Fifty meters.
Cinder's legs moved. One foot. Then the other. The world swam in and out of focus. Blood dripped from his gut, leaving a dark trail on the cobblestones that glistened under the lantern light.
'Fifty fucking meters.'
His chest heaved. Each breath tasted like rust. The wound in his stomach pulsed with every step, warm and wet and wrong. But the cold fire the system had lit inside him kept him upright. Barely.
He turned a corner.
And there he was.
Halden Vane stood outside a three-story townhouse with iron gates and a polished oak door. Two guards flanked the entrance, their hands resting on sword hilts. Halden was laughing at something one of them said, his fat belly shaking under his expensive coat.
The lantern light caught his face. Soft. Pink. Well-fed.
Cinder leaned against the wall at the end of the street. His vision pulsed with every heartbeat. But above Halden's head, a number was burning in his eyes.
2,347.
Red. Flowing like blood.
[SYSTEM: TARGET IN RANGE]
[ACTIVATE KARMA SIGHT?]
Cinder didn't think. He just focused on the number.
The world ripped apart.
He was standing in a room. A small room with iron bars and straw on the floor. Children. Dozens of them. Their faces were hollow, eyes dead. A girl no older than seven coughed blood into her sleeve. The man handing out bread was Halden. Younger. Thinner. But the same eyes. The same smile.
The memory shifted.
Now Cinder was in a factory. Machines that chewed flesh. A boy's hand caught in a press. The scream. Halden standing at the door, counting coins, not even looking.
Another shift.
A woman on her knees. Pleading. Her children behind her. Halden's boot in her face. The crack of teeth. The silence after.
The images came faster. Drowning. Burning. Starving. A hundred faces. Two hundred. Each one a life Halden had chewed up and spat out.
Cinder gasped. He was back in the street, his back against the wall, his legs barely holding him.
'Jesus Christ.'
His head throbbed. The system had shoved every sin into his skull in the span of three seconds. He wanted to puke.
[TARGET: HALDEN VANE]
[SIN VERIFIED]
[JUDGEMENT OPTIONS AVAILABLE]
Three choices appeared in his vision. Floating. Waiting.
[EXECUTE: Painless death. No XP. No Karma cost.]
[TORTURE: Target experiences every victim's suffering in cycles. Full XP. Judge bears 1% of total suffering per cycle.]
[SPARE: Target freed. 10% XP. Judge bears 5% of total suffering over time. Long-term decay.]
Cinder read them twice.
'Painless death.'
He could just end it. One move. Halden drops. Done. No pain for Cinder. No burden.
The image of the seven-year-old girl coughing blood flashed in his mind.
'Fuck that.'
He looked at the TORTURE option. 1% per cycle. Halden's victims numbered in the thousands. The total suffering was… Cinder didn't want to do the math. But 1% of an ocean was still a wave that could drown him.
The SPARE option was a joke. 5% long-term decay. That was a slow death. The system would eat him from the inside.
'No spares. Not for this bastard.'
He pushed off the wall.
The guards saw him first. One of them raised a hand.
"Hey. You. Stop right there."
Cinder kept walking. His feet dragged. His blood painted the stones behind him.
The guard drew his sword. "I said stop, you fucking gutter rat."
Halden turned. His eyes found Cinder. Recognition flickered across his face. Then confusion. Then something else. Something that might have been fear.
"You," Halden breathed. "You're supposed to be dead."
Cinder stopped ten feet away. He could feel the system humming in his chest. The shadows at his feet seemed darker. Thicker. Alive.
"Supposed to be," Cinder said. His voice was a razor wrapped in sandpaper. "But I had a chat with someone who disagrees."
The guard lunged.
Cinder's hand moved. He didn't think. The system did it for him.
His shadow erupted.
It shot across the cobblestones like oil spilled on glass. Wrapped around the guard's legs. Pulled. The man's eyes went wide as his knees buckled. He hit the ground with a crack of bone.
The second guard swung his sword.
Cinder's shadow caught it. The blade stopped mid-swing, trapped in darkness that had no weight but held like iron. The guard yanked. The shadow didn't move. He yanked harder. Nothing.
