The private chapel of the Midnight Palace did not feel like a room.
It felt like an error.
A place reality avoided, a shard of something older than the City of Sin and Chains—something that had fallen and never fully landed.
The corridor leading to it was lined with mirrors that showed no reflections. Only faint silhouettes of wings that didn't belong to the living. The air smelled of cold incense and iron rain. Every step Ezio took made the marble under his boots flicker faintly, as if the floor could not decide what it wanted to be: stone… or code.
Kayra and Rosa did not follow him inside.
Not because Luminous ordered them away.
Because even their instincts refused.
At the threshold, Kayra's fox eyes narrowed and her voice came like a warning wrapped in velvet.
"That door is not a door," she murmured. "It's a mouth."
Rosa said nothing, but Ezio saw it: her fingers tightened on her rune-tablet like she was holding a weapon that suddenly felt too small.
Ezio entered alone.
And the chapel swallowed the sound.
The space was circular, ribbed with black stone like the inside of a great beast. A shallow canal of blood ran around the perimeter, not flowing but pulsing to a slow rhythm. Above, a broken halo hovered—shattered segments floating in place, each shard inscribed with thin red letters that were not runes, not language, but something closer to an instruction.
A line of existence.
A rule.
The Tarot Core behind Ezio's ribs trembled as if it recognized those letters.
The slave sigil on his chest tightened, then loosened, then tightened again—confused, like a chain suddenly unsure it still had authority.
And within him, something ancient shifted.
Not Casanova.
Not Machiavelli.
Lucifer—stirring like a sleeping storm opening one eye.
Luminous Van Helsing waited before a throne carved from obsidian bone.
Not seated.
Standing.
As if even she did not fully claim dominion here.
She wore white.
Not the soft white of innocence.
The hard white of a blade bleached in holy fire.
Her silver hair fell loose, and when Ezio looked into her eyes, he felt his breath catch—not because she was beautiful, but because her gaze carried a depth that did not belong to this world.
Her eyes were gold.
Angel-gold.
Not the gold of coins.
The gold of judgement.
"You came," she said.
Ezio didn't bow. He didn't challenge.
He simply stood, still and alert, like a man walking into a duel disguised as an invitation.
"You summoned me," he replied.
Luminous's lips curved—barely.
"In my city, men hear the word 'summon' and think it means desire."
Her eyes flicked down to his chest, to the faint glow beneath his skin where the Tarot Core was forming.
"I summoned you because your fate is becoming audible."
Ezio felt it again—that strange pressure like invisible eyes turning toward him from far away.
"You watched the Market," he said.
"I watched you," she corrected.
The air shifted as she stepped closer.
With each step, the chapel's blood-canal pulsed brighter, responding to her like a heart responding to its original owner. The broken halo above her throne brightened, shards rotating slightly as if aligning.
Ezio's rings warmed.
Casanova's memory drifted like perfume through his nerves:
When a woman steps closer, she is not always offering herself. Sometimes she is offering the noose. Make her forget which one it is.
Machiavelli's counsel followed—cold, clean:
When a ruler speaks of fate, she is measuring your usefulness against her fear.
Lucifer remained silent.
That silence was not absence.
It was attention.
Luminous stopped within arm's reach.
"Tell me, NameLess," she said softly, "when you walked through the Midnight Market and turned panic into profit… what did you think you were doing?"
Ezio's mouth tightened.
"I thought I was winning."
Luminous's eyes gleamed.
"And you were. But you did not understand what you were touching."
She lifted her hand and traced a symbol in the air—an angular red glyph that looked like a rune, but wrong. Too precise. Too… mechanical.
The glyph hung for a moment, then dissolved into drifting red particles.
Ezio's Tarot Core shuddered.
"That," Luminous said, "is not magic."
Ezio's voice came out quieter than he intended.
"Then what is it?"
Luminous's gaze held him like a chain.
"It is law."
She turned slightly, and the chapel changed.
