The rain in the North District slums did not wash away the filth; it only turned it into a viscous, black sludge that clung to the boots of those desperate enough to traverse the alleyways. Alex Kane stood in the deep shadow of a collapsed tenement building, his silhouette merging seamlessly with the jagged ruins of rusted rebar and crumbling brick. He had been standing there for nearly an hour, motionless, his right hand buried deep in the pocket of his duster, while his left—the hidden, obsidian-black graft—remained still and cold beneath the thick grey handlers' sleeve.
Across the narrow, flooded street, a cracked holographic billboard flickered with erratic life. It was a relic of a more prosperous era, now used by the North District Oversight Committee to blast propaganda into the ears of the starving.
The image on the screen was crystal clear, a jarring contrast to the decaying environment surrounding it. It showed the grand plaza of the Inner City, a place of white marble and gold-leafed statues where the air was filtered and the sun was always allowed to shine.
In the center of the frame stood Victor Drake.
He was a vision of celestial military might. His silver Saint-Silver armor had been polished to a mirror finish, reflecting the flashbulbs of a thousand cameras. A ceremonial white cloak draped over his broad shoulders, pinned by a brooch of pure sapphire. His face, projected forty feet high onto the side of the billboard, was a mask of solemn, humble nobility.
"...and though the cost was high, the sacrifice of my men was not in vain," Victor's voice boomed through the speakers, smooth and rehearsed, carrying a resonance that seemed to vibrate with a faint, magical hum. "The Red Gate was a trial sent by the heavens, and the Drake family did not flinch. I stood before the Archdemon of Destruction, and though it took my strength and wounded me deeply, the light of our resolve drove the darkness back."
Victor raised his left arm. It was encased in a beautiful, ornate cast made of white dragon-bone and etched with glowing blue runes. He winced slightly—a perfectly timed display of pain for the cameras.
"I lost much in that fight," Victor continued, his eyes misting over with calculated emotion. "But the true tragedy was not the demon. It was the betrayal from within. A scavenger, a man named Alex Kane, whom I once tried to mentor, turned his back on humanity in our darkest hour. He sabotaged our rear-guard logistics, stole vital mana cores meant for the front lines, and fled into the ruins like a coward. His actions cost lives. His cowardice is a stain on the North District."
In the shadows, Alex watched. He didn't blink. He didn't sneer. His breathing remained steady, a slow and rhythmic cycle that barely stirred the damp air. To a casual observer, he was a statue. But through the lens of God's Eye, the world was a very different place.
Alex focused his vision on the screen, narrowing his perception until the pixels dissolved into their underlying energetic signatures. He wasn't looking at the hero; he was looking at the loot.
Specifically, he was looking at the Medal of Saintly Grace that a high-ranking official was currently pinning to Victor's chest.
In the physical world, it was a piece of gold and silver. But to Alex's God's Eye, the medal was a vacuum. It was glowing with a pale, sickly light—not the light of mana, but the light of Faith. He could see thousands of thin, ethereal threads extending from the weeping crowds in the plaza, stretching toward that medal.
The medal was a siphon. It was harvesting the collective relief and worship of the terrified populace, converting their emotional energy into a raw, concentrated attribute of 'Divine Favor.'
And Victor was the reservoir.
He's not just lying for fame, Alex thought, his right hand clenching inside his pocket. He's farming them. He's using the lie to harvest an attribute he could never earn on the battlefield.
[Vision Feedback: Item 'Saintly Grace Medal' identified.] [Attribute Detected: Faith-Based Aura (C-Rank). Current Storage: 84%.] [Function: Absorbs collective belief to provide the wearer with 'Protection from Evil' and 'Regenerative Authority'.]
Alex shifted his gaze to Victor's 'wounded' arm. Beneath the dragon-bone cast, he saw the truth. There was no rot. There was no destruction. The arm was perfectly intact, though slightly bruised from the shockwave of Alex's own white-fire spear. Victor was hiding his healthy limb to justify the 'miracle' of his survival and to heighten the emotional impact of his story.
The lie was elaborate. It was a masterpiece of social alchemy.
"He's climbing," Alex whispered to the rain, his voice a ghost of a sound.
From the shadows behind him, the heavy boots of Old Jack approached. The old man stopped a few paces away, his breath coming in a wheeze. He looked at the billboard, then at the silent boy in the duster.
"They're offering a bounty of fifty thousand credits for your head, Alex," Jack said, his voice trembling with a mixture of fear and exhaustion. "Dead or alive. Mostly dead. The Drakes aren't taking chances. They've framed you so perfectly that if you walked into a police station now, the officers would kill you before you could even open your mouth."
"I know," Alex said.
"Victor is being groomed for the Seat of the North," Jack continued, pointing a shaking finger at the screen. "He's using your name as the dirt to fill his foundation. Doesn't it burn you, kid? Seeing him stand there, wearing a medal for a victory you bought with your own arm?"
