Once Charles stepped out of Elijah's hospital room, he didn't pause or glance back. He motioned to the doctor waiting down the hall—one of the few he trusted enough for this—and asked to be led to the control room.
The moment they arrived, he sat down, brought up the security logs, and calmly deleted the last hour of footage.
On his way out of the hospital, he stopped at the office of the doctor in charge of Elijah's treatment. The man was already standing, expecting him.
Money had a way of making people agreeable—especially men like this one, whose silence could be bought as easily as finding stones. Charles handed him a thin envelope and leaned in with quick instruction.
"No more pain meds," he said. "No sedatives. No sleep aids. Nothing."
The doctor nodded, almost too eagerly.
Charles didn't wait for a response. He turned and left.
In Elijah's room, the lights were dim.
Machines hummed softly. He lay there, stiff and still, unable to move a finger. His eyes stared up at the ceiling, unfocused.
At first, he tried to rationalize it.
'Maybe they had a reason.'
'Maybe I was too harsh.'
'Too cold. Maybe I made them feel small…'
He let that thought linger, trying to hold onto it like a rope in water, slippery but comforting.
But the longer he lay there, the more that idea soured. The warmth drained from it. His jaw clenched.
Without the medication he was awake for most of the day and night leaving him to stew in his thoughts. By the next day his thought slowly changed.
'I wasn't competing with any of them.'
'I didn't even take what should have been mine.'
'If I had… I'd be twice as rich. Three times.'
'I could've taken the guild by force if I wanted, but I didn't. And still—they blamed me.'
The bitterness dug deeper with every minute. That same thought looped again and again until, slowly, it shifted again.
'If I had taken what I was owed... if I had crushed them, taken the guild, the profits, the titles…
Then maybe I wouldn't be here.'
'Maybe I'd be in charge.'
'Maybe I'd be safe.'
'Not paralyzed in a hospital bed like this.'
His body began to throb. A dull ache at first, then sharper. The absence of medication was becoming impossible to ignore. His head buzzed. His hands trembled, though they didn't move.
'It hurts...' he thought. Not just the pain—though that was there, grinding through him—but the betrayal. The helplessness. The regret.
And then, as the haze thickened and the pain sharpened, the thought solidified, bitter and cold:
'I should've taken it all.'
'Everything.'
'They wanted to make me the villain. Then I should've given them a reason.'
'I was never in a competition… but they turned it into one.'
'They asked for this.'
He stared at the ceiling, breath shallow, the silence around him heavy with something new.
Resolve.
He tried to move.
Nothing.
He tried again. Still nothing.
The more he tried, the angrier he became.
Desperation welled up inside him, and with it came a storm of dark thoughts. Each one louder, sharper—feeding off his helplessness.
*******
{City Slum}
A faint hum echoed through the slums as a portal tore open in the air. Something stepped through… and vanished.
Drawn by the noise and the flicker of light, a malnourished man rounded the corner. He squinted into the dim alley, eyes darting.
"Is anybody there?" he called into the darkness.
Silence.
He frowned.
'I swear I heard something.'
But when no one replied and nothing moved, he shrugged it off. He didn't see anything, and frankly, it wasn't his business.
Without another thought, he turned around and walked away.
Unseen, the entity who'd stepped out chuckled to itself.
"Definitely surviving a horror movie."
It grinned. 'Since I'm here, I should check out the movies this world made over the last five years.'
Human horror films had always fascinated it.
The creativity of their twisted imagination had taught it more than a few useful torture techniques—though it had added its own twists, of course.
"I guess it's time to collect that debt."
In a blink, the entity vanished—moving at an inhuman speed.
Seconds later, it stopped, now in an entirely different part of the city.
It paused.
'Such intense negativity from one person… how is that even possible?'
Turning, it darted once more—this time appearing inside a hospital room.
It paused, observing the figure in the bed.
'Ah… I see. An angel is falling,' it thought, surprised.
It was rare—very rare—to witness the fall of an angel.
In this realm, races fell somewhere along a spectrum—good to evil.
All of them did.
Well, all except humans… but that's a conversation for another day.
Angels sat firmly on the extreme end of the good spectrum.
But don't confuse that with been "good people."
It didn't mean they were kind, or fair. It meant that, without influence, they naturally leaned toward that end of the spectrum.
But a world without external influence didn't exist.
The entity? It stood as part of the opposite side—evil.
But that didn't make it 'bad,' either.
Not exactly.
There was an old saying from the entity's origin:
'A demon raised in heaven would become a saint… albeit a weak one.'
Watching this particular fall unfold sparked a dozen ideas in its mind.
It paused, thinking through them all—running the possibilities in silence.
Then, it made up its mind.
'This might just work,' the entity mused, before calmly taking a seat beside Elijah's bed.
For the next few days, the dark entity did nothing. It simply watched as Elijah suffered—helpless, alone, and abandoned in his own decaying body.
Every groan, every twitch of pain, every moment of despair—it soaked it all in like a spectator at the end of a long play.
It almost seemed like it enjoyed Elijah's suffering… maybe it did.
Then, finally, it happened.
The beeping of the monitor slowed… then flatlined.
Silence.
Elijah was dead.
Just as his soul began to drift, the dark entity's voice rang out like a hook in the void.
"Quick—accept this deal."
Elijah, dazed and floating somewhere between confusion, anger, hate and peace, blinked at the voice. "What?" he asked, recoiling instinctively. "I'm not signing anything."
The entity didn't argue.
It didn't need to all it had to do was just say the right words.
"You'll be able to get your revenge."
That was all it took.
"I accept. Yes... I accept! What do I have to do?!"
"You already accepted by saying so," the entity replied smoothly, with a glint in its eyes. "Don't worry. You did the right thing."
Internally, the being sighed. 'If only I could've milked more out of him. That level of desperation? He'd have agreed to anything.'
But it didn't dare go too far.
Not with the system watching.
On pre-awakening worlds, every deal needed to be consensual.
If it overstepped—if it twisted the rules—it could be punished. And the penalties? They weren't light. Loss of stats, spell seals, maybe even direct destruction.
'Too risky.'
Just as it reached out to take Elijah with him, the young man paused. He turned… and stared at his own body.
At first, anger surged through him, a wave of fresh hatred crashing down.
But then, something else settled in its place.
Resolve.
He had a new chance, and he swore that the people that kept him in this state were going to pay.