The doorbell didn't ring. It screamed.
A high-pitched, gargling shriek tore through the foyer. It was the sound of a cat being strangled underwater, amplified by bad acoustics and ancient malice. The bronze gargoyle mounted on the oak door vibrated, its metal mouth unhinged, tongue lolling out in a spasm of noise.
SCREEEEEEEEE~~~
Victor dropped the Petrified Tear. It hit the floor with a heavy, expensive thud.
Under the mahogany dining table, seven feet of mythical wolf whimpered. Fenrir had squeezed himself into a ball, paws over his ears, tail tucked so far between his legs it touched his chin. The table—solid oak, weighing three hundred pounds—levitated an inch off the ground, lifted by the sheer force of the wolf's trembling back. Dust motes danced in the vibration.
"Make it stop," Fenrir whined. The sound was small, pathetic. Entirely inappropriate for a creature that could eat the sun. "It's the Hounds of the Void. They've found us. They know I ate that star in 4000 B.C. It gave me heartburn for a century. Isn't that punishment enough?"
"It's just the doorbell, Fenrir," Victor said. He rubbed his temples. The high-pitched whine wasn't just the door; it was the System again, recalibrating his auditory cortex. No text boxes this time, just a persistent tinnitus that smelled faintly of burning electronics. "And get off the floor. You're scratching the varnish. Do you know how much varnish costs? I don't, but I bet I can't afford it."
"It's not a bell! It's a Soul Siren! It calls to the guilty!"
SCREEEEEEEEE~~~
"Coming!" Victor shouted. His voice cracked. A humiliatiing sound. He smoothed his shirt, trying to look like the master of a haunted castle and not a man who had just inherited a mortgage from hell.
He marched to the door. His knees were water. Every step was a negotiation with gravity. He grabbed the heavy iron handle. Cold iron. It bit into his palm, freezing the sweat instantly.
He pulled. The hinges groaned, a sound of rust and reluctance.
The screaming stopped.
Standing on the doormat was not a Hound of the Void. It was a goblin.
It stood three feet tall, a compact ball of spite and gristle. It wore a red cap dyed in fresh, sticky blood—the fabric was stiff with it. A denim vest with "HELLFIRE COURIER" stitched on the pocket barely contained a beer gut that looked hard enough to break a hand. It was chewing gum. Loudly. Smack~~~ Smack~~~Smack~~~
"Delivery for..." The goblin squinted at a clipboard larger than its torso. The paper was yellowed, curling at the edges, smelling of sulfur and cheap tobacco. "Victor... Cor-vee-nus? Dead guy's heir?"
"Corvinus," Victor corrected. He leaned against the doorframe, trying to stop his leg from shaking. "And he's not dead. Just... absent. Indefinitely."
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Absent, dead, ascended to a higher plane of tax evasion. It's all the same paperwork." The goblin shoved the clipboard into Victor's stomach. It winded him. The creature smelled of wet dog, copper, and old ham. "Sign here. Standard inheritance package. Liens, curses, unpaid blood debts. The works."
Victor stared at the pen. It was a quill, stripped from some unfortunate bird of prey. The tip dripped a black fluid that hissed when it hit the paper. Smoke curled up from the signature line.
"Do I have to?"
The goblin stopped chewing. It looked up. Its eyes were yellow, reptilian, and entirely devoid of empathy. They were the eyes of a bureaucrat who enjoyed denying parole. "Look, buddy. I get paid by the soul. You sign, or I mark it 'Refused' and the Collection Agency sends the big guys. And they don't knock. They don't use doors. They usually come through the plumbing."
Victor signed. His hand shook. The signature was a seismograph of an earthquake, a jagged line of panic.
"Pleasure doing business." The goblin ripped the top sheet off. "Oh, and here's the bill."
It reached into its pocket—a space that defied physics—and pulled out a scroll. A small scroll, wrapped in red ribbon.
Then it dropped the end.
Thwack~~~
The scroll hit the floor. It rolled. It kept rolling. It unraveled past Victor's boots, across the cracked foyer tiles, under the trembling dining table. It hit the far wall with a soft thud and kept going, piling up against the skirting board like a snowdrift of bad news.
