The slave mark did not touch skin first.
It touched fate.
Ezio felt it bloom beneath his sternum—cold as moonlight, heavy as a judge's gavel. A sigil the color of dried blood unfolded inside his chest like a flower that had learned to hate the sun. It wasn't pain exactly. Pain was simple. Pain was honest.
This was ownership.
The auction platform reeked of incense and iron. The crowd's hunger came in waves: vampires with refined appetites, witches with smiles like razors, demons who looked at people the way men looked at meat in famine. Above them all hung the Midnight Sect's ceiling—black crystal carved with a thousand watching eyes.
The old world had auction houses too.
But there, men sold bodies.
Here, they sold souls.
Ezio stood between the four women like a blade laid on velvet: beautiful because it was dangerous, valuable because it could cut.
Kayra's chains were thin and decorative—almost insulting. The Midnight Sect understood fox-blood; they didn't need iron to restrain her. They used certainty. A contract around her throat, invisible, tight as a lover's hand.
Rosa's shackles were heavier, not because she was stronger, but because she was smarter. The kind of mind that made princes nervous. The kind of mind that turned armies into numbers and numbers into graves.
The other two… weren't from his past.
One smelled like scorched earth and battlefields after rain.
Laura.
Even in chains, she held herself like someone who had never accepted the word "no." Her skin carried faint crimson markings—oni runes that pulsed like a second heartbeat. Rage swam under her eyes, but it wasn't childish fury.
It was the rage of someone who had been used until the only language left was violence.
The last one was worse.
Lagertha.
She didn't thrash. She didn't plead. She didn't glare.
She watched.
Tall, horn-shadowed, armored in black leather and sealed sigils, she stood like a general waiting for the right second to turn a battlefield. Her calm wasn't peace.
It was discipline.
Ezio felt it: a predator that didn't need hunger to kill.
He should have been afraid.
He was.
But fear, Ezio had learned, could be refined into something useful—like poison reduced into a single perfect drop.
The auctioneer—a pale man with too many teeth—raised his hands.
"Five foreign assets, freshly acquired. A fox-blood information broker. A human strategist. An oni-blood weapon. A demon-blood commander. And—"
His eyes slid to Ezio with theatrical delight.
"—a Nameless male. No bloodline. No recorded destiny. No clan seal."
The crowd murmured.
The old world would've laughed at a man with no bloodline.
But in this place… the strangers' whispers carried a different flavor.
Curiosity.
Because in a world where everything was inherited, a man with nothing could be either trash… or an anomaly.
Ezio stared out into the audience and forced his breathing to slow.
Casanova, he remembered, was never truly trapped by a room full of predators.
He had walked into salons where smiles were knives, where a wrong word meant exile, where women could ruin men with a rumor and men could ruin women with a ring.
Ezio wasn't born noble. He wasn't born chosen.
So he learned the only way a nobody survives in a palace:
Make them want you.
Not because you beg.
Because you fascinate.
The Casanova Ring pulsed against his finger like a heartbeat that didn't belong to him.
Then the Machiavelli Ring—cold, calculating—tightened something in his mind.
Princes are not defeated by enemies, the memory whispered, but by illusions they choose to believe.
Ezio let his eyes drift upward, toward the highest balcony.
That was where the power sat.
And there she was.
Luminous Van Helsing.
She didn't lean forward like the others. She didn't whisper. She didn't lick her lips or mask her hunger with politeness.
She sat as if the world owed her silence.
Silver hair flowed over a black gown that looked like it had been sewn from midnight itself. Pale skin that made the crimson lanterns feel dim. Eyes that were not merely red—they were the color of old wine and fresh sin.
She looked young the way winter looked young: beautiful because it did not care who froze.
And when her gaze touched Ezio—
it did not slide over him.
It entered him.
A pressure coiled around his heart, intimate as a kiss, cruel as a blade held just under the ribs.
Ezio's Tarot Core—still forming, still half-dream and half-wound—twitched.
Not awakening.
Recognizing.
Something ancient in him whispered a name he didn't speak aloud.
Lucifer.
Not as a horned demon in a storybook.
But as a sensation. A truth in his spine.
A rebellious warmth that said:
If you must kneel—kneel like a weapon being sheathed.Let the crown think it owns you.Then steal the crown in the dark.
Ezio swallowed.
