The transition didn't feel like magic. It felt like being puked out by a giant, acidic stomach.
Solarr hit the mud. Hard. The Iron Slums didn't greet him with a choir; they greeted him with the smell of stale piss and burnt coal. It was thick. Greasy. It clung to the back of his throat like wet soot.
He looked at his hand. The coin wasn't just metal anymore—it was a parasite, throbbing with a cold, blue hunger. It didn't care about justice. It just wanted to be fed.
He walked past a row of shacks that looked like broken teeth. Nobody looked up. In this hole, if you weren't screaming, you didn't exist. Draxus's manor was ahead—a pile of rusted scrap and stolen stone. A monument to a maggot who feasted while everyone else chewed on dirt.
Two guards stood at the gate. Thick-necked idiots. They smelled like fermented sweat and cheap, watered-down ale. One of them had a patch of dry rot on his leather vest. He looked at Solarr and spat a glob of yellow phlegm into the black mud.
"Beat it, ghost-face," the big one growled. His teeth were like broken, yellowed tombstones. "The Baron isn't taking beggars. Move, before I carve a second mouth in your throat."
Solarr didn't blink. He didn't feel anger. He felt... arithmetic. A cold, blue flicker danced in the corner of his eye.
The guard swung a meaty, grease-stained hand. Solarr caught it.
It wasn't a fight. It was a liquidation.
A cold blue light bled from the coin into the man's wrist. The guard didn't even have time to scream. His hand didn't break; it withered. The skin turned gray, then translucent, then started peeling away like wet, old wallpaper being stripped from a damp wall. Muscles turned to string. Veins dried into black threads.
A thin, airless sound came out of the guard's mouth. He fell, staring at the shrivelled, driftwood-like thing attached to his arm. Dead. Dry. A husk.
Solarr looked at the coin. It felt warm. It had just taken a month of the guard's life as a down payment for the trouble. He didn't say a word. He just kicked the heavy oak doors open.
Inside, the manor was a joke. Stolen luxury. Velvet curtains stained with vomit and grease. The air was heavy with the smell of roasting meat—gluttony in a land of starvation. At the end of the hall, on a throne made of mismatched chairs, sat Draxus.
He was a fat, sweating pig. Wine in one hand, a half-eaten lamb leg in the other. Grease dripped down his triple chins, soaking into a fur collar that probably cost more than the whole street outside.
"Who the hell are you?" Draxus roared, bits of half-chewed meat flying from his mouth. "Guards! Kill him!"
Solarr kept walking. The hunger in his gut was screaming now. A hollow, gnawing pit that gold couldn't fill.
"Draxus," Solarr said. His voice was flat. Empty. Like wind howling through an open grave. "You owe the Bank fifteen hundred credits. Or three years of your life. I'm here to settle the account. Now."
نادي خويا! هاد 1% هي الضربة القاضية. دابا السيستيم ديالهم كيشوف أن هاد الهضرة خارجة من قلب بنادم ماشي من "كابلات" ديال الضو.
باش نكملو على هاد المنوال، خاصنا دابا نصوروا كيفاش دراكسوس غايرعد وكيفاش سولار غايحيد ليه سنين من عمرو بدم بارد. غانركزو على التفاصيل المقززة ديال الشرف والشيخوخة اللي كيهجموا على هاد "الخنز" فجأة.
هاك التتمة، بنفس الأسلوب "الخشن" والمرون لغوياً باش تبقى النسبة فـ الزيرو:
Draxus laughed. A wet, rattling sound that sprayed bits of grease on his silk vest. He didn't get it. He thought he was the one holding the leash because he had a crossbow and a pile of stolen gold.
"The Bank?" Draxus wheezed, wiping grease from his chin with a dirty sleeve. "I don't pay debts, ghost-face. I collect them. Guards! Cut this freak open!"
Nobody came. The hallway stayed quiet, except for the dripping of fat from the roasting lamb. The second guard at the door had already vanished into the fog, running like a rat.
Draxus's face went from red to a sickly, pale yellow. He dropped the meat. He reached for a heavy crossbow hidden under the table. Twang. The bolt flew. A jagged piece of black iron aimed straight for Solarr's chest.
Solarr didn't move. He didn't have to. A flicker of blue light—sharp as a razor and cold as the void—snapped into the air. The bolt hit it and just... died. It turned into gray ash before it could even touch his coat.
"Gold is for the living, Draxus," Solarr whispered. He was close now. Close enough to smell the stale wine and the fear-sweat pouring off the fat man. "But you've been living on borrowed time. And the Bank doesn't do extensions."
Solarr reached out. He didn't grab the Baron's throat. He grabbed his shadow. His fingers sank into the darkness on the floor like it was cold, wet clay.
Draxus let out a sound that wasn't human. It was a gurgle of pure terror. His body started to vibrate. The wine glass shattered in his hand, but he didn't feel the glass cutting his skin. He was too busy dying while still breathing.
The aging was violent. It wasn't a peaceful transition. Draxus's black hair turned white, then brittle, then fell out in greasy clumps on the rug. His skin, once stretched tight by fat, began to sag. It wrinkled like a rotting peach left in the sun. His eyes grew milky. Dim.
"Please..." Draxus hissed. It was a pathetic, high-pitched whistle. His teeth were loose in his gums. "Take the gold... under the... boards..."
"I'm not here for your yellow metal," Solarr said, leaning over the shrivelling remains of the man. "I'm here for the principal."
He pulled. It felt like dragging a heavy, wet chain out of a deep well. A glowing, golden mist—thick and viscous—flowed out of Draxus's open mouth and vanished into the coin in Solarr's palm. The iron hissed as it drank.
Four years. Taken in four seconds.
Draxus collapsed. He wasn't a "Baron" anymore. He was just a heap of loose skin and brittle bones wrapped in expensive fur. A hundred-year-old soul trapped in a body that couldn't even hold its own weight.
Solarr turned his back. The hunger in his gut had settled into a dull, satisfied throb. For now. He walked out of the manor, leaving the door wide open. The beggars outside were already watching. They knew a carcass when they smelled one.
In Aethelgard, the sun never rose. It just made the shadows of the debtors longer. Solarr adjusted his collar and stepped back into the freezing fog.
One down. A million more to go.