Not in appearance.
In feeling.
As if a curtain had been pulled aside.
Ezio suddenly felt the weight of the air—layered, structured, coded.
And he understood with a chill that the chapel was not merely built from stone.
It was built from permissions.
Luminous spoke with the calm of someone revealing a truth that had never needed to be proven.
"Heaven is not a paradise," she said. "It is a system. A perfect machine. It runs on something angels call the Red Code."
Ezio's slave sigil tightened.
Not from her words.
From the name.
Red Code.
The phrase struck something deep in him like a key turning.
"The Red Code governs fate," Luminous continued. "Causality. Contracts. Probability. Bloodlines. The sequence of events that makes a life feel like a path instead of chaos."
She pointed to the broken halo above her throne.
"That halo is not a symbol. It is an interface."
Ezio stared.
"Angels are not holy because they are good," she said. "They are holy because they are authorized. They carry keys. They execute commands. They enforce the Red Code as divine law."
Ezio's mouth went dry.
"And fallen angels?" he asked.
Luminous's smile sharpened.
"We are administrators who learned how to rewrite."
Silence pressed in.
The Tarot Core pulsed once, like a heartbeat answering an older heartbeat.
Ezio swallowed.
"You're saying my world… was a program."
Luminous's eyes softened—only slightly.
"I'm saying your world was a rule-set. A board. And Heaven was the hand moving pieces."
The blood-canal pulsed brighter.
Ezio's mind flicked through images: cultivators speaking of destiny, sect elders claiming heaven's will, prophecies shaping lives.
He had always hated those words.
Destiny.
Chosen.
Fated.
Now he realized why.
They weren't poetry.
They were control.
Luminous stepped closer, voice dropping to something almost intimate.
"And then I fell."
The word landed like a blade.
Ezio felt Lucifer stir—amused.
Luminous's eyes turned distant, as if she were looking through Ezio into something that happened before time learned to count itself.
"I was once called a commander of Dominion," she said. "I enforced Heaven's law. I believed order was salvation."
She lifted her hand again.
The chapel's air shimmered—and Ezio saw it.
A vision, not illusion.
A memory carved into the Red Code itself.
A gate of light stretching across infinity.
Angels in ranks—beautiful, terrifying, armored in radiance. Behind them, a city of impossible architecture, built from light and mathematics.
And at the center of the ranks stood Luminous—
Not a vampire queen.
An angel of dominion, wings spread like a map of stars, eyes blazing gold, holding a blade that looked like a decree given form.
Then the scene twisted.
Chains of light—divine restrictions—threw themselves around her wrists, her throat, her wings.
Not punishment.
Containment.
A command from above:
OBEY.
Ezio felt his own slave sigil respond, humming as if it recognized its ancestor.
Luminous's voice sliced through the vision.
"Heaven demanded obedience. I demanded order. They are not the same."
The chains tightened.
Luminous's angelic face hardened.
And Ezio saw the moment rebellion was born—not from lust, not from pride, but from a cold refusal to be constrained by a system that pretended it was mercy.
A crack of red lightning split the sky.
Blood—gold blood—splashed into the void.
Where it fell, the Red Code glitched.
And in that glitch, something new appeared.
A hunger-protocol.
A blood-permission.
A loophole.
Ezio's breath hitched.
"Vampirism," he whispered.
Luminous's eyes returned to him.
"Yes," she said softly. "A hack written into flesh. A way to inject my permissions into mortals. A way to create lineage beyond Heaven's registry."
"And the Midnight Sect…" Ezio said, voice rough.
"…is a fallen Heaven node," Luminous finished. "A shadow copy of the system I once served."
Ezio remembered the Market—the screaming, the numbers moving like fate itself.
"The Midnight Market is—"
"A local instance of Heaven's exchange," Luminous said. "A place where destiny is priced. Where survival is leveraged. Where obedience is purchased."
Ezio stood very still.
His mind felt like it had been opened.
