Devil's Advocate: Specific Performance or How I Became A Baron In A Fantasy World

[Superstes]

 

[Superstes]

The air in the suite was a thick, stagnant soup of scent and silence. It smelled of things that were old and expensive: the peat-bog musk of single-malt scotch, the buttery perfume of worn leather from the Chesterfield sofas, the sweet, spicy ghost of a recently extinguished Cuban cigar. It was well past three in the morning. Outside, the sleepless heart of Manhattan still pulsed with a distant, electric hum, but in here, the only sounds were the soft, musical clinking of heavy clay chips, the whisper-thin riffle of a fresh deck of cards, and the low, measured breathing of the four men who remained.

A single, low-hanging brass lamp cast a pool of light over the green of the poker table, turning it into a silent, felted stage. Shadows clung to the corners of the room, deep and absolute, swallowing the details of the ornate furniture and the faces of the silent observers who had long since faded into the background.

As for the remaining players… there was Sergei, a muscular, tattooed slab of a man whose stillness was more menacing than any threat. Rumor said he wasn't just wealthy; he was the kind of man who ran half of the city's shadows from a backroom in Brighton Beach. His hands, thick-fingered and heavy with gold, cradled his chips with a terrifying gentleness.

Across from him sat the General -- so named for his fondness for ordering General Tso's Chicken during sessions. He was an elderly Asian man with a face like a dried apple and eyes that glittered with a gambler's desperate hope. He bluffed entirely too much and everyone knew it, but his pockets were a bottomless well from which all other players drank -- and so, he was always welcome at the table.

Next to him was Marcus, a young god sculpted in a gym and bankrolled by Bitcoins. He was handsome, good-natured, and radiated the naive confidence of a man who had never known a day of real failure in his life. He bounced his knee, radiating an excited energy.

And then there was Cornelius Vance.

He was a ghost at his own execution, slumped in his chair, wearing a bespoke suit that felt more like a burial shroud. His green eyes, dark and hollow, were fixed on a single, meaningless point on the far wall. His stack of chips was a chaotic mess of spilled color, an insult to the neat, orderly columns of the other players.

The dealer, a well-regarded professional with skilled hands, slid two cards facedown in front of each player.

Cornelius didn't move. He didn't even look. The hole cards lay untouched before him.

Sergei, with a low grunt, opened with a respectable bet. Marcus quickly made the call. The General promptly raised -- as he often had with almost any random two cards.

And then, the action came to Cornelius.

Without a word, without a glance at the two pieces of cardstock that held his fate, he grabbed a messy, uncounted handful of his remaining chips — a chaotic fistful of reds and blues and blacks — and shoved them into the center of the table. It was a raise so large, so disproportionate to the action, that it made Marcus physically flinch.

The General's lips thinned in disdain.

The courtroom smelled of lemon-scented polish and old paper, a sterile, suffocating odor. The air was dead and still. He stood ramrod straight, his eyes fixed on the way the overhead lights reflected off the polished mahogany of the defense table, turning the wood into a deep, liquid brown.

The judge's voice, a dry, reedy instrument of doom, echoed in the cavernous space.

"…sentenced to six years in a federal penitentiary… restitution to be paid in the amount of seven-point-two million dollars…"

The number was a physical blow, an impossible sum designed to erase him.

Across the room, his boss, the firm's Senior Partner, a man whose guilt was as plain as the bespoke suit on his back, calmly adjusted his tie. The slap on his own wrist had barely even left a mark.

The dealer burned a card and laid out the flop with a snap of his wrist:

Ten of Spades. Ten of Diamonds. Nine of Spades.

The board looked dangerous.

Sergei, who had been as still as a granite statue, finally moved. He leaned forward, the leather of his chair groaning under his immense weight. His thick fingers deliberately separated a tall stack of yellow chips from his hoard, his movements slow and predatory, as if he were dissecting a kill. He slid them forward with a soft, definitive rasp.

"Fifty thousand," he announced in a heavy Russian accent.

A strong bet indeed.

Marcus put on a show, taking a long time to consider his move. He leaned back, rubbing his chin and staring at the ceiling as if consulting with the gods of probability. Finally, he let out a long, theatrical sigh.

