The shadow of the "Murder-Suicide" manor loomed like a jagged tooth against the bleeding colors of the sunset. Freddy Orenstein stood in the middle of the road, his grey suit nearly invisible in the gloaming. He watched Rayn's silhouette vanish behind the heavy mahogany doors of the newly renovated manor.
A slow, enigmatic smile spread across Freddy's face—a look that held none of the warmth he had shown during the coffee session. He tilted his head back, watching the first few stars pierce the coal-fog of Ashbury. With a subtle flick of his wrist, he tapped the bowl of his pipe. Instead of ash falling, a ripple of distorted space emanated from his feet.
In a heartbeat, his form blurred, melting into the shadows as if he had never been more than a phantom of the night. He didn't walk away; he simply ceased to be present in the physical world.
The following morning, the sun rose like a cold copper coin over the horizon. Its rays, filtered through the perpetual haze of the industrial city, crawled across the floor of Rayn's master bedroom.
Rayn awakened with the precision of a hunting cat. His mind was clear, his Tier 8 Dantian humming with the slow, steady rhythm of the Obsidian King's Breath. He dressed with methodical care, donning a clean white shirt and adjusting his rectangular glasses. He felt like a scholar, but his soul remained a battlefield.
As he descended the marble stairs to the ground floor, he stopped.
Vespera was not in the guest suite he had prepared. Instead, she was curled on the cold stone floor near the foyer. She lay in a strange, primal posture—her knees tucked to her chest, her blonde hair spilling across the tiles like silk, her body coiled in a way that mimicked a dragon protecting its hoard.
Rayn stood over her, his expression unreadable. "Vespera. Why are you on the ground? I provided a room with the finest linens gold can buy."
The golden-haired woman stirred, her eyes fluttering open. She didn't look tired; she looked ancient. "Master... I have slept in the cold embrace of the earth for three hundred billion years. A soft bed feels like a trap. The ground is honest. It vibrates with the pulse of the world."
She sat up, looking at him with a gaze of absolute, terrifying devotion. "And I did not want you to leave. Last time, the Master left me in the dark. I slept here to ensure that if you moved, the stones would tell me."
Rayn's face twisted into a faint, demonic smirk. Internally, his thoughts were cold and pragmatic. A loyal hound is better than a powerful ally. As long as she views me as her sun, she is the perfect shield. If the world turns against me, I can sacrifice her and walk away through the gap she creates.
"Then sleep for two more minutes," Rayn said, his voice devoid of warmth. "I shall brew the bitter nectar. When I return, you will rise."
She nodded and immediately slumped back into her dragon-pose, her breathing evening out instantly. Rayn went to the kitchen and performed the alchemy of the coffee once more. The smell of roasted beans and heat filled the room. When he returned, she drank the cup with a sigh of relief.
"It clears the dizziness of the soul," she murmured.
"You need to maintain this vessel," Rayn said, handing her a silver-handled brush and a set of aromatic soaps he had purchased. "The people of this world are obsessed with hygiene. If you smell of the cave, you invite suspicion."
"Hygiene?" Vespera tilted her head. "We Dragons do not 'brush.' We purge our scales with Essence. Our teeth are sharpened by the mana we consume."
"Here, you are a woman," Rayn countered. He spent the next hour teaching her the mundane rituals of the human world—the scrubbing of the skin, the cleaning of the teeth.
As they stood in the steam of the washroom, Vespera looked at him, her golden eyes scanning his stoic face. "Master... you see my body, yet your pulse does not quicken. You see me as I am, yet you think no thoughts of the flesh. Am I so repulsive to your eyes?"
Rayn looked at her, his gaze passing over her jade-like skin and perfect curves as if he were inspecting a piece of furniture. "I have no interest in your body, Vespera. You could stand before me in the nude, attempting every seduction known to the heavens, and I would feel nothing but annoyance at the delay. My dream is not built on the warmth of a woman; it is built on the ruins of my enemies."
Women are distractions, he thought internally. They are tools to be used for escape or leverage. I will keep her by my side because she is the key to my hidden powers, but the moment she becomes a liability, I will treat her like the old furniture I burned in the yard.
"I am going to the town," Rayn said, turning his back on her. "I need ingredients for a proper meal. Stay here and guard the boundary."
"No," Vespera said, her voice turning sharp. "I will not let you go alone."
Before Rayn could protest, she reached out and grabbed his hand. Her grip was like iron. Suddenly, she leaned forward and bit his palm.
"Urgh!" Rayn hissed, feeling a sharp, burning sensation.
A drop of gold-tinted blood fell onto his Black Ring. Instantly, a strange gold mark—resembling a slit dragon's eye—etched itself into the obsidian metal of the ring. A faint, invisible thread of energy snapped into place between them.
"What have you done?" Rayn demanded, trying to pull the ring off. It wouldn't move; it felt as if it had fused with his bone.
"A Soul-Tracker," Vespera whispered, her lips stained with a hint of his blood. "Wherever you go in this world, I will find you. You cannot hide, and you cannot remove that ring. It is my flesh, and now, it is your shadow."