The goblin tipped its blood-red cap. A drop of liquid fell from the brim and sizzled on the stone. "You have twenty-four hours. Have a nice apocalypse."
It vanished. Pop. A vacuum of air, then the smell of sulfur filled the space.
Victor stood alone in the cold draft. The only sound was the wind whistling through the keyhole and Fenrir's hyperventilating from under the table.
He looked down at the scroll.
The paper was red, the texture of dried skin. The ink was black and moving. Shifting ants on a carcass.
------------------------------
INVOICE #666-A
TO: Blackwood Manor Estate
1924: Unlicensed Apocalypse Attempt (Zombie Plague - Class B). Note: Zombies were not housebroken. ... 12,000,000 Gold
1950: Noise Complaint (Howling at Non-Existent Moons). Fine levied by the Lunar Council. ... 500,000 Gold
1987: Disposal of Heroic Party (Clean-up Fee). Includes removal of holy swords and ethical dilemmas. ... 2,500,000 Gold
1999: Y2K Panic Induction (Consulting Fee). ... 1,000,000 Gold
2024: Inheritance Tax (Luxury Bracket). ... 35,000,000 Gold
TOTAL DUE: 50,000,000 Gold
PAYMENT TERMS: IMMEDIATE.
------------------------------
Victor stopped reading. He couldn't breathe. The air in the foyer was thin, vacuum-sealed. He was standing on top of Everest without a tank, staring down a fifty-million-foot drop.
Fifty million.
He reached into his pocket. His fingers brushed the cold, hard surface of the Petrified Tear. It was heavy, dense with compressed sorrow.
Value: 500,000 Gold.
It was a pebble. A grain of sand against a tidal wave. It wouldn't even cover the interest.
"Sir?"
Victor jumped. His heart hammered against his ribs. Yggdrasil, the butler, had materialized out of a potted fern. The old man was holding a silver tray with a glass of murky water on it. Leaves stuck out of his collar.
"You look... pale, sir. Translucent, almost. Shall I fetch the leeches? We have a fresh jar. Very vigorous."
"No leeches," Victor wheezed. He waved the scroll. The paper rustled, a dry, dead sound. "Yggdrasil. The debt. It's... it's fifty million gold coins. Do I look like I have a dragon's hoard?"
Yggdrasil squinted at the numbers, adjusting a monocle that had no glass in it. "Ah. Inflation. The Hellfire Bank has pegged the Gold Coin to the US Dollar at a 1:1 ratio. Administrative convenience, they say. It makes the despair more relatable to the modern soul."
"Relatable?" Victor choked. "It's a phone number. A long distance one."
"Indeed. The economy is in shambles, truly."
"We need money," Victor said. The panic was rising, a cold tide in his chest. It drowned his logic. "We need money now. The Tear. We have to sell the Tear. It's the only liquid asset we have."
He looked at the scroll again. The bottom line glowed red, pulsing like an infection.
Interest Rate: 10% per hour.
"Oh god," Victor whispered. "It's compounding. I can see the numbers going up."
He spun around. "Fenrir! Get up!"
The table rattled. Two glowing red eyes peeked out from under the tablecloth. They were the eyes of a monster that haunted nightmares, currently filled with the moisture of a frightened toddler.
"Is... is the Assassin gone?"
"It was a mailman, you idiot. Get up. We're going out."
The table stopped rattling. Silence filled the room. Heavy. Absolute. Dust settled on the floor.
"Out?" Fenrir's voice was a squeak. A rusted hinge.
"Yes. Out. To the Night Market. To sell this." Victor held up the Tear. It caught the dim candlelight, gleaming with petrified sadness. "I need a bodyguard. You're a giant wolf. You have teeth the size of daggers. Let's go."
"No."
"What?"
"No." The table lowered slowly to the floor. "I can't."
"Fenrir, if we don't pay this, they will come and take the castle. They will take my castle. Your territory. They will turn your basement into a Starbucks."
"Let them take it," Fenrir mumbled. "I can live in a hole. Holes are safe. No windows. No eyes."