"Man, oh man," he muttered to no one in particular. After a moment that stretched just a little too long, a wide grin broke across his face. "Ah, what the hell." He grabbed two handfuls of chips and cascaded them into the pot. "Let's make it spicy, boys! I raise!"

Across from the table, the General's eyes lit up with a sudden, intense gleam. He peered at the board, then glanced back at his own cards. He let out a long, drawn-out sigh, shaking his head as if in great pain. "So much… just to see the next card" he lamented, though his eyes still sparkled with a gambler's fire. With the dramatic flair of a man making his final stand, he slid a stack of chips forward to match the bet. "I call."

The action was on Cornelius.

"Call," he said, his voice a flat, empty thing. He pushed another uncounted stack forward, the chips tumbling into the pot with a sound like falling rocks.

The apartment was all white-on-white minimalism, a sterile gallery for a life he no longer lived. It smelled of the expensive, impersonal floral arrangements She favored. Amelia stood with her arms crossed, a wall of cool glass between them. Her words were not shouted; they were precise, clinical, like a surgeon making an incision.

"I can't be with a criminal, Cornelius. It's a matter of optics, you understand."

He didn't hear the rest. He just watched her thumb move on the screen of her phone, a small, simple motion that severed the final thread of the life they were supposed to have. The silence that followed was louder than any scream.

The dealer burned another card.

The turn was the Queen of Spades.

The board was now a minefield of straight and flush possibilities. A hush fell over the table. Even Marcus stopped bouncing his knee.

Sergei checked.

Marcus made another dramatic show of thought before making a cautious bet — which was quickly called by the General.

The action came to Cornelius.

Contrary to his best efforts, he had been winning all night.

He looked at the mountain of chips in the center of the table, then at his own not inconsiderable supply. He blinked slowly, as if waking from a long dream.

"All in," he whispered.

The words hung in the smoky air. Slowly, with resignation, he pushed the last of his fortune into the pot.

The staticky hum of a long-distance call was the only sound in his dark apartment. His father's voice, usually so full of booming, political charm for the campaign trail, was now a blade of ice.

"You were told not to call this number. My campaign… your stepmother and I… no son of ours will be in prison!"

He stared at his own reflection in the black glass of the window, a stranger with a ghost's eyes, watching a man who was already gone. The line went dead. The dial tone was the loneliest sound in the world.

Surprisingly, Sergei, Marcus, and the General all called. They were committed, it seemed, and didn't wish to turn back now.

The total sum in the middle of the table had reached a number that was truly obscene, a veritable king's ransom that could retire an average developing country family to a life of luxury several times over.

The dealer burned one last card, then placed the river down with the reverence of a high priest.

It was… the Jack of Spades.

A collective intake of breath went around the table.

There were four consecutive spades on the board, making one-card straight flushes possible.

Before anyone could move, a new voice cut through the tension, as smooth and cool as the scotch in their glasses.

It was Mr. Ash: the fifth man at the table. He wore a fine charcoal-grey suit of a cut so impossibly sharp and classic it seemed to belong to no particular decade, but rather to all of them at once. His age was difficult to place. The face was a placid, ageless mask with not a wrinkle to be found — and yet, it seemed to possess an air of an ancient, weary weight in the eyes that belied any suggestion of youth.

But it was his stillness that was the most unnerving thing about him. While other men fidgeted, drank, or breathed, Mr. Ash was a portrait of absolute economy. His movements were so minimal, so utterly without waste, that he seemed less a man playing a game and more a patient, geological force waiting for a mountain to erode.

And his eyes… dark and amused, his eyes had rarely left Cornelius, watching his reckless, self-destructive moves not with judgment, but with the quiet, appreciative focus of a seasoned connoisseur examining a rare bottle of Whiskey before some rich, clueless snob ended up mixing it with a can of diet coke.

"Mr. Vance. A proposition before the big reveal."

All eyes turned to him.

Mr. Ash's hand emerged from the shadows beneath the table. In it, he held a thick, rolled parchment, its edges yellowed and brittle with an age that felt far older than mere paper had any right to be. It was tied with a faded red ribbon, the fabric frayed and thin, and sealed with a dollop of black wax that bore a strange, spidery sigil.

With a flick of his wrist that was as elegant as it was economical, he sent the scroll sliding across the green baize. It moved with an unnatural smoothness, cutting a silent path through the battlefield of scattered chips, before coming to a perfect, gentle stop just before Cornelius's seat.

