him the paper, the old soldier grunted.
"Time's coming," Gaspar said simply.
Marcos nodded.
"Yes. But not yet."
He burned the note in the stove, watching it curl and vanish in silence.
Then he turned back to his desk, drew his map again, and began marking towns beyond the valley.
Congonhas. Ouro Branco. Mariana.
They were watching.
But soon?
They would be following.