"What the fuck—"
Cinder stepped forward. The shadow released the sword. It wrapped around the guard's throat. Squeezed. The man's face turned purple in three seconds. His eyes bulged. His hands clawed at his neck but found only empty air.
'One cycle.'
Cinder didn't know why he counted. He just did.
The first guard tried to get up. Cinder's foot came down on his hand. Bones crunched under his boot. The man screamed.
Cinder looked at Halden.
The councilman was backing toward the townhouse door. His hand fumbled for the handle. His face was white. The smugness was gone. All that was left was a fat man facing something he didn't understand.
"You can't do this," Halden stammered. "I have money. I have power. I have—"
"Two thousand, three hundred and forty-seven," Cinder said.
Halden froze.
"That's your number," Cinder continued. He walked toward Halden. Slow. Deliberate. Each step left a bloody footprint. "Every life you crushed. Every child you sold. Every parent you broke. Two thousand, three hundred and forty-seven souls."
Halden's mouth opened and closed like a fish.
"The system showed me," Cinder said. "All of it. The little girl with the bloody cough. The boy with his hand in the press. The woman whose teeth you kicked out while her kids watched."
He was three feet from Halden now. The councilman's back was pressed against the oak door. His eyes were wet.
"Please," Halden whispered. "Please. I'll give you anything. Money. A position. Anything."
Cinder stopped.
[JUDGEMENT: SELECT OPTION]
He stared at Halden. The fat, pink face. The expensive coat. The hands that had counted coins while children burned.
'No mercy.'
He selected TORTURE.
[EXECUTING JUDGEMENT: TORTURE]
[TARGET: HALDEN VANE]
[TOTAL VICTIMS: 2,347]
[CYCLES: 847]
[JUDGE BURDEN: 1% PER CYCLE]
[ESTIMATED KARMA LOAD: CRITICAL]
The world went white.
Halden screamed first.
His body arched. His mouth stretched wide. And then he was in the room with the children. He was them. He felt the hunger. The cold. The sickness eating his lungs. He coughed blood. He felt the terror of being sold like meat.
One cycle.
He was in the factory. His hand was in the press. The metal came down. Bones shattered. Flesh tore. He screamed. No one came.
Two cycles.
He was on his knees. A boot was coming toward his face. Teeth cracked. Blood filled his mouth. His children were crying behind him.
Three cycles.
Cinder felt it.
The first wave hit him like a sledgehammer. His stomach cramped. His lungs filled with phantom fluid. He tasted blood that wasn't his. Heard screams that came from a thousand throats.
'One percent.'
It was nothing compared to what Halden was feeling. But it was enough to drop him to his knees.
His body convulsed. The wound in his gut tore open wider. Blood poured down his legs. But the pain from that was nothing next to the suffering flooding his nerves.
Four cycles. Five. Six.
Halden was on the ground now. His body twitched. Foam bubbled from his lips. But his eyes were open. He was seeing. He was feeling. Every death. Every terror. Every moment of despair he had inflicted on others.
Seven cycles. Eight.
Cinder's vision blacked at the edges. His heart stuttered. The system's cold fire was the only thing keeping him conscious. He could feel the burden stacking on his soul like bricks on a broken back.
'Nine. Ten.'
His teeth ground together. Blood ran from his nose.
'Eleven. Twelve.'
Halden was trying to scream. But his throat was already raw. Only air came out. His fingers clawed at the cobblestones, leaving bloody trails.
'Fifteen. Twenty.'
Cinder's head hit the ground. His cheek pressed against the cold stone. He watched Halden convulse through a haze of shared agony.
'Thirty. Forty.'
The cycles were coming faster now. Halden's body was breaking down. His eyes had rolled back. His limbs jerked in spasms.
'Fifty. Sixty.'
Cinder felt a rib crack. Phantom pain. A child's memory of being beaten. It was so vivid he could taste the blood in his own mouth.
'Seventy. Eighty.'
Halden's breathing stopped.
Then started again. The system wouldn't let him die. Not until all cycles were complete.
'Ninety. One hundred.'