The object's sudden appearance drew a sharp, audible gasp from Marcus.

"Whoa, dude, is that, like, a historical document or something?" he whispered, leaning forward, his eyes wide with the boyish excitement of someone who saw the world as one big playroom.

Sergei, however, was less impressed. He let out a low, guttural sound of annoyance at someone interrupting his hand, his heavy brow furrowing. His gaze flickered from the ancient parchment to Mr. Ash, his eyes narrowing with the deep, primal suspicion of a man who trusted only in cash and violence.

The General, in contrast, gave a slight, almost perceptible nod of approval. A glint of true appreciation sparked in his old eyes. He was a gambler to his core, and he recognized the beauty — and fun — of such side bets, having been on both sides of many of them himself!

"This is the title to a mid-sized, private estate. Quite valuable by most standards — if somewhat… remote," Mr. Ash said, his smile never touching his eyes.

"I'm willing to make a small side bet. Just between the two of us. The wager will be this deed against... oh, let's say a simple IOU from you for… five million dollars — far less than what such an estate would be worth on the market, of course, but I seem to be in a gambling mood today. My terms are this: win this hand, and the deed is yours. Lose to one of these fine gentlemen — and you will owe me the five million. Well, Mr. Vance? How about it?"

Marcus stared, his jaw agape. "Bruh, what? Don't be an idiot, Cornelius! You've been lucky today, but you need to know when to stop. You haven't even looked at your cards!"

But Cornelius didn't look at Marcus.

His gaze dropped to the ancient scroll. For a fleeting moment, he imagined it was a legal document from another, saner world — a world where cases were governed by reason and precedent, not by power and lies. He imagined unrolling it to find the clause that would exonerate him, the loophole that would give him back his life while putting his former boss behind bars, where he belonged.

Then the fantasy evaporated, leaving only the bitter residue of reality.

He lifted his eyes to Mr. Ash's face, a mask of serene, predatory calm. And in that moment, a laugh bubbled up from deep within his chest, a harsh, grating sound like the grinding of broken gears. It wasn't a laugh of mirth, but of supreme, cosmic absurdity.

Six years.

Two thousand, one hundred and ninety days in a cage, followed by a lifetime of being a disgraced, disbarred felon.

And this man was offering him what was -- likely -- a make-believe title, to some make-believe land, in exchange for an equally make-believe debt.

An IOU for five million dollars? What a joke!

What was that to an already-broke man whose properties were in the process of being seized by the government? What practical chance was there of him ever getting a hold of that much cash, even after he left prison?

It was the most meaningless transaction in the history of the world — and for that reason alone, it was the only one that made any sense at all!

"Sure," he said. "Why not?"

Mr. Ash's smile widened, a subtle, predatory curving of the lips. "Excellent." He extended a hand across the table, his long, pale fingers uncurling from the shadows. "Then let us shake on it."

Cornelius stared at the offered hand…

And, for a moment, he hesitated.

It felt like the last formal act of his life, and the disbarred lawyer felt the sudden, absurd urge to decline — and then simply muck his hand without ever having seen it.

But then, with a shrug that sent a tremor through his exhausted body, he reached out and took the offered hand into his own.

The grip was firm, the skin unnaturally warm and dry, like old parchment. For a fraction of a second, a strange, electric tingle shot up his arm — producing a feeling like that of a faint static shock or a dizzying wave of vertigo. It was there and then gone — so quickly that he couldn't be sure he hadn't imagined it.

The deal was made.

The dealer, his voice a calm, professional monotone that cut through the tension, announced:

"Gentlemen. Showdown."

Sergei, with a wide, predatory grin, slammed his hole cards onto the table: a pair of Nines.

With the two Tens and a Nine on the board, he had a full house. A very, very strong hand — one that, statistically speaking, should win ninety-nine times out of a hundred.

Marcus let out a whoop.

"Yo, bro, that is so sick! But — check this out!"

He triumphantly flipped his own cards over.

A pair of Tens.

The table erupted in gasps. With two more tens on the flop, Marcus now had four of a kind. Quads.

Sergei's face turned to stone.

