The law office of Margaret occupied the third floor of a building that had survived three recessions and two attempted demolitions. Ethan climbed stairs that creaked under his weight, passing doors with frosted glass. Margaret's office was at the end of the hall, her name painted in letters.
He knocked once. The sound echoed in the empty corridor.
"Come in," a voice called.
Ethan pushed open the door and watched Margaret's face cycle through confusion, recognition, and shock so profound she dropped the pen she had been holding. It clattered against her desk, rolling to a stop against a stack of case files.
"Ethan?" Her voice cracked on his name. "Ethan Cross?"
"Hello, Margaret."
She stood so fast her chair rolled backward and hit the wall. Her hands came up to touch him, and to verify he was real, then they fell back to her sides. "They told everyone you died in the prison riot five years ago. There was a memorial service. I attended it. I spoke at it."
"Who told everyone?"
Margaret's throat worked as she swallowed whatever she had been about to say. Her gaze moved to the door behind Ethan, checking if they were alone, then back to his face with new wariness tempering her shock. "The Blackwoods. Victor made the announcement personally at a Council meeting. He said it was a tragedy. That you were defending yourself against gang members and it was too late before the guards could intervene."
"Convenient timing." Ethan stepped fully into the office and closed the door behind him. "How convenient was it for them?"
Margaret sat back in her chair as if her legs had given up supporting her weight. "Sit down, Ethan. Please. You need to understand what happened after you went in."
He sat in the client chair across from her desk. Margaret pulled out a bottle of drink and poured two glasses. She pushed one across the desk to him and drained her own in a single swallow.
"Your death declaration made everything easier for them," Margaret said, refilling her glass with hands that shook slightly. "No heir to contest the absorption of CrossGen Pharma. No questions about where the assets went. No pesky legal battles over intellectual property or patent rights. Victor Blackwood and Damien Silvercrest carved up your parents' company like vultures fighting over a corpse, and nobody could challenge them because the last Cross was supposedly dead."
Ethan's fingers tightened around the glass."You knew I was alive."
"I didn't know but I hoped." Margaret's eyes glistened. "But I had no proof, and the prison administration confirmed the death with paperwork that looked legitimate. I couldn't fight ghosts, Ethan. I'm good, but I'm not that good."
"What else?"
Margaret reached into a different drawer, and brought out a small brass key. She set it on the desk between them like a chess piece being moved into play. "Your mother gave me this three days before the accident." She made air quotes around the last word with fingers that trembled. "She said if anything happened to her and your father, I was to give it to you when you were ready. I've been carrying it for fifteen years, waiting for a ghost to walk through my door."
Ethan picked up the key. "She knew they were going to kill her."
"She suspected that someone was poisoning the well." Margaret's voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "The night she gave me that key, she told me your father had been sick for months. Doctors couldn't figure out why. She had started running her own tests, and what she found terrified her enough to prepare for the worst."
"What did she find?"
"She wouldn't tell me. She said it was safer if I didn't know." Margaret's laugh was bitter. "She was probably right. I'm still alive, after all."
Ethan stood, pocketing the key. "Thank you, Margaret."
"Wait." She stood as well. "Whatever you're planning, be careful. The Blackwoods have the Council in their pocket now. Victor sits on three committees that control everything from business licenses to cultivation permits. He's untouchable."
"Nobody is untouchable." Ethan's smile was cold enough to frost the windows. "I learned that from an expert."
He left Margaret standing in her office, staring after him.
Ethan went to the First National Bank. He walked through the doors and approached the vault access desk with the key held loosely in his hand.
The attendant barely looked up from her computer. "Box number?"
"Three-seven-four-two."
Her fingers flew across the keyboard, then stopped. She looked up at him immediately."That box hasn't been accessed in over fifteen years. I'll need identification and authorization."
Ethan provided both. The attendant's professional mask slipped when she verified his name matched the account records. "Mr. Cross. I thought you were..."
"Dead?" Ethan's tone was pleasant.
She kept quiet instantly, leading him to the vault. The attendant left him alone in the private viewing room. Inside the box, his mother's handwriting greeted him like a voice from beyond the grave.
