Art style: 2D Hand-drawn.
2D illustration of a shady merchant in a dark alley at night, working at a table with scales and jars of dark powder, a wooden cage with a small animal nearby, a burlap sack, shadows and a single lantern, symbolic and non-graphic, sepia and charcoal palette with muted crimson accents, flat vector colors, clean bold outlines, vertical 9:16, no text.
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FINAL STYLE ENFORCEMENT (this is the authoritative rendering directive — it overrides any style wording elsewhere in the prompt):
Render this image in the following art style:
Classic 2D hand-drawn animation, clean expressive outlines, simplified shapes, soft cel shading, illustrated backgrounds, traditional animated-film aesthetic.
Every surface, skin, fabric, material, and environmental element must be rendered in this idiom.