The General, who had been watching all of this with the serene calm of a Buddhist monk, pointedly looked at Marcus' four Tens. He gave a slow, deliberate nod, a gesture of profound respect. A small, knowing smile touched the corners of his lips as he let the tension in the room stretch to its breaking point, savoring the moment like it was a fine wine.

"That is a good hand, young man," the General said, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. "A very good hand, indeed."

He paused, letting Marcus believe, for one sweet, agonizing second, that he had won.

Then, the General's smile widened, revealing a glint of gold teeth.

"But not," he said, his voice dropping to a half-whisper, "good enough!"

With painstaking slowness, he turned over his first card: the Seven of Spades. Then the second: the Eight of Spades!

The room fell silent as everyone looked on in a stunned disbelief.

The nine, ten, Jack, and Queen of spades were on the board. His eight made a Queen-high straight flush!

Beating quads with a straight flush was the stuff of legend; it happened so rarely, in fact, that a sizeable jackpot — sometimes even over a million dollars(!) — would have been paid out for such a hand had this beat happened in a licensed casino rather than a darkened hotel suite.

Marcus stared, his own face pale now, looking like he'd seen a ghost.

The General gave a slight, dignified bow of his head, accepting the silent congratulations.

Then, all eyes fell on Cornelius.

He sighed, the sound barely audible, and reached for his own cards, the last to act. He flipped them over without ceremony, without even looking, wanting only for the night to finally — blessedly — over.

The first card was the King of Spades.

The second was the Ace of Spades.

For a moment, nothing happened.

The players and the dealer silently stared at the two cards.

Then down at the board.

Then at the two cards again.

Ten. Jack. Queen. King. Ace.

All spades.

A "Royal" Straight Flush!

The highest possible hand in poker.

The hand that beats a lower straight flush.

Which beats quads.

Which beats a full house.

All of which occurred in the same pot.

It wasn't just improbable; it bordered on the impossible!

And somehow, without even looking at his hand until showdown, Cornelius had won everything.

Mr. Ash stood up smoothly, adjusting the cuffs of his immaculate charcoal suit.

"My congratulations. A spectacular victory, Mr. Vance. Do enjoy your prize."

He placed a small, black business card next to the deed document.

"We'll soon be in touch regarding the transit."

He turned and walked out of the room, melting into the shadows beyond as if he'd never been there at all.

As Marcus playfully slapped him on the back, and as the other players erupted in a cacophony of curses and disbelieving congratulations, a strange, nagging thought wormed its way into Cornelius' exhausted mind.

He realized that he didn't remember who had invited Mr. Ash.

In fact, he didn't even remember the man playing a single hand.

 

[Superstes]

The first thing he was aware of was the cold. Not the biting, aggressive cold of the blizzard that raged against the windows of his empty apartment, but a deeper, more profound cold that seemed to emanate from the hollow space in his own chest. It was a cold of absolute emptiness, a vacuum where a life used to be.

Cornelius Vance lay on a solitary mattress on the floor, the last piece of furniture he owned, and stared at the gray, featureless ceiling. It was just before dawn. Outside, the city was a muffled roar, a beast silenced by a blanket of snow. Inside, the silence was absolute, the kind of tomb-like quiet that echoes with the ghosts of a life that has been seized, cataloged, and sold off for parts. The faint impressions in the dust where his desk, his chairs, his entire life had once stood were like chalk outlines at a crime scene.

His gaze drifted to the lighter rectangle of hardwood by the far wall, a pale ghost of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf that had once held his entire legal library — Blackstone, Coke, Story — centuries of jurisprudence that had once been his religion, now rendered meaningless. Near the window, two faint scuff marks were all that remained of the worn leather armchair where he and Amelia used to... sit, her feet tucked under her as they read on quiet Sunday mornings. The memory was a sharp, physical pain, a phantom limb aching for a life that had been amputated.

Sleep had been a shallow, fitful thing, a series of grim, disjointed dreams of gavels falling and doors slamming shut, a state from which he was glad to be roused. He was trying to get used to it, this waking to a world without purpose. It was, he thought with a bitter twist of his lips, good practice. A small, futile act of rebellion against the rigid, soul-crushing schedules of the federal penitentiary that surely awaited him in just a few days. The irony was an almost physical thing, leaving a sour taste in the back of his throat: he had willingly spent his entire adult life — High School, University, Law School, then the unforgiving halls of New York's Elite "Big Law" Firms — adhering to brutal, inhuman schedules in order to achieve so-called success… and now, his only remaining freedom was to defy the clock.