He remembered the moment he was dragged through the veil between worlds—how the air had changed, how his cultivation had felt wrong, like breathing in water. How the stars had looked unfamiliar. How the laws of qi had twisted into something thicker, more primal.
This wasn't the continent of sects and righteous banners.
This was a realm with mega-sects—empires disguised as religions.
Midnight Sect. Crimson Hell Sect.
And he had been sold into the first.
The auctioneer called prices.
Blood credits. Soul coins. Favors written in ink that shimmered like living parasites.
Then Luminous lifted one finger.
The entire hall fell silent like a throat being gripped.
"I will take them," she said.
No debate.
No bargaining.
She didn't raise her voice.
She didn't need to.
The auctioneer's smile turned nervous.
"My Empress… perhaps we—"
Luminous looked at him.
He stopped breathing.
"I will take them," she repeated, softer.
A vampire lord two rows below laughed weakly, trying to challenge her with bravado.
"A fine batch, yes, but surely—"
Luminous didn't even glance at him.
A witch beside him flinched as if she heard something snap.
The vampire lord's laughter died in his mouth.
His eyes rolled back.
He collapsed, choking on nothing, hands clawing at his throat as if invisible fingers were squeezing his life out through his arrogance.
No one moved.
No one helped.
Because the Midnight Sect didn't reward mercy.
The vampire lord twitched once… then lay still.
Luminous finally looked away.
"Payment," she said.
A servant hurried forward carrying a black box. Luminous opened it with one nail.
Inside were coins cut from polished bone, each one stamped with a sigil that made Ezio's soul itch.
The auctioneer nearly bowed too low.
"It is done, Your Eminence."
Luminous rose.
And the hall felt smaller.
Ezio's mouth went dry—not from lust, not from fear alone.
From the crushing awareness that he was now within reach of something that had never been told "no" and had never been forced to accept it.
She descended.
Step by step.
Not hurried.
Not dramatic.
Just inevitable.
When she reached the platform, she didn't look at the women first.
She looked at Ezio.
Like a collector studying a rare blade.
Like a queen considering whether a man would make a good pet… or a good weapon.
Her fingers lifted his chin.
Cold.
Precise.
Possessive.
Ezio's throat tightened, not because she squeezed.
Because he felt how easily she could.
Up close, she smelled like night rain and wine and something darker—like the memory of a kiss that ended in a funeral.
"You," she murmured.
Ezio kept his eyes on hers.
He didn't bow.
He didn't smirk.
He held the gaze the way a man holds a knife: carefully, knowing it could cut both ways.
"You don't tremble," she said.
Ezio let a breath slip out, slow.
"I tremble where you cannot see."
Her lips curved faintly. Interest.
"Say it again."
Ezio leaned in just a fraction—enough to make it intimate, not enough to make it submissive.
"I tremble," he said softly, "in the place you're trying to own."
The air sharpened.
Kayra inhaled sharply behind him.
Rosa's eyes narrowed, as if she could see the hidden gamble being made.
Laura snarled under her breath like an animal sensing a storm.
Lagertha's gaze finally shifted—one clean movement—locking onto Ezio as if marking him.
Luminous stared at him for a long moment.
Then her thumb brushed the edge of his jaw.
A touch too gentle to be cruelty.
A touch too controlled to be kindness.
"You're a foreign soul," she said. "No bloodline. No recorded fate."
Her eyes flickered downward—toward his chest.
"And yet… something is forming inside you."
Ezio felt the Tarot Core twitch again, like a sleeping beast rolling over in its cage.
Lucifer whispered, amused:
She senses the fire.Let her come closer.
Luminous stepped in.
Now her body was within a breath of his.
It wasn't an embrace.
It was an invasion.
A deliberate pressure of presence, so intimate it made the room feel like it had disappeared.
"Do you know what it means," she whispered, "to be owned by the Midnight Sect?"
Ezio didn't answer quickly.
He let the silence stretch.
Casanova would make her wait.
Machiavelli would make her wonder why.
Finally, Ezio said:
"It means you can break me."
Luminous smiled.
"And?"
Ezio's voice dropped.
"It means… you think you can."
That smile—slow and sharp—arrived like a blade sliding out of its sheath.
"Oh," she said, almost fondly. "You're going to be entertainment."