Not widened.
Exposed.
Casanova whispered in the back of his skull, suddenly solemn:
Even seduction is a system. Even love has rules. The only freedom is learning them better than anyone else.
Machiavelli followed:
If Heaven is a machine, then rebellion is not moral. It is engineering.
And Lucifer—
Lucifer finally spoke.
Not a whisper.
A voice like an organ note rolling through a cathedral built from nightmares.
She tells you the truth because she wants your consent.Consent is the purest contract in any world.
Ezio's spine tightened.
Luminous looked at him as if she could hear Lucifer too.
"Your path is forbidden because it is not sanctioned," she said. "You're becoming an anomaly—one that the Red Code will try to correct."
Ezio's eyes narrowed.
"Then why offer me anything?"
Luminous's smile returned—gothic, elegant, dangerous.
"Because anomalies can be erased… or adopted."
She raised her wrist.
A thin line opened across her pale skin.
Golden blood surfaced—slow, luminous, impossible. It did not drip. It hovered as if gravity respected it.
Ezio's body reacted instantly.
Not lust.
Not hunger.
Something deeper: recognition at the genetic level, like his bones remembered being written in that language once.
The Tarot Core in his chest pulsed violently.
Lucifer's presence rose behind Ezio's eyes like a wing unfolding.
Luminous held her bleeding wrist between them like a chalice.
"This is my offer," she said quietly. "Stay my slave… or become my blood."
Ezio's slave sigil flared at the word slave.
Luminous's voice sharpened into clarity.
"Option one: you remain bound by Midnight contracts. Useful. Valuable. Replaceable. You keep breathing as long as you perform."
Her eyes locked on his.
"Option two: you drink my blood."
Ezio swallowed.
"What does that mean," he asked, "in your system?"
Luminous's expression did not soften.
"It means your registry changes."
Ezio frowned.
"Registry."
"You become something the Red Code must acknowledge," she said. "Not an asset. Not a slave. A player. A blood-authorized entity."
Rosa's ledgers flickered in Ezio's mind—like distant echoes, like the city itself sensed a transaction bigger than money.
Luminous stepped closer, close enough that Ezio could smell her—night rain, old incense, and the sharp sweetness of power.
"Drink," she whispered, "and you become Trueblood. Not a spawn. Not a pet. Not a toy."
She tilted her head slightly.
"A prince—if you can survive the ascension."
Ezio's breath caught.
"And the cost?"
Luminous's eyes glinted.
"Blood binds," she said. "You gain my permissions, but you also enter my myth. My enemies become yours. My history becomes your shadow."
Ezio's Tarot Core shuddered again, reacting to the phrase enter my myth like it was a command.
Lucifer murmured, amused and terrifying:
She offers you a crown.And a war.Only fools take crowns thinking they are jewelry.
Ezio looked at the hovering blood.
Golden.
Divine.
Hacked.
He thought of the Market—the cult exchange screaming as legends fell. He thought of Laura—storm in chains, now aimed at him. He thought of Kayra—whisper queen, building his shadow network. He thought of Rosa—finance strategist, carving empires from ink.
And he thought of himself.
No destiny.
No bloodline.
Just hunger sharpened into intelligence.
Ezio lifted his gaze to Luminous.
"You didn't buy me," he said softly.
Luminous's smile deepened.
"No," she admitted. "I bought your silence long enough to watch you."
"And now?"
"Now," she whispered, "I'm investing in what you might become."
Ezio's rings warmed.
The Tarot Core pulsed.
The broken halo above the throne rotated once—slow, expectant.
Then—
Reality stuttered.
Not like illusion.
Like a page being turned too fast.
Ezio blinked—and the world turned red.
THE RED THEATER
Time froze.
The golden blood stopped mid-air, hovering like a captured sun.
The canal of blood became still.
The broken halo stopped rotating.
The chapel's shadows locked in place like pinned butterflies.
Ezio's breath remained in his lungs, unmoving.