His eyes drifted to the kitchen, a cavern of white marble and stainless steel visible from his position on the floor. On the vast, empty countertop sat a chaotic mountain of cash from his poker win — an obscene, meaningless pile of paper that still smelled faintly of cigar smoke and desperation. It wasn't in neat stacks. It was a jumble of hundreds, fifties, and twenties, some crisp and new, others soft and worn with the grease and secrets of a thousand transactions. The sheer, tactile reality of it felt absurd and even almost insulting in the sterile emptiness of the room. The total likely approached the neighborhood of two or even three million, but he felt no triumph — only a hollow, aching void. Given the numerous civil fraud lawsuits now being brought against him — courtesy of his clever former boss, who had set him up to take the fall — it was a temporary fortune at best; money he couldn't keep from a life he no longer had.

The phone buzzed.

It was lying on the hardwood floor beside him, and the vibration was a jarring, violent intrusion, like an insect trying to burrow through the floorboards. He let it buzz: a frantic, angry sound in the dead air, watching as it skittered about in a small circle.

He hoped it would stop.

It didn't.

With a weary sigh that seemed to pull the very marrow from his bones, he reached for it.

An unknown number.

"Yeah?" he said, his voice a low, sleep-gravelled rasp.

The voice on the other end was female, crisp, and professional, yet it was laced with a strange undercurrent of playful, disarming warmth. It was the kind of voice that could sell you sand in a desert and make you think you've got a great deal. A voice like honey laced with gin.

"Mr. Vance? Good morning! I am so glad I was able to reach you! This is Chloe from Aethelred Capital & Holdings. I'm calling on behalf of Mr. Ash."

He almost hung up then and there...

But the name — Ash — stirred a murky, unpleasant memory from the haze of the poker game.

"Listen here," he muttered, closing his eyes against the intrusive gray light. "Whatever it is you're selling, I'm not interested. So, unless you've got a spare seven-point-two million you'd like to wire to the U.S. Treasury on my behalf, please just let me sleep in."

A soft, sexy chuckle echoed down the line: a sound so full of seemingly-genuine amusement that it sent a literal shiver down his spine.

"Oh, you're such a joker, Mr. Vance! After all, the portfolio you acquired last night is valued at... well, the phrase 'considerably more' would be a massive understatement! However, should you wish to finalize the transfer, the land would come with certain… non-negotiable obligations. Mr. Ash would like to discuss those particulars with you. He can see you at ten this morning!"

She gave a prestigious Park Avenue address and hung up before he could even fully process what just happened.

He held the silent phone in his hand, the aluminum and glass casing warm against his cold skin. For a long moment, the only sound was that of his breath. In his mind, he could still hear the ghost of that laugh — a sound far too vibrant, far too full of life for this gray, dead room.

The absurdity of the call warred with the first, faint flicker of professional curiosity he had felt in weeks. It was a stupid, obvious scam. It had to be…

...Right?

The lawyer in him, battered and left for dead, finally stirred. He sat up, the cold of the floor seeping through his feet, and reached for his laptop. Cross-legged on the floor, the screen's pale blue glow the only light in the dim room, he began to dig into "Aethelred Capital & Holdings."

No official public website. No press releases. No corporate filings with the SEC.

But, as he descended into the deeper, more esoteric corners of the financial world — or, rather, into a couple reputable blogs mixed in with a speculative fintech subreddit — a picture began to emerge. And it was a picture painted in rumor and awe. Aethelred Capital was a ghost.

A legend.

It was a private wealth consultancy that had supposedly existed for centuries, managing the fortunes of the world's true shadow elite — the kind of wealth that owned not just politicians, but governments. They were the ultimate "don't call us, we'll call you" firm… And the fact that they did indeed call him was interesting, to say the least.

When it came, the realization hit him like a physical blow, a sudden, ice-cold dread that made the hair on his arms stand up. He ran through the entire poker night in his head: every card, every bet, every face.

He never gave Mr. Ash his full name. He certainly never gave him his number. So how did they find him so quickly? And what would a titan like Aethelred want with a tiny fish like him?