She turned slightly and addressed the women, her voice cutting through them like silk.
"The fox," she said, looking at Kayra, "will be placed near my night markets. You'll learn what secrets cost here."
Kayra's ears—fox hidden under glamor—almost twitched. She swallowed her fear and nodded once.
"The strategist," Luminous said, eyes on Rosa, "will learn our economy. Not with books. With blood."
Rosa didn't flinch.
Only the faint tightening of her jaw betrayed that she understood: this was a world where losing a negotiation could cost a limb… or a soul.
"The oni," Luminous said, turning to Laura, "will be kept contained."
Laura spat toward the floor. "I'd rather die than—"
Luminous's gaze hit her like winter.
Laura's words died.
Not because she was scared.
Because her body recognized something older than rage: a predator that could swallow storms.
"The demon," Luminous said to Lagertha, "will be tested."
Lagertha finally smiled.
Not happy.
Just… eager.
Then Luminous returned to Ezio.
"And you," she whispered, her nail grazing the base of his throat, "will come to my palace. Tonight."
The word "tonight" wasn't a promise.
It was a collar.
Ezio felt it tighten around his mind, around his fate, around the fragile forming Tarot Core.
A servant approached with a contract scroll—black parchment, red ink that pulsed like veins.
Luminous pressed her thumb into it.
Blood kissed paper.
The contract ignited.
The slave marks on all five of them burned at once.
Ezio's vision blurred.
For a heartbeat he thought he might fall.
Lucifer's voice steadied him:
Pain is the gate. Walk through it.
Ezio straightened.
He did not show weakness.
Luminous watched him with that same calm fascination.
"Good," she murmured. "You understand. This world doesn't respect pride. It respects endurance."
Ezio forced his breathing even.
His rings hummed—desire and strategy twisting together like twin serpents.
The Tarot Core trembled as if it had tasted the word "Empress" and decided it liked it.
They were escorted out of the auction hall.
Not dragged.
Escorted.
The difference was intentional.
Because the Midnight Sect loved reminding its slaves of a cruel truth:
Sometimes a cage is velvet.
Sometimes a leash feels like a kiss.
Outside, the City of Sin and Chains opened before them.
A metropolis of shadow-lit canals and gothic towers. Floating lanterns holding whispering spirits. Bridges lined with nightclubs, each door guarded by vampires smiling like they knew your worst memory. Market streets where witches sold charms made from heartbreak and demon merchants traded in vows.
Ezio stared.
The sky was wrong.
Not the sky of his home world—this one was thick, bruised, heavy with a permanent twilight. The moon looked closer. Larger. Like an eye.
Kayra whispered, voice barely steady, "This isn't… this isn't our continent."
Rosa's gaze was sharp, cold, refusing panic. "No. This is an empire disguised as a city."
Laura's breathing came fast. Rage and terror mixed. She didn't want to admit the terror, so she fed the rage.
Lagertha's eyes gleamed like a war drum hearing its first beat.
Ezio said nothing.
Because inside him, Machiavelli was already counting:
Who rules the streets
Who rules the contracts
Who rules the blood banks
Who can be bought
Who must be broken
And Casanova was already tasting the air:
Who desires
Who envies
Who is lonely
Who is hungry enough to make mistakes
Lucifer was the third voice, smiling in the dark:
Heaven has no gate.Hell has no walls.Only rulers who think they are eternal.
They entered the Midnight Palace.
As the doors closed behind them, Ezio felt the contract settle deeper, like a brand inside his soul.
He was trapped.
Yes.
But he had been trapped before.
The difference now…
was that this cage came with a queen.
And queens could be conquered the same way empires were conquered:
Not by force.
By choice.
By desire.
By making the one who owns you believe they are the one being hunted.
Ezio lifted his gaze as servants led them down separate corridors.
Luminous looked back once—just once—over her shoulder.
Their eyes met.
Her expression was calm.
But her pupils tightened.
As if she felt it too:
A man with no bloodline.
No destiny.
No clan seal.
Yet something inside him…
refused to bow.
Ezio didn't smile.
He let his face remain still.
Because the most dangerous smile…
is the one you keep hidden until the moment the world realizes it's already lost.
And deep inside his chest, the forming Tarot Core whispered like a card being drawn in darkness:
The Empress is not a woman.
It is a position.
And one day… it will be his.