The wooden carriage didn't have suspension, or maybe it did and the empire just hated prisoners, because every rock on that muddy road felt like it was trying to relocate my kidneys straight to my throat.
Outside, the crowd was making that specific wet, slapping sound that only happens when a bunch of bored peasants throw overripe tomatoes at a wooden box, their screams about the "traitorous bitch" sounding exactly like the bleating of sheep waiting for the slaughter.
I didn't care about the tomatoes or the yelling, honestly; I was too busy staring at the neon purple screen floating three inches from my nose, which was written in a font that looked suspiciously like a corrupted version of Comic Sans.
The thing smelled like someone had forgotten a handful of cheap rubber bands on top of a hot router, a sharp, industrial ozone stench that made the back of my throat itch like I'd just swallowed a handful of dry glitter.
There was no friendly anime girl or a polite AI explaining the mechanics, just a block of jagged text that felt less like a tutorial and more like a collection agency notice from a bank you've been avoiding for six months.
[INFINITY GREED SYSTEM: Soul Synchronization 100%. Bloodline of Greed unlocked.]
The letters were actively vibrating against my retinas, leaving little trails of yellow after-images that made me miss the blue light filter on my old office monitor, even if it never stopped the migraine after a twelve-hour shift.
To unlock anything useful, the screen informed me in its ugly, glowing text, I needed Sin Points, which could be acquired through wealth accumulation, causing general ruin, or total domination of a region.
It was basically the exact same business model as the multinational corporation I used to work for back in São Paulo, just with more magic and less corporate sustainability bullshit in the company manifesto.
I tried to scroll down to see if there was a free trial or a welcome pack, but the system just gave a wet, static pop that left a metallic taste under my tongue, like I'd been sucking on an old battery.
"Enjoying the view, your highness? You won't see many tomatoes where you're going, just monsters that'll peel you like a banana before the sun even goes down," the guard on the left said, his voice a grating mix of bad tobacco and a desperate need to feel important.
He was leaning against the iron bars of the rolling cage, picking something out from between his teeth with a fingernail that had a crescent moon of black grease under it, looking at me with that classic small-man authority.
His armor had a patch of orange rust right on the shoulder joint that looked like a dried bloodstain from a distance, but up close, it just screamed that the imperial logistics division was pocketing the maintenance budget.
"You should really get that rust checked out on your pauldron before the humidity makes the metal weld itself to your collarbone, because that's a bitch to clean," I said, my voice sounding flat and bored even to my own ears, lacking any of the high-pitched screaming the guy was clearly hoping for.
"Besides, with what the empire pays a third-class escort guard, you probably can't afford the grease to fix it, let alone the tetanus shot you're going to need when the skin on your shoulder starts rotting off."
His greasy finger stopped halfway to his mouth, and his face took on that specific, blank look of a person who had a script ready in their head and just realized the other actor was improvising.
I could see the gears in his head grinding with the heavy, slow rotation of a rusted water wheel, his chest puffing out as he tried to find a comeback that didn't involve admitting his salary was garbage.
His partner, the quiet one with a nose that looked like it had been broken in three different bars, shifted his weight and stared intently at the muddy road behind us, clearly trying to pretend he hadn't heard me nail their financial situation.
It was the same look the junior accountants used to give me when I pointed out they'd double-counted the depreciation on the office laptops to hide their coffee expenses from the audit.
"You think you're smart, don't you? You're going to the Death Lands, girl. Nobody comes back from there, not even the mages," the guard spat, but the venom in his voice was gone, replaced by that defensive, whiny tone that people get when they realize they've been read like an open book by someone they thought was powerless.
I just shrugged, the lace on the shoulder of this ridiculous dress catching on a splinter in the wood and tearing with a tiny, satisfying rip that felt like the final thread connecting me to the Astrea family name.
"The mages probably didn't have an offshore account or a proper understanding of asset liquidation, so their survival rate doesn't really factor into my business plan for the quarter," I muttered.
The carriage gave a sudden, violent jerk that sent my forehead straight into the iron bars with a hollow clunk, the smell of burning horse fat and wet mud filling the small space as the driver slammed on the brakes.
Outside, the screaming of the mob had died down, replaced by a heavy, suffocating silence that felt thick enough to chew, like the air in a server room after the air conditioning fails in the middle of summer.
I rubbed the spot on my head where a bruise was definitely going to form, thinking about how I'd never filled out the health insurance form for the new fiscal year before Roberto shot me.
Through the gaps in the wooden planks, I could see the sky had turned a sick, bruised shade of magenta, the horizon completely swallowed by a massive chasm that looked like a jagged scar across the world's crust.
It didn't look like a natural canyon; it looked like someone had used a giant, dull excavator to scoop out a chunk of the planet and then filled the hole with the purple smoke you get when you burn plastic.
This was the Edge, the boundary where the empire stopped collecting taxes because the cost of sending collectors was higher than the revenue they could squeeze out of the local corpses.
The smell of ozone from the floating system screen was suddenly overpowered by something else—a heavy, sweet rot that smelled exactly like a bag of potatoes forgotten at the bottom of a pantry during a long vacation.
It was a physical mass of air that seemed to want to occupy the same space as my lungs, heavy and oily, coating the inside of my mouth with a flavor that reminded me of copper and old church incense.
The guards weren't laughing anymore, their hands white-knuckled on the shafts of their spears as they looked at the purple void like it was a boss they hadn't prepared for.
"Out. Now. Move your ass before I kick it out," the broken-nose guard said, his voice shaking just enough that the bravado fell flat, his hand trembling as he unlocked the iron cage with a key that looked like it had been chewed on by a dog.
They didn't drag me out with the cinematic violence I expected; it was more of a clumsy, awkward shuffle as they gripped my elbows with too much force, their palms sweaty against the expensive fabric of my sleeves.
I could feel their heartbeats through their thumbs, a rapid, panicky rhythm that reminded me of a pigeon trapped in an air shaft at the office.
I didn't bother resisting because there was no point in wasting calories on a struggle against two guys who were basically just low-level assets being used as disposal tools by the management.
Instead, I used the time to look at their faces, memorizing the specific shape of the broken-nosed guy's nostrils and the way the other guard had a mole right on his left eyelid that twitched when he was nervous.
I was cataloging them in my mind under the 'Future Liabilities' folder, right next to the guys who had handled the logistics for the failed crypto merger in my previous life.
We stopped at the very edge of the precipice, where the white marble of the imperial road just stopped and gave way to jagged, black stone that looked like it had been melted and then frozen mid-drip.
The purple miasma below was swirling in slow, heavy circles, like a bucket of paint that hadn't been mixed properly, completely obscuring whatever was at the bottom of the gorge.
The air was so quiet here that I could hear the guards' leather armor creaking with every breath they took, a rhythmic, annoying sound that was making my headache much worse than it needed to be.
"May the Holy Light have mercy on your soul, because the Emperor certainly didn't," the guard with the mole said, his voice sounding small and pathetic against the backdrop of the massive, purple abyss that was waiting to swallow me whole.
He gave me a shove that wasn't even particularly strong—just a nervous, quick push intended to get the job over with so they could go back to their cheap beer and low-paying shifts.
I didn't scream or flail my arms like a character in a bad soap opera; I just let the gravity take over, my heavy, lace-covered skirt blooming around me like a ridiculous, overpriced parachute.