The vast, empty apartment suddenly felt small and confining, a glass cage under unseen observation. A prickling sensation started at the base of his neck, the primal, animal instinct of being watched. The shadows in the corners of the room, cast by the weak morning light, suddenly seemed to stretch and deepen — no longer inert but alive with a silent, waiting potential. He found himself involuntarily glancing towards the locked front door, then at the sealed windows, his heart thumping a heavy, useless rhythm against his ribs.

It was a moment of pure, rational paranoia. This wasn't a scam. It was something far, far stranger.

Just what had he gotten himself into?

He went through the motions of a life he no longer lived.

He took a refreshing, warm shower, the water drumming against his skin, trying to wash away the feeling of dread. He shaved with an artisanal straight razor, the blade a cold, dangerous kiss against his throat. He went to his empty walk-in closet, where a perfect suit hung in a garment bag. It was his armor. As he pulled the fine cashmere-and-silk fabric of the jacket over his shoulders, a memory ambushed him: the sharp, satisfying scent of the tailor's shop on Savile Row, the reflection of a younger, more ambitious version of himself in the three-way mirror. He remembered his boss, Steve Blackwood, clapping him on the shoulder after they won the McClaren case, right in this very suit. "You're a killer, Vance," he'd said, his smile full of predatory pride.

The memory curdled in his stomach. The same hand that had once praised him had signed the affidavits that sent him to prison. It was a lesson every man learns, he supposed, though few learn it so brutally. The bonds forged in boardrooms and celebrated over expensive scotch are not bonds of brotherhood, but of mutual convenience. They are covenants with clauses of termination, alliances of ambition and opportunity that last only as long as the sun shined. When the long night of true trouble fell, one would always be left standing utterly, terrifyingly alone — and the bosses that once praised you will be the first to throw you under the bus to help preserve their own hide.

He dressed with the meticulous, automatic precision of a consummate professional. But, as he adjusted the knot of his silk tie in the dark, reflective glass of a window, he didn't see a powerful lawyer. He saw a condemned man dressing for his own funeral. It felt like a final, defiant act of being Cornelius Vance, Esq. before the world reduced him to an inmate number.

He walked through the silent apartment one last time and opened the door. The hallway, once a passage of triumph and homecoming, now felt utterly alien. He remembered when Amelia had first shown him the brochure for this building, her eyes alight with an ambition that mirrored his own. She had fallen in love with the building's signature carpet — a vibrant, almost jarring pattern of royal blue and brilliant gold that flowed down the corridors like a river of lapis and sunlight.

"This isn't just a place to live, Cor," she'd said, her voice full of breathless excitement that evening. "It's a statement! Everyone who matters either has a place here, has one nearby, or wishes they did! It's close to the firm for you, close to the gallery for me. It's... perfect."

And for a time, it had been.

Now, however? Now, the vibrant colors seemed to mock him, a garish reminder of a life built on a foundation of sand.

He pressed the button for the elevator, the soft chime echoing in the quiet. When the doors slid open, a woman he recognized from the condo board, Eleanor Covington, was already inside, clutching a trembling, bug-eyed Pomeranian that was more fluff than dog.

He knew Eleanor probably disliked him even before the indictment — after all, she was a woman who thrived on manufactured grievances and neighborhood gossip. Now that he's been convicted and sentenced? In her eyes, he wasn't just an inconsiderate neighbor; he was a confirmed villain, a tangible source of social contamination.

A bitter, rebellious part of him, a part he thought had died in the courtroom, decided that if he was going to be the monster in her petty drama, he might as well play the part with a smile.

A bright, utterly false cheerfulness entered his voice.

"Morning, Eleanor!" he said, the sound offensively pleasant in the confined space. "Lovely holiday weather we are having! Don't you just love the snow?"

She gave him a tight, thin-lipped smile that didn't come close to reaching her eyes. She clutched her dog, Sir Reginald Fluffington III, tighter to her chest and physically shuffled to the far corner of the elevator, as if his disgrace were a communicable disease. Sir Reginald, sensing his owner's tension, let out a series of high-pitched, frantic yaps.