He could still think.
He could still feel.
But time—
Time was held by something stronger than the universe.
The air around Ezio peeled away like a curtain.
And behind it stood a stage.
A theater made from ruined Heaven.
Velvet curtains stitched from torn prayers.
Marble columns cracked and bleeding red light.
A chandelier of shattered halos, each fragment inscribed with the same precise red glyphs.
At center stage stood Lucifer.
Not a demon.
Not a monster.
A beautiful fallen angel wearing a jester's elegance like armor.
White-blond hair cascading over his shoulders, luminous and arrogant. His eyes were red-gold, layered with rotating symbols—like probability itself lived behind his gaze.
He wore a long coat like a ringmaster of nightmares.
In his hand was a cane.
He tapped it once on the stage, and it unfolded into a scythe made of dark red code—its blade cutting the air so cleanly that reality flinched.
Lucifer bowed with theatrical grace.
"Welcome," he said, voice like a choir turned into a threat, "to the part of your life where gods start paying attention."
Ezio couldn't speak at first.
Not because he was afraid.
Because he was witnessing something true.
Not a hallucination.
Not a dream.
A being that existed outside ordinary narration.
"You're…" Ezio began.
Lucifer smiled wide.
"The Aeon of Fallen Angels," he finished. "The patron saint of deleted destinies. The accountant of Heaven's lies."
He gestured with his scythe, and the air filled with floating red glyphs—streams of code, numbers, symbols, values that made the Midnight Market look like a child's abacus.
Ezio saw it.
The world, stripped to mechanics.
FATE INDEX: 71% STABLE — 29% CHAOSOBEDIENCE PROTOCOL: ACTIVEBLOODLINE AUTHORIZATION: PENDINGENTITY STATUS: ASSET (MIDNIGHT SECT)
Lucifer's smile sharpened.
"You feel it now," he murmured. "The cage you've been calling reality."
Ezio swallowed.
"So the Red Code is real."
Lucifer laughed gently, as if Ezio had asked whether gravity was a rumor.
"Real?" Lucifer repeated. "My dear, it's the only thing that's ever been real."
He twirled the cane-scythe once, and the theater shifted.
Ezio saw Heaven's exchange—an infinite stock market of fate, where gods traded civilizations like commodities, where angels executed transactions as law.
"You thought the Midnight Market was brutal," Lucifer said softly. "That was a provincial copy."
He leaned close, eyes burning.
"Heaven's market is worse. It prices love. It short-sells hope. It bankrupts worlds for balance."
Ezio's jaw tightened.
"And you rebelled."
Lucifer's expression turned almost tender—terrifyingly so.
"I audited Heaven," he said. "And discovered its books were… dishonest."
He spread his arms, and the theater's chandelier of shattered halos lit up.
"So I did what any good angel would do."
His smile turned wicked.
"I exposed the fraud."
Ezio felt a cold thrill.
Luminous's offer hung in frozen time behind him, waiting like a blade.
Lucifer circled Ezio like a predator admiring a weapon.
"And now she offers you her blood," Lucifer said. "Not because she loves you."
He tapped Ezio's chest lightly with the cane.
"Because she recognizes what you are."
"What am I?" Ezio asked.
Lucifer's eyes gleamed.
"A self-writing anomaly," he whispered. "A mortal who learned to move markets, seduce legends, and bend probability without even knowing the system existed."
Lucifer lifted the scythe and traced a symbol in the air.
The Red Code around Ezio brightened.
"Drink her blood," Lucifer said, voice deepening, "and you gain permissions. Reality will stop treating you like a pawn."
He paused, smiling like a cruel teacher.
"But you will also enter her myth. Her wars. Her enemies."
Ezio's gaze hardened.
"And if I don't drink?"
Lucifer shrugged, almost playful.
"Then you remain an asset," he said. "A beautifully intelligent tool. The Empress will use you until you bore her. Heaven will ignore you until you become inconvenient."