Alex finally turned his head. His eyes, usually a dull grey, seemed to catch a glint of the billboard's light, turning them into cold, predatory slivers of flint.
"Why would it burn me, Jack?"
Jack blinked, taken aback by the lack of vitriol in Alex's tone. "Because it's yours! The credit, the glory, the resources—he stole them all!"
"He didn't steal them," Alex said, turning back to the image of Victor. "He's just holding them for me. Think like a scavenger, Jack. If I had taken the credit, I would be the one standing on that stage. I would be the one the cameras are watching. I would be the one whose every attribute is analyzed by rivals and enemies. I would be a target."
He stepped out of the deepest shadow, the rain lashing against his face.
"But now? Victor is the target. He is gathering all the best resources of the Drake family into one place. He is refining his mana, he is collecting high-tier artifacts like that medal, and he is building a 'Status' that is bloated with value. He is a golden pig, Jack. He's eating the best food, growing fat and heavy with attributes."
Alex raised his right hand, the fingers tracing the air as if he were already peeling the skin off the hero on the screen.
"I need him to climb higher. I need him to reach the very top. I need him to wear the best armor, the strongest swords, and the most concentrated blessings the Inner City can provide. Because when I finally reach for him, I won't just be taking revenge. I will be harvesting a god."
The coldness in Alex's logic was more terrifying to Jack than the demon arm hidden beneath the duster. It was a level of patience that bordered on the divine—or the demonic. Alex wasn't interested in the petty satisfaction of an immediate counter-attack. He was playing the long game, treating his mortal enemy as a long-term investment.
"You're going to let him become the Hero of the North?" Jack asked, his voice barely a whisper.
"I'm going to let him believe he is," Alex replied. "The lie is his greatest strength right now. It gives him access to things a 'disgraced' heir could never touch. But every lie is a debt, Jack. And the interest on a lie of this magnitude... is catastrophic."
Alex focused his God's Eye one last time on the Saint-Silver armor Victor wore. He saw a microscopic fracture in the 'Resilience' attribute of the breastplate—a lingering shadow from the white-fire impact.
17 days, 4 hours, 12 minutes, Alex's new passive, Chrono-Residual Perception, whispered in the back of his mind.
That was the time remaining before the structural memory of that armor failed. Victor's 'invincibility' was already on a countdown.
"We need to move," Alex said, his tone shifting back to the clinical pragmatism of a field commander. "The search teams are getting closer. They're using thermal scanners, but they're calibrated for human heat signatures. They won't expect something that radiates the cold of a Void."
"Where are we going?" Jack asked, readjusting his heavy pack. "The slums are a cage now."
"We're going to the one place the Drakes can't reach with their cameras," Alex said. "The Grey Market. I need to convert the Ember Crystals I pulled from my shoulder into something useful. And I need to see if the rumors about the 'Broken Saints' are true."
"The Grey Market is a death trap for a one-armed kid with a bounty," Jack warned.
"Then it's a good thing I'm not just a kid anymore," Alex said.
He reached into his coat and felt the cold, jagged texture of the obsidian arm. It was pulsing with a low, eager heat, as if it could sense the proximity of the Faith-energy on the screen and wanted to consume it. Alex suppressed the urge with a flick of his will.
Not yet, he told the limb. We let the fruit ripen before we pick it.
He turned away from the billboard, leaving the glowing image of the 'Hero' behind him. As he walked into the dark, rain-swept labyrinth of the North District, he looked like just another piece of trash being washed away by the storm.
But as the broadcast ended with a triumphant fanfare, and Victor Drake walked off the stage to the applause of a city, he had no idea that a pair of grey eyes were already calculating the market value of his soul.
Alex Kane vanished into the fog, his footsteps silent, his heart beating with the heavy, metallic thud of a machine. He was no longer a victim of the Drake family's narrative. He was the editor, waiting for the final chapter to be written so he could strip the book of its leather and gold.
The lie was Victor's shield. But to Alex, it was merely a very expensive wrapping on a very valuable gift.
"Keep climbing, Victor," Alex whispered into the darkness of a drainage pipe. "The view from the top is beautiful. It'll be the last thing you see before I take it all."
The chapter of the hero had begun. But in the gutters and the shadows, the chapter of the God-Eater was being written in black ink and demonic blood.
The scavenger was back in the ruins. And in the ruins, he was the only king that mattered.
As the holographic light finally died out, leaving the alleyway in total darkness, a single, dark-red spark flickered in the void where Alex had been standing—the lingering trail of a demon's breath, and a promise of the reckoning to come.
As Alex reaches the entrance to the underground tunnels, he hears a high-pitched, rhythmic clicking sound—the sound of a 'Silver Hound' drone, programmed with his genetic scent, rounding the corner of the block. He doesn't run. He simply reaches for the grey glove on his left arm.