The elevator descended in a silence that was thick with her discomfort, a silence he found himself enjoying with a kind of dark, bitter amusement. It was a petty sort of power, the only kind left to him, but it was power nonetheless, and it felt surprisingly good. He vividly remembered Eleanor fawning over him at the building's rooftop barbecue last summer, her voice dripping with false sincerity as she asked for his "invaluable" opinion on some tedious co-op dispute. Back then, he was Cornelius Vance: the legal eagle working for one of New York's most prestigious firms! A useful connection. Now, stripped of his title and prestige, he might as well be a leper — an object of fear and contempt. And watching her squirm a bit, trapped in this small box with the very "monster" she whispered about in the hallways, gave him a grim, satisfying sense of clarity.

The elevator doors opened onto the grand lobby, a space designed not just to impress, but to overwhelm. It was a soaring, three-story atrium of polished black marble and gleaming glass. Garlands of fragrant evergreen, woven with ribbons of gold satin, were draped artfully along the mezzanine railings.

In the center of the hall stood a massive Christmas tree, at least twenty feet tall, its branches laden with thousands of twinkling white lights and ornaments of spun glass and polished silver that glittered like captive stars.

To the right of the tree, the massive, abstract chrome sculpture that twisted towards the ceiling was now entwined with delicate strands of laser-projected lights, reflecting the snowy scene from the vast windows in a thousand fractured, festive patterns.

The air smelled of cinnamon and the clean, sharp scent of pine.

To his left was "The Alchemist's Nook," the building's resident-exclusive bar, its brass fixtures and dark mahogany wood gleaming under soft, recessed lighting, a single, elegant wreath hanging on its closed door. The rows of top-shelf liquor bottles were like silent, sleeping soldiers, a potent memory of the night he'd celebrated his promotion there just last year, the air then thick with laughter, the scent of expensive cocktails, and the promise of a bright future. This early in the morning, the bar was, naturally, empty — mirroring the emptiness in his soul.

As he walked towards the entrance, he saw another neighbor, a hedge fund manager named Tom, approaching from the other side. Tom, who had once cornered him in this very lobby to get stock tips, now found something utterly fascinating on his phone, abruptly changing his trajectory to head towards the mailroom, his eyes fixed firmly downward. The message was clear: the herd had cast him out.

As he moved to leave, Hector, the elderly doorman with kind, weary eyes, stopped him with a gentle hand on his arm.

"Mr. Vance," he said, his voice soft. "I read the papers. It's a damn shame what they've done to you — anyone with a brain can see you're just a fall guy. For what it's worth, we're all going to miss you around here. You were always a gentleman."

The simple, unexpected human decency was a gut punch. It was a reminder of the community that he was being ripped away from. He managed a tight, appreciative nod, unable to trust his voice, before pushing through the revolving doors and stepping out into the storm.

He walked through a monochrome world of white snow, gray slush, and black asphalt.

The city was a whirlwind of biting wind and thick, wet snow. The wind howled between the canyons of the skyscrapers, a mournful, lonely sound. The festive holiday lights on Park Avenue, meant to be cheerful, looked somehow garish and cruel through the curtain of falling snow.

As he waited to cross a street, he saw a young couple huddled under a cafe awning, sharing a hot beverage, their heads close together as they laughed, their breath mingling in a single white cloud. It was a small, perfect glimpse of the kind of life that was no longer accessible to him, a world he could observe from behind an invisible wall but never again physically join. He felt utterly disconnected from the huddled masses rushing past him, a ghost moving through a city that has already forgotten him. The physical cold was a perfect mirror for the frozen emptiness inside him.

Soon enough, he arrived at a severe, imposing skyscraper of black glass and steel. The lobby was a cathedral of cold, white marble, echoing and deserted save for a single figure at a vast, monolithic desk. His footsteps clicked and echoed unnaturally on the polished floor, the sound swallowed by the sheer vertical scale of the space, a hall designed to make kings feel small. The air was sterile and still, with a faint, clean scent of ozone, like the air after a lightning strike.

On the other hand, the young goddess at the desk — "Chloe," according to her name-tag — was a veritable work of art; a creature of devastating, effortless beauty who brought a splash of impossible, vibrant color to the boring, monochrome hall. Her hair was a cascade of spun gold that seemed to drink the cold light of the lobby and transform it into something warm and alive as it tumbled over her shoulders. Her eyes were the startling blue of a high-summer sky, and they held an ancient, knowing amusement that was at odds with the youthful perfection of her face. She had high cheekbones, a sharp, intelligent jawline, and a full, pouty mouth that was painted with lipstick of a deep, wicked crimson shade.