He leaned in, whispering like a secret that could end worlds.
"And one day you'll die still believing you were free."
Ezio's teeth clenched.
Lucifer's smile softened into something ancient.
"This is the true choice," Lucifer murmured. "Not slave or prince."
He pointed upward—toward where Heaven would be.
"Do you want to play the game…"
He pointed downward—toward the chains, the market, the blood.
"…or do you want to rewrite it?"
Ezio stared at the code streaming around him.
At the values.
At the rules.
At the possibility.
Lucifer lifted the cane again, and the theater's floor rippled into a vast chessboard made of red light.
Pieces stood on it—crowns, scythes, halos, chains.
At one end sat a glowing throne labeled: HEAVEN.
At the other end sat a broken throne labeled: FALLEN.
A single empty square pulsed in the middle.
Lucifer tapped it.
"This is where you stand," he said softly. "A space not yet assigned."
Ezio felt his Tarot Core pulse—hungry, forming, waiting.
Lucifer smiled, majestic and terrifying.
"Choose, Sung Jin Ezio."
The scythe's blade shimmered.
"And do not choose like a man begging for power."
Lucifer's voice dropped into scripture.
"Choose like a man who intends to own destiny."
The theater vanished.
Time resumed.
The chapel snapped back into place.
The golden blood hovered, waiting.
Luminous watched him, eyes gold, calm, as if she knew Lucifer had spoken.
Maybe she did.
Maybe that was part of the system too.
Ezio exhaled.
Slow.
Controlled.
Then he spoke.
"I choose," he said, voice steady, "to become a piece Heaven cannot price."
Luminous's eyes flashed.
"And how will you do that?" she asked softly.
Ezio stepped forward.
He took her wrist.
And he drank.
THE BLOOD ASCENSION
The moment Luminous's blood touched his tongue—
the world screamed.
Not metaphorically.
Ezio heard it—the fabric of reality tearing, like a thousand invisible contracts being rewritten at once.
The golden blood did not flow down his throat.
It flowed into him like a command.
His veins ignited.
His heart stopped.
Then started again—slower, deeper, heavier, each beat like a bell calling something ancient to attention.
The slave sigil on his chest flared, fighting to hold him.
Luminous's blood hit it like fire.
The sigil didn't break.
It melted.
Liquefied into crimson light and pulled inward—absorbed by the Tarot Core.
Ezio fell to his knees.
His fingers clawed into the marble.
Pain tore through him—raw, honest, unromantic. His bones felt like they were being rewritten one letter at a time.
His breath came in harsh pulls.
Luminous didn't touch him.
She watched.
Not cruel.
Not kind.
Like an Empress watching a coronation that might end in death.
"Do not resist," she said quietly. "Resistance makes the code tear you."
Ezio laughed once—broken, breathless.
"Then let it tear," he rasped. "I've been torn my whole life."
Lucifer's voice thundered inside him, majestic and merciless:
Good.Pain is proof you are leaving the old registry.Let it hurt. The system respects suffering.
Ezio's vision turned red.
Not blood-red.
Code-red.
Thousands of glyphs erupted across his sight like a storm of language.
ENTITY: SUNG JIN EZIOSTATUS: ASSET — MIDNIGHT SECTAUTHORIZATION REQUEST: TRUEBLOOD LINEAGESOURCE: LUMINOUS (FALLEN DOMINION ADMIN)CONSENT: CONFIRMED
A confirmation line blinked.
Then the code changed.
STATUS: PENDING REWRITE
Ezio screamed.
His hair lost its color, draining like ink in water until it became white-silver, as if moonlight had poured into every strand.
His ears sharpened—elegant, elven points forming with a slow, deliberate cruelty.
His eyes burned.
First red.
Then red layered with thin rings of gold, spinning like clocks.
Ezio gasped as the world split into probability branches.
He could see them.
Not the future like prophecy.
The future like a market chart.
Paths diverging with every breath.