Cinder's own heart was failing. He could feel it. The burden was too much. The 1% was accumulating. Cycle after cycle. Each one adding another weight to his soul.
'Two hundred.'
His lungs filled with fluid. He was drowning. A child's death. A boy who fell in a river while Halden's men watched and laughed.
'Three hundred.'
He was burning. A warehouse fire. Locked doors. Screams that went on for hours.
'Four hundred.'
He was starving. Days without food. Weeks. His body eating itself.
'Five hundred.'
He was nothing. Just pain. Endless. Relentless. The suffering of two thousand people packed into five hundred cycles and counting.
Cinder's eyes were open. He didn't know if he was screaming. He couldn't hear anything over the roar of borrowed agony.
'Six hundred.'
Halden's body was still. Only the occasional twitch showed he was alive. His face was frozen in a mask of pure horror. The kind that never washed off.
'Seven hundred.'
Cinder's vision was gone. He was floating in darkness. The only thing anchoring him to reality was the cold fire in his chest. The system. The god. The thing that had chosen him.
'Eight hundred.'
A voice. Not in his ears. In his bones.
[ALMOST THERE.]
The Shadow God. Cracked. Broken. But still there.
[HOLD ON. YOU'RE NOT DONE. NOT YET.]
'Eight hundred forty.'
Cinder's body was a ruin. His heart skipped beats. His lungs struggled for air. The wound in his gut had stopped bleeding. There was nothing left to bleed.
'Eight hundred forty-five. Forty-six. Forty-seven.'
[CYCLE 847 COMPLETE]
[JUDGEMENT: TORTURE – COMPLETE]
[TARGET: HALDEN VANE – DECEASED]
[XP GAINED: 847]
[KARMA BURDEN: 847 UNITS – 1% PER CYCLE APPLIED]
[JUDGE STATUS: CRITICAL – KARMA OVERLOAD IMMINENT]
The last cycle ended.
Halden's chest didn't rise again. His eyes stared at the weeping moons. Empty. His face was still twisted in that mask of horror. No peace. No release. Just the echo of two thousand screams.
Cinder lay on the cobblestones. His blood mixed with Halden's. The two guards were unconscious or dead. He didn't care.
The burden sat on his chest like a mountain. Every death. Every tear. Every second of terror. All of it was inside him now. He could feel the girl coughing blood. The boy losing his hand. The woman whose teeth were kicked out. All of them. Living in his bones.
'Is this what you wanted?'
He didn't know if he was asking the system or himself.
[SYSTEM: KARMA LOAD EXCEEDS CURRENT THRESHOLD]
[WARNING: KARMA COMA IMMINENT]
[RECOMMENDATION: REST. RECOVER. DO NOT ENGAGE FURTHER TARGETS.]
Cinder laughed.
It was a wet, broken sound. Blood bubbled on his lips.
'Rest. Sure. I'll just take a nap on a pile of dead children's memories. That'll fix everything.'
He tried to move. His arms wouldn't respond. His legs were dead weight. The only thing still working was his eyes. They stared up at the two moons. The black tears dripped down. One landed on his cheek. Warm. Thick. Like oil.
'You're crying too, huh?'
The cold fire in his chest dimmed. The system was pulling back. Giving him just enough to stay alive. Not enough to move.
Footsteps.
He heard them before he saw the source. Running. Fast. Two sets.
'More guards. Great. I'll die here. Again.'
A shadow fell over him. A man's face. Old. Wrinkled. Eyes that had seen too much.
"Found him," the old man said. "Vex, help me lift him. Now."
A younger face appeared. Scared. Pale. Sweating.
"Holy shit. What the fuck happened here?"
"Later. Lift."
Hands grabbed Cinder. Pain exploded through his body. He tried to scream but only a wheeze came out.
The old man looked down at him. His eyes were hard. But there was something else there. Something that might have been recognition.
"You're the one," the old man said. "The one the system chose."
Cinder's vision was fading. The last thing he saw was the old man's face. And the number floating above his head.
[THEROS KADE]
[SIN COUNT: 0]
Then everything went black.