The journal was leather-bound, its pages filled with notes written in Elizabeth Cross's precise hand. Ethan read, and with each page, his understanding of the conspiracy that had destroyed his family deepened into something that made his celestial qi surge with fury.
His mother had documented everything. The slow poisoning of his father with a compound that mimicked natural organ failure. The Blackwood family's increasing pressure to sell CrossGen Pharma or accept them as majority partners. The breakthrough that had made the company invaluable enough to kill for.
CrossGen Pharma had been on the verge of creating a cultivation pill that could awaken latent abilities in ordinary people. Not the addictive poison Damien was spreading now, but something pure. Something that would have revolutionized the cultivation world by making power accessible to those born without natural talent.
The Blackwoods had stolen the formula. When they could not replicate it, they destroyed the company and everyone who knew how it worked.
The final entry was dated two days before his parents died.
"If you're reading this, Ethan, then Michael and I are gone. I'm sorry we couldn't protect you from what's coming. The formula is hidden where only you can find it. Trust yourself. Trust your instincts. And know that everything we built, we built it for you. Make them pay, son. Make them all pay."
Beneath the journal, Ethan found bank statements showing an account with five hundred thousand dollars, untouched for fifteen years and grown with compound interest. Property deeds to a warehouse in the industrial district, purchased under a shell company his mother had created.
"This will be my foundation," Ethan said to the empty room.
Across the city, Damien Silvercrest prepared for what he called his quarterly harvest.
Damien stood at the array's heart, his eyes closed in concentration as he extended his spiritual sense across the city. Fifty threads of blood-red qi snaked out from his position, seeking their targets.
In hospitals throughout the city, patients addicted to Vitality+ pills began to convulse. Their life force, already weakened by months of dependency, was drawn out through channels Damien had embedded in the pill.
Damien's cultivation surged. Power flooded through his meridians, pushing against the barriers that separated Demonic Silver-rank from Demonic Gold.
The breakthrough came like a dam bursting. Demonic Gold-rank.
His assistant Jade entered the chamber as the ritual completed. "Master, the quarterly harvest exceeds projections. We've collected enough life force to power three more breakthroughs if you distribute it among our key operatives."
"Excellent." Damien's voice was rough from channeling so much power. "And the facilities?"
"Expanding as planned. We have seventeen new distribution centers opening next month, and the Council has approved our pharmaceutical license for six more cities." Jade's smile was sharp.
"The best poisons always taste sweet." Damien moved to the window. "What about Ethan Cross?"
"Raymond's report was... concerning. The power display suggests cultivation far beyond what should be possible for someone who spent just fifteen years in a suppression prison."
"Then investigate further." Damien turned from the window. "If he's somehow dangerous, we will eliminate him before he becomes a problem".
At Blackwood Estate, Victor Blackwood accepted a briefcase from Damien's courier.
"The Council won't investigate your facilities as promised," Victor said, closing the briefcase with a click. " You have a free hand for the next quarter. Possibly longer if you keep the donations flowing to the right committee chairs."
The courier bowed and left without speaking. Victor poured himself a drink. The mysterious cultivator protecting Claire Moonstone bothered him in ways he could not quite articulate.
Down the hall, Tyler Blackwood practiced in front of a mirror.
"Claire, you look beautiful tonight." Pause. Smile. "No, that's weak." Reset. "Claire, I've always admired your strength." Better. "Claire, marry me and I'll make all your problems disappear."
Behind him, mounted on the wall like trophies, photographs of Claire covered every available surface. Claire laughing. Claire working. Claire sleeping, captured through her bedroom window by cameras Tyler had paid professionals to install. The collection would have gotten him arrested if anyone besides his sister knew about it.
Scarlett leaned against the doorframe, watching her brother rehearse delusions with an expression of disgust and pity. "She'll never love you, Tyler. You know that, right?"
"She will." Tyler's reflection smiled back at him with absolute certainty. "After the Gala, she won't have a choice."
He pulled a vial from his pocket, holding it up to the light. The liquid inside was the color of roses dipped in blood, swirling with currents. "Damien's finest work. One drop in her champagne, and Claire will beg to marry me. She'll think it was her idea and she'll believe she's always loved me."