Rayn stared at the mark, a dark chuckle escaping his throat. "Tricked by my own tool. They say you shouldn't eat everything you see... I suppose I should have been more careful about what I claimed as mine."
Rayn departed the manor, his black coat billowing behind him like the wings of a crow. He walked for twenty minutes, his boots clicking rhythmically on the cobblestones as the city's noise rose to meet him.
The market was a cacophony of shouting merchants and hissing steam vents. Rayn moved through the crowd with the invisible grace of a predator. He bought sacks of pearl-rice, fresh greens still dusted with dew, and aromatic spices that reminded him of the kitchens in Aetheleon.
At the butcher's stall, he watched the man hack through a side of beef. "Two hundred Fazhos of the prime cut," Rayn said, tossing the coins onto the counter. The butcher looked at Rayn's white hair and red eyes, his hand trembling as he wrapped the meat in wax paper.
Rayn didn't care for the man's fear; he cared for the quality of the protein.
After thirty minutes of shopping, he found himself in the town square. His eyes were drawn to a small, ragged pink tent tucked away in the shadow of a massive stone bank building. It looked out of place, a splash of gaudy color in a grey world. A sign hung over the entrance, written in peeling gold paint: "PREDICT YOUR FUTURE."
Rayn stopped. A fortune teller? In Aetheleon, seers were either gods or charlatans. He didn't believe in destiny—he believed in the strength of his own fist. Yet, the absurdity of his life—almost dying, The life feels like being reborn again, finding a dragon in a ring—made him curious. He pushed aside the velvet flap and stepped into the dim, incense-heavy interior.
A woman sat behind a table covered in a faded silk cloth. She looked to be in her mid-thirties, with tired eyes and a face that had once been beautiful but was now etched with the stress of poverty.
"Hey, boy," she croaked, beckoning him. "Come. Let the stars speak to you."
"Me?" Rayn asked, sitting in the creaking wooden chair.
She took his hand. Her palms were calloused and cold. She closed her eyes, her head tilting back. "I see... I see gold. Mountains of it. You will be a billionaire, young master. You will see more wealth than the King of Ashbury. And... you will be a ruler. A man who stands above others."
Rayn felt a wave of disappointment. It was a generic prediction, the kind of fluff sold to merchants' sons. He could sense through his glasses that her "Spirit Root" was shriveled—she might have had a spark of the "Sight" once, perhaps in her youth, but it was gone now. She was a fake, feeding him lines for a copper.
Rayn stood up. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a stack of bills. He laid 2000 Fazhos on the table.
The woman's eyes snapped open. She gasped, staring at the money. Most customers gave her ten or twenty. "This... this is too much, boy."
Rayn leaned in, his red eyes boring into hers. "I know you are a fraud," he whispered, his voice like dry leaves. "I know you lost your sight years ago. But... you said one thing that I liked. You said I would be a ruler. For that word alone, the price is fair."
He took out another 3000 Fazhos and dropped them on the table. "Take it. Pay your debts. Build a shop that sells something real. I pay for the ambition, not the truth."
He turned and walked out, his laughter echoing softly in the tent.
The woman sat frozen, her fingers hovering over the mountain of Fazhos. Five thousand... It was enough to change her life. She thought he was a rich idiot, a "genius" with more gold than sense.
But as she reached out to gather the money, her hand touched the spot where Rayn's palm had rested.
"ARGH!"
A blinding pain erupted behind her eyes. Her head felt as if it were being split by a lightning bolt. She collapsed to the floor, her body convulsing as a dormant, ancient power within her blood suddenly ignited, sparked by the residual Obsidian Qi Rayn had left behind.
The "Sight" returned—not as a spark, but as a forest fire.
In her mind's eye, the pink tent vanished. She saw a world of white and red.
She saw Rayn. But he wasn't wearing a suit. He was clad in armor that seemed to be made of solidified shadows. In his hand, he held the King DD Sword, its blade weeping crimson tears.
He wasn't standing in a market. He was standing on a mountain of corpses—thousands, tens of thousands of bodies piled high. The sky above him was black, torn apart by purple lightning. Rayn's white hair was matted with gore, and his red eyes glowed with a light that suggested he had moved beyond the realm of men and into the realm of devils.
He looked up in the vision, and for a terrifying second, it felt as if he were looking directly at her through time. He raised his sword, and the world itself seemed to groan under his weight.
The vision snapped.
The woman lay on the floor of her tent, gasping for air, her clothes soaked in cold sweat. The money lay scattered around her, but she no longer felt joy. She felt a bone-deep, existential terror.
"He isn't a boy," she whispered, her voice trembling. "He isn't a billionaire. He is the end... he is the sole ruler of the entire planet. And he will wade through a sea of blood to reach his throne."
She clutched the money to her chest, sobbing. She would build her shop, but she knew one thing for certain: when the world began to burn, she would know exactly whose hand held the torch.