Victor walked to the table. He grabbed the velvet tablecloth and ripped it away.
The Great Wolf Fenrisulfr, Devourer of Odin, Breaker of Chains, was curled into a fetal position. He was sucking his thumb. Or, well, his claw. He looked like a giant, furry pillbug.
"Why?" Victor asked. He was too tired to be angry. The adrenaline crash had left him hollowed out.
Fenrir looked up. His eyes were wide, wet pools of terror. He was shaking so hard his fur blurred.
"The eyes," he whispered. "Out there... everyone looks. The birds look. The stars look. They perceive me. If they perceive me, they can judge me. If they judge me..." He shuddered. A massive, rolling convulsion. "I might be... cringe."
Victor stared.
The System text burned across his retina, jagged and mocking. It wasn't a clean UI box. It was letters branded into his vision with a soldering iron.
------------------------------
DIAGNOSIS COMPLETE.
Subject: Fenrisulfr.
Condition: Severe Agoraphobia (Social Anxiety Variant).
Trigger: Being Perceived.
Minion Morale: Critical Failure.
Suggestion: Euthanasia. It's cheaper than therapy.
------------------------------
Victor closed his eyes. He rubbed them until he saw sparks.
Agoraphobia. The monster who ended the world was afraid of being seen in public. He wasn't a god-killer. He was a shut-in.
"It's over," Victor said to the empty room. "We're dead. The demons will come, they'll skin us, and I'll die owing fifty million dollars. They'll probably resurrect me just to make me work off the debt."
He slumped against the wall. His hand brushed against something soft.
It was a pile of laundry Yggdrasil had left on a chair. Old curtains, moth-eaten velvet, smelling of dust and lavender. The fabric was heavy, thick enough to block out the sun.
Victor looked at the fabric. He looked at Fenrir.
An idea sparked. It wasn't a good idea. It was a desperate, stupid idea born of exhaustion and debt. But it was all he had.
"Fenrir," Victor said. His voice was low, steady. A lie wrapped in velvet.
The wolf's ear twitched.
"You think I would ask you to go out naked?" Victor scoffed. He injected a note of aristocratic disdain into his voice. "Do you take me for a fool? For a savage?"
Fenrir peeked out. "I... I have fur."
"Fur is nothing to the Gaze of the World," Victor said. He grabbed a heavy, dark purple curtain. He ripped it off the rail. The sound was a sharp tear in the silence. Dust rained down, grey snow covering the floor. "That is why I have forged... this."
He held up the curtain. It was just a curtain. It had a hole in it where a moth had eaten lunch. It was stained with age.
"What is it?" Fenrir asked. He crawled out, just an inch. His nose twitched, smelling the dust.
"The Cloak of the Void," Victor lied. He threw it over the wolf's head.
The velvet draped over Fenrir's massive shoulders. The hole happened to fall right over one eye, giving him a piratical, deranged look. The fabric dragged on the floor, collecting dust bunnies.
"It... it smells like mothballs," Fenrir sniffed.
"That is the scent of the Void," Victor said quickly. "It blocks all perception. When you wear this, you are invisible to the judgments of the weak. The birds cannot see you. The stars cannot judge you. You are a ghost. You are nothing."
Fenrir stood up. The curtain hung around him, a monk's robe for a beast. He looked ridiculous. He looked like a giant, purple ghost-wolf prepared for a low-budget Halloween party.
But his tail untucked. Just a little.
"Invisible?" Fenrir whispered.
"Completely," Victor said. "To them, you are nothing but a shadow. A rumor."
Fenrir took a step towards the mirror in the hallway. He looked at himself. The curtain hid his face, his trembling snout. He could only see out through the moth-hole. He turned his head, admiring the way the heavy fabric obscured his form.
"They can't see me," he murmured. His voice dropped an octave, returning to the deep, gravelly rumble of a predator. The whine was gone. "I am... the shadow."
He turned to Victor. The single red eye visible through the hole burned with sudden confidence.
"Open the door, Master. We have a debt to pay."
Victor let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. His hands were still shaking, but now it was from relief, not just terror.
"Right," Victor said. He opened the door to the cold night air. "After you... Shadow."