"That's rape, brother." Scarlett's voice was flat. "Magical or not, that's what you're planning."
"That's love." Tyler's smile never wavered. "She just doesn't know it yet."
Scarlett left him to his madness.
At Moonstone Apothecary, Claire counted pills for Mrs. Henderson, an elderly woman. Her hands shook from exhaustion and the numbers kept blurring together on her counting tray.
"Dear, you look terrible," Mrs. Henderson said. "When's the last time you ate?"
"This morning." The lie came easily.
Her phone rang. She recognized the number from Saint Mercy Hospital and felt her stomach drop into her shoes.
"Miss Moonstone, this is Dr. Harrison. Your mother's condition has worsened significantly. We need to perform an emergency procedure within the next forty-eight hours or she won't survive the week."
Claire's vision tunneled. "How much?"
"Two hundred thousand dollars. I'm sorry, but without insurance covering it, you'll need to pay upfront before we can schedule the surgery."
The line went dead. Claire stood holding the phone. Her savings account had twelve thousand dollars. The apothecary's account had thirty thousand, and that was supposed to cover rent and supplies for the next three months.
She was one hundred and fifty-eight thousand dollars short of saving her mother's life.
Mrs. Henderson took the phone from Claire's fingers and set it gently on the counter. "Bad news?"
"The worst." Claire's voice sounded distant in her own ears.
Her phone rang again. Different number. Her herb supplier, the one relationship she had left that Tyler's money had not corrupted yet.
"Claire, I'm sorry." The supplier's voice carried genuine regret. "Blackwood offered me triple my normal rate to cut you off. After this order ships tomorrow, we're done. I can't afford to refuse him. I have a family to feed."
"I understand." Claire hung up before he could hear her cry.
On her counter, pushed to the corner where she had tried to ignore it, Tyler's business card sat with his private number written on the back in his neat handwriting. Next to it was a note he had left after his last visit. "Call anytime. I can solve all your problems."
Claire's finger hovered over the call button on her phone. Tears fell onto the screen, distorting Tyler's number into watery fragments. All she had to do was press one button. Say yes to one proposal. And sell herself to save her mother.
The door chimed.
Claire looked up through tear-blurred vision to see the mysterious stranger from yesterday walking into her shop.
"I'm a physician," he said."I heard you needed help."
Claire moved her hands away from the phone. And she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
"Who sent you? Tyler? If this is some kind of game he's playing, I swear I'll burn this place down myself before I let him have it."
"No one sent me." The stranger set his medical bag on her counter. "I help those who deserve it."
"And you think I deserve it?" Bitterness made Claire's voice sharp. "You don't know anything about me."
"I know enough." He moved closer. "I know you're trying to save your mother. I know Tyler Blackwood is threatening everything you've built. And I know you're about to make a choice you'll regret for the rest of your life."
"How could you possibly know that?"
He did not answer. Instead, he reached out and gently took her hand. Claire gasped as she realized blood was seeping from a cut on her palm.
The stranger's hand glowed with soft golden light. Warmth spread from his touch into her skin, and Claire watched in stunned silence as the cut sealed itself without leaving a scar. The pain vanished as if it had never existed.
"Celestial Medicine Arts," Claire whispered."But that's impossible. Nobody has achieved Celestial rank in two centuries. The knowledge was lost."
"Until now." The stranger released her hand, but the warmth of his touch lingered like a promise. "I can save your mother and I can restore your business. I can give you everything Tyler is offering without requiring you to destroy yourself in the process."
"What do you want in return?"
"I'll save your mother and restore your business. In return, you'll help me destroy those who poisoned this city."
Claire opened her mouth to answer, but she never got the chance.
The windows exploded inward in a shower of glass and splintering wood. Six figures in Council Enforcer uniforms crashed through the opening, their weapons already drawn and glowing with killing intent. They surrounded Claire and the stranger in a formation designed to prevent escape.
The lead enforcer leveled a runed blade at the stranger's throat. "Unregistered cultivator practicing illegal medicine. You're under arrest. Resist, and we're authorized to use lethal force."
Claire's world tilted sideways as she realized she was standing at the center of a trap. And the mysterious stranger who had just offered her salvation was smiling like the trap had been his idea all along.