The rain hammered harder, turning the alleys into rivers of filth. Lonir stood just beyond the graveyard's rusted gate, boots sinking into black mud. The black robes clung to his skin like a second, heavier hide. The golden belt at his waist felt alien—too ornate for a man who had spent years begging for scraps. From it hung the pact anchor: a scorched black card, edges frayed like burned paper, bearing the faint, distorted silhouette of a horned figure bound in thorns, face tilted skyward in silent accusation.
He brushed his fingers across it once. Cold. Unyielding. A faint tremor ran up his arm, like the first shiver before fever.
His throat remembered the knife. No scar. No blood. But the ghost of steel lingered, a phantom line that ached when he swallowed.
He started walking.
The narrow passage ahead was familiar—same shortcut he'd taken countless nights when he still had a roof. Lanterns sputtered behind cracked shutters. A drunk muttered curses at nothing. A woman's cry cut off abruptly somewhere close. Ordinary sounds. Nothing that should have mattered.
Three shapes detached from the wall.
"Nice coat," the tallest said. Knife already drawn, rain sliding along the blade. "Hand it over. And the belt. Looks like you came into money tonight."
The other two spread out. Broken bottle in one hand. Cracked knuckles in the other.
Lonir stopped.
No pulse of fear. No flare of anger. Just a vast, echoing hollow where those feelings used to live.
He closed his eyes.
The pact anchor warmed against his hip—barely, like a coal long dead but still holding heat. Behind his eyelids, images rose unbidden: gray-black rectangles rimmed in frost. Names etched in cold white light.
One burned brighter than the rest.
The Bleak.
He reached for it the way a man reaches for a blade in the dark—without thought, without permission.
And the knowledge came.
Not as words. Not as a voice.
It came as something implanted, something that had been waiting inside his marrow since the moment he slit his throat and the god answered. The rules weren't explained. They were carved into him—into nerves, into bone, into the meat of his mind. He knew, with absolute, sickening certainty:
Activate.
Endure.
Reflect.
No choice. No tutorial. Just the brutal certainty that to wield it, he had to break himself first.
He activated.
Pain arrived like a landslide.
It started in his eyes—pressure exploding behind the sockets. His vision swam red. Then the left orb burst outward with a wet, meaty pop, dangling by slick threads of nerve and vessel. Vitreous fluid poured down his cheek in thick, clear ropes streaked with black. The right eye followed a heartbeat later—swelling, rupturing, hanging like obscene fruit.
He staggered once. Legs buckling under the shock.
Skin on his face split next—fine webs of cracks racing from eyes to jaw to throat. Then the cracks wept. Flesh liquefied in slow, steaming sheets, peeling away to expose glistening muscle and yellow fat. Cheek sagged. Jawbone gleamed wetly through translucent ruin. Lips dissolved into dripping strings.
His hands rose instinctively to his face. Fingers trembled. Skin sloughed off in wet clumps, revealing raw pink tissue that pulsed with every frantic heartbeat. The smell hit—burnt hair, cooked meat, copper and rot. His own.
Chest tore open in a long, vertical gash. Ribs creaked as muscle pulled away. Heart hammered against exposed bone, visible, obscene. Lungs sucked air through bubbling fluid. Every breath was fire.
He didn't scream.
He couldn't.
The agony was so total it short-circuited everything else. His throat had already melted halfway; vocal cords were pulp. What emerged was a wet, gurgling rasp—less sound, more leaking air. Tears couldn't fall—tear ducts were gone. Blood and ichor streamed instead.
But he endured.
He counted in the only place left: inside his skull.
Ten seconds.
Fifteen.
Twenty.
The torment deepened. Arms split along the seams. Muscle peeled back like overripe fruit. Organs shifted visibly beneath widening rents. The agony wasn't just physical anymore. It was every memory made flesh—his mother's final, choking gasp; nobles laughing while he scrubbed their floors; nights starving until the hunger became a second heartbeat. All of it boiling under his skin, melting him alive.
And through the haze of white-hot suffering, he felt it.
The card—still hanging at his waist—seemed to lean in.
Not with sound. Not with light.
With satisfaction.
The horned figure on its surface looked… pleased. Thorns tighter around ribs. Head tilted at a more contented angle. As though watching a long-awaited meal finally begin to bleed.
Lonir realized, in the small, cold corner of mind that still functioned:
He felt less.
Less horror at his own ruin.
Less pity for the men staring at him.
Less anything at all.
Just bleakness. A vast, gray sadness that swallowed color and left only ash.
He released.
A small portion. Just enough.
The wave rolled outward—silent.
The leader's eyes bulged first. Veins burst black. Both orbs ruptured in quick succession—wet pops echoing in the alley. Skin on his face split and peeled in steaming sheets, muscle bubbling beneath. He screamed—high, raw, clawing at the melting ruin as though he could hold it together.
The bottle-man's cheeks tore wide. Flesh sloughed away in heavy flaps, revealing jawbone and tongue. He dropped to his knees, gurgling, fingers sinking into softening tissue, trying to scoop it back into place.
The knuckle-cracker staggered. Lips melted off entirely. Teeth clacked in a lipless rictus. Skin on arms and chest cracked and liquefied—muscle exposed, steaming in the rain. He collapsed forward, face-first into mud, body jerking as the reflected agony ate deeper, layer by layer.
They suffered more than he had—because they still had hope to lose.
Lonir let the offering end.
The pain receded—slowly, cruelly. Flesh crawled back. Eyes reformed with wet, sucking sounds, pushing into sockets. Skin regrew in raw, pink patches veined with thin black lines. His face felt wrong—too tight, too scarred—but it was whole again. Almost.
The three men lay in the mud—moaning, twitching, clutching faces that no longer resembled faces. One eye on the leader still dangled, swinging with each broken sob. They weren't dead. They were just… less.
Lonir looked down.
No triumph.
No guilt.
Only the bleak certainty that he could do it again.
And next time… endure longer.
The pact anchor at his waist seemed to settle—content, for now.
He stepped over them.
The rain washed blood and fluid from his robes, but the smell clung—his own cooked flesh, mixed with theirs.
His steps were steady.
Inside, empathy had thinned to a ghost.
Sadness remained—vast, gray, unchanging.
He turned the corner.
Deeper into the dark.
The rain kept falling.
And the card at his waist waited—quietly pleased—for the next time he chose to offer himself.