Chapter 1 : The Sinner's First Breath in Hell
I died expecting the cold, sterile certainty of an assassin's bullet.
Instead, I was judged by the burning, unfathomable gaze of a god .
I built an empire on human suffering. Millions bled in the shadows so I could sleep on Egyptian cotton, untouchable, immaculate, and utterly ruthless. But when the universe finally noticed the sheer weight of my sins, it didn't just obliterate my soul. It tore my consciousness from its high pedestal and threw me into the filth, trapping my ancient, sociopathic mind inside the rotting, bruised body of a six-year-old child.
And tonight, the violent, foul-smelling drunkard who claims the title of my father is planning to sell me. To a black-market alchemist. For a crate of cheap potato gin.
Tomorrow, I will either be a vivisected corpse on a rusted laboratory table, or I will be an orphan with fresh blood on my hands. I greatly prefer the latter.
The wire was already set.
Taut, practically invisible in the suffocating gloom, and anchored with mathematical perfection to a precariously balanced latch. All that remained was for the man to take three oblivious steps forward.
I sat in the darkest corner of the filthy, urine-soaked shack, wrapping my frail arms around my knees to forcefully stop the shivering. My ribs pressed against my pale, translucent skin like the rusted bars of a birdcage. This body was pathetic. It was fragile, starving, and agonizingly human. I hated it. This weak, trembling body disgusted me. I despised the taste of copper and wet ash that permanently coated my tongue, a constant reminder of the gutter I now called home.
But most of all, I loathed the shattered mirror in the corner.
Even in the pitch black of the room, I could feel the unnatural, feverish heat radiating from my left socket. While my right eye was a dull, dead grey, my left burned with a violent, luminescent crimson. It pulsed with a heavy, suffocating energy, beating in time with my own heart. In a world governed by pristine divine blessings, this was the ultimate brand of the condemned. A Curse. It was the physical manifestation of my blackened soul, and it was the exact, horrific reason I was a coveted alchemical ingredient.
My trap was mathematically flawless. A heavy, iron anvil sat balanced on a splintered shelf directly above the doorframe, held in check by the single wire. A lethal, kinetic guillotine waiting for a catalyst. When my father inevitably stumbled through that door to drag me out to the buyer, his foot would snap the wire, the latch would give way, the shelf would tip, and eighty pounds of solid iron would instantly crush his skull.
A guaranteed execution. The architect was back in control.
Across the room, the heavy, wet snores of the Viscount—a disgraced nobleman who had gambled away his sprawling estates and his honor for cheap liquor—suddenly stopped.
My breathing shallowed. The freezing, damp air in the shack seemed to solidify into ice.
The heavy, uneven shifting of a massive body echoed off the rotting floorboards. He was waking from his drunken stupor, surfacing into consciousness with all the grace of a drowning beast.
"Boy,"
the man grunted, his voice a gravelly, violent slur that scraped against the silence.
"Where are you, you little demon? The Baron will be here soon. Need to wash the filth off your face before he weighs you."
I remained perfectly still in the shadows, melding into the darkness. My dull grey eye locked onto the tripwire.
"Just take three steps forward," I commanded silently, asserting my will over reality just as I used to. "Just walk through the doorframe."
The large man stood, swaying heavily like a rotting, felled tree caught in a gale. He took a heavy, dragging step toward the doorway.
Then another.
But he didn't take the third
Suddenly, a violent, wet fit of coughing seized him. His lungs, rotting from years of inhaling cheap gin fumes and slum dampness, spasmed uncontrollably. He doubled over, hacking violently, and the sudden, jerky motion threw his drunken equilibrium entirely off balance.
Instead of walking straight through the doorframe as logic dictated, he lunged wildly sideways in a desperate attempt to catch his fall. His massive shoulder slammed directly into the rotting wooden doorjamb.
The ancient wood splintered with a deafening, agonizing crack. The raw kinetic impact violently shook the entire structural wall.
"No", my mind shrieked, the cold, pristine calculus of my perfect plan instantly evaporating into chaos.
The violent vibration shattered the tension on the latch. The shelf tipped prematurely. The anvil plummeted.
Because the drunkard had stumbled sideways rather than walking straight, the eighty pounds of solid iron missed his skull by a mere three inches. It crashed through the rotting floorboards with a thunderous, concussive boom, throwing up a choking, blinding cloud of mortar dust, wood splinters, and damp earth.
The drunkard froze. The coughing fit died instantly in his throat.
He stared blankly down at the massive, jagged crater in the floor, his alcohol-addled brain slowly, terribly processing the rusted iron block that had nearly decapitated him.
Then, slowly, methodically, his gaze tracked the snapped, glinting silver wire across the floorboards. He followed the metallic thread as it led directly into the shadows. Directly to my small, trembling hands.
The silence that swallowed the room was heavier, denser, and far more lethal than the anvil.
"You..." his father whispered. The murky, drunken haze completely vanished from his eyes, instantly replaced by a dark, terrifyingly lucid, murderous clarity."You tried to kill me."
I tried to scramble backward. My adult intellect screamed at my child's body to move, to dodge, to fight—but there was nowhere to go. My spine hit the damp, unyielding brick wall. The majestic illusion of my absolute control shattered into a million jagged pieces. I had calculated the physics, the weight, the trajectory. But I had entirely, fatally failed to account for the chaotic, unpredictable clumsiness of human error.
He crossed the room in two massive, ground-shaking strides. His calloused, filthy hand wrapped entirely around my frail throat, lifting me off the ground effortlessly, as if I weighed nothing more than a ragged doll. My legs kicked uselessly at the empty air.
The first strike of the heavy iron poker felt like a stone building collapsing onto my chest. The air was violently, agonizingly expelled from my lungs in a bloody gasp.
The second strike shattered my collarbone with a sickening, wet crunch that echoed inside my skull.
My vision swam with dark, pulsating blood, searing pain, and the agonizing realization of my own absolute hubris. The universe wasn't just punishing me; it was actively humiliating me, stripping away my godhood and rubbing my face in the dirt.
And then, as I choked on the metallic taste of my own blood, the great grandfather clock in the distant town square began to chime its final toll of the night.
Dong.
Midnight.
I was officially seven years old.
Dong
Deep within the center of my chest, a freezing, necrotic fire violently ignited.
The Curse had awakened