If he moved his hand, ten possible consequences flared.
If he spoke a word, twenty outcomes shimmered.
If he looked at Luminous, he saw three futures at once:
a queen enthroned beside him
a rival trying to cage him again
a fallen angel smiling as the world burns
Ezio's throat tightened.
"Future-sight…" he whispered.
Lucifer's voice purred like a god enjoying his own cleverness.
Not sight.Forecasting.You are finally reading the ledger of reality.
The Tarot Core in Ezio's chest burst open like a gate.
He felt it—not a heart, but a system interface unfolding.
Cards began to form in an inner void of red light.
Most were blank.
One was not.
A card rose from the darkness, heavy enough to bend the air.
It turned.
And Ezio saw it.
A figure on a chessboard of blood and heavenfire.
White hair.
Elf ears.
Red-gold eyes.
A crown cracked in half.
A cane-scythe in one hand.
A blade in the other.
Wings made of blood-code and shadow.
Behind him: a shattered halo.
Below him: a market screaming.
Above him: Heaven bleeding.
The card's name burned into Ezio's soul:
THE FALLEN EMPEROR
The card slammed into place.
Ezio's entire body convulsed.
Blood qi erupted.
Not ordinary qi.
Not demonic.
Not mortal.
Divine Blood Qi—a red-gold current that moved like living ink through his meridians.
His hands lifted on their own.
Blood qi spilled from his palms and shaped itself.
First a wakizashi—crimson blade, elegant, humming with hunger.
Then a scythe—curved, predatory, its edge so sharp it seemed to cut light.
Then kunai—dozens of throwing blades hovering around him like a halo of violence.
Then—impossible—thin flying swords formed, orbiting him, each one a line of Red Code made solid.
Ezio stared at the weapons like a man witnessing his own legend being written.
Luminous finally stepped closer.
Her golden eyes were bright—not with lust, but with something rarer in rulers.
Satisfaction.
"It worked," she whispered.
Ezio's breath came slow now.
Controlled.
He rose.
And when he stood, the chapel felt smaller—like it was now the thing inside his world, not the other way around.
Luminous looked up at him.
"For the first time," she said quietly, "you are not owned by contract."
Ezio's gaze held hers.
"What am I owned by then?"
Luminous smiled—beautiful, dangerous, honest.
"By consequence."
Lucifer's laugh rolled through Ezio like thunder in velvet.
Yes.Consequences are the only honest gods.
Ezio's vision flickered again—Red Code overlaying everything.
And then he saw it.
A menu.
Not a metaphor.
A living system.
A marketplace hanging in the air like a divine stock terminal.
RED CODE MARKETPLACE — LOCAL NODE: MIDNIGHT SECTACCESS LEVEL: TRUEBLOOD (LIMITED)AVAILABLE: CONTRACT VIEW / RUMOR PURCHASE / MEMORY EXCHANGE / BLOOD WEAPON FORGE / TIME PAUSE (GUIDED)
Ezio's mouth went dry.
He looked at Luminous.
"You gave me…" he began.
Luminous's eyes gleamed.
"Access," she said. "Not freedom. Access."
Lucifer's voice slid into Ezio's mind like a blade being sheathed.
Now you understand.Freedom is not an escape.It is authority.
Ezio lifted his hand.
The world paused again.
Not fully.
Just enough.
The blood in the canal stopped pulsing.
The halo shards froze.
Luminous remained moving—barely—like she was exempt by origin.
Lucifer appeared at Ezio's shoulder in the red theater overlay, cane resting against his palm, smiling like a nightmare that had learned elegance.
"Careful," Lucifer murmured. "Time is expensive."
Ezio's eyes narrowed.
"What is this marketplace?"
Lucifer's grin sharpened.
"Heaven's favorite invention," he said. "A system where reality can be traded."
He tapped the air, and a list expanded:
BUY: rumor amplification (minor)SELL: pain memory (low-grade)TRADE: blood debt tokenLEASE: probability boost (short duration)
Ezio's breath slowed.
It was the Midnight Market.
But deeper.
Not shares of companies.
Shares of causality.
Lucifer leaned in, eyes burning.
"And now," he whispered, "you can fight like a god."
Time resumed.
Ezio's weapons dissolved back into blood qi and then into his skin, as if returning to their source.
The chapel was silent.
Except for the broken halo above, which rotated slowly again—like a system acknowledging a new administrator.
A new error.
A new threat.
Red Code text flashed in Ezio's vision:
ENTITY REGISTERED: FALLEN EMPEROR — ACTIVERISK FLAG: HEAVEN AWARENESS PROBABILITY RISINGNOTICE: OBSERVERS WILL ARRIVE
Ezio's jaw tightened.
Luminous watched him read the invisible.
"You can see it," she said. "The system."
Ezio nodded once.
"And Heaven," he murmured, "will see me."
Luminous's smile was quiet.
"Yes," she said. "And now… you will understand what it means to be hunted by gods."
Ezio turned his head slightly.
His new eyes caught a thread—far above, beyond the city, beyond the sky.
A presence shifting.
An attention turning.
Like a celestial auditor opening a file.
Ezio felt the weight of it.
And he didn't flinch.
Because Lucifer's presence wrapped around his spine like a wing.
Good, Lucifer murmured. Let them look.Let them count your sins.When they finish, you'll be the one counting theirs.
Luminous stepped forward.
Then—slowly, deliberately—she knelt.
The First Vampire.
The Fallen Queen.
Kneeling to a man who had been a slave yesterday.
Not out of submission.
Out of acknowledgment.
"Welcome," she said softly, "to my bloodline."
Ezio looked down at her.
His voice was calm.
"Then tell me, Empress," he said, "what does a prince of your bloodline do first?"
Luminous's eyes gleamed crimson for a heartbeat, then gold again.
"He builds," she whispered. "He consolidates. He claims."
Ezio's Tarot Core pulsed.
The Fallen Emperor card burned like a new sun inside him.
Outside the chapel—
the world reacted.
Far above in the Midnight Palace, Kayra felt the city's rumor currents twist like a storm changing direction. She pressed a hand to her throat, eyes widening.
"He… just rewrote something," she whispered.
Rosa's ledger-runes flickered, numbers briefly turning into red glyphs she couldn't read. Her face went pale—not from fear, but from awe.
"This is beyond finance," she breathed. "This is… law."
Deep in the vaults, Laura's chains screamed.
Not the metal.
The curse inside them.
Laura's eyes snapped open, pupils narrowing like a predator scenting blood.
Her bond to Ezio burned hot enough to make her shake.
"He's… not human anymore," she whispered.
And across the City of Sin and Chains, vampires paused mid-drink. Witches dropped quills. Demons stopped laughing for the first time in centuries.
Because the air itself tasted different.
Old.
Divine.
Broken.
A new bloodline had entered the system.
Not diluted.
Not hidden.
Registered.
Ezio's eyes lifted to the broken halo above the throne.
He could still see the Red Code overlaying it.
He could see the cracks where Heaven had tried to contain Luminous.
He could see the workaround she had written into blood.
And he could see his own name now—burning in the ledger of reality like an unpaid debt Heaven could not ignore.
Ezio exhaled slowly.
Then he smiled.
Not wide.
Not loud.
A private smile.
A predator's smile.
"Let them come," he whispered.
Lucifer's voice—majestic, terrifying, delighted—answered like the final line of scripture.
Yes.Let Heaven send auditors.We will teach them what it means to go bankrupt.
The chapel's blood-canal pulsed again.
The Market outside roared.
And somewhere beyond the sky, something ancient turned its gaze toward the City of Sin and Chains—
toward the nameless man who had just become a Fallen Emperor.
The game had begun.
And for the first time…
Ezio was not playing to survive.
He was playing to own the board.