She wore a severe, charcoal-gray suit that should have been conservative — but on her, it seemed only to emphasize the generous curve of her hips and the slender line of her waist. The silk blouse beneath was a deep, blood-red… and unbuttoned just enough to offer a tantalizing glimpse of the smooth, pale skin of her collarbone and the delicate hollow of her throat. She wore a headset, but her attention was on him the moment he stepped inside.

He approached the desk tentatively, his well-practiced professional composure having utterly abandoned him. He felt like a boy on his first day of school. He cleared his throat and opened his mouth, the words "Hello, I have an appointment..." forming on his lips.

But he never got them out.

"Ah, Mr. Vance! Welcome!" she said, her voice the same honey-and-gin concoction from the phone. Her smile was a slow, deliberate sunrise, impossibly warm in the sterile coldness of the hall. It was a smile that seemed to know things, to see right through the expensive suit to the terrified, broken man beneath. "We've been expecting you."

She hadn't looked at a screen, hadn't checked a list. She had known his name and face… on sight alone?

The fresh burst of paranoia returned in a cold rush.

"Mr. Ash is very much looking forward to this meeting," she continued, leaning forward slightly, her chin resting on her hand in a gesture of casual, almost intimate confidence. "He's waiting for you at the top floor suites. Just through there, please!"

She pointed with a single, perfectly manicured finger towards the far wall of the lobby. Cornelius followed her gesture.

He saw a vast, unbroken expanse of polished, veined marble, a sheer cliff of stone reflecting the cold light from the windows.

He blinked.

There was nothing there but wall.

He turned back to her, a frown creasing his brow. "I'm sorry…?"

But Chloe's smile didn't waver. If anything, it widened, becoming more enigmatic. More knowing. She held his gaze and pointed again, her expression a perfect blend of amusement and professional calm. "Right down the lobby there, you'll see a private elevator. You've been cleared to use it," she said, her voice soft but firm.

An unsettling shiver ran down his spine. He turned back to the wall, his heart beginning to beat a little faster. He forced his eyes to focus, to really look, tracing the veins in the marble, searching for the trick.

And then, he noticed it.

The elevator door was so perfectly integrated into the marble's pattern, the dark wood almost indistinguishable from the darker veins in the stone, that it was easy to overlook. The call button panel on the wall looked to be old, ornate brass, with tasteful gilded age metalwork around the edges.

His mind reeled for a moment, the absurd assertion that the door had not been there moments before, that it had simply appeared, warring with a lifetime of rational thought.

No, he told himself firmly, a lawyer cross-examining his own senses. Surely I must have simply missed it. The stress, the lack of sleep... the way the light hits the polished stone from this angle. Of course it was there all along! Elevator doors don't simply appear out of thin air.

He managed a clumsy, "Uh, thank you," his voice sounding a note higher than usual.

Chloe's smile deepened, a spark of genuine mischief in her summer-sky eyes. "Oh, believe me, Mr. Vance, the pleasure is all mine. After all, it's not every day we get to welcome a client with such a compelling portfolio!" Her emphasis on the words "pleasure" and "compelling" felt loaded, a private joke he wasn't privy to. For a moment, her gaze held his, and he felt like a specimen under a very beautiful, very expensive microscope.

He broke eye contact first, turning and walking towards the impossible door on legs that felt strangely disconnected from his body.

He reached the mahogany elevator door and pressed the large brass button. It didn't beep or light up. Instead, it depressed with a heavy, satisfying click, a sound of old, well-oiled machinery engaging deep within the walls.

For a long moment, nothing happened. Then, with a silent, seamless grace, the heavy mahogany door slid sideways into the marble wall, vanishing completely.

 

[Superstes]

He stepped through, and the world changed.

The cold, ozonic air of the lobby was instantly replaced by a comforting warmth of the small, private space paneled in rich, warm cherry wood that glowed under a soft, indirect light. The air smelled faintly of cedar and old books.

Cozy, he noted.

There were only two buttons on the ornate brass panel:



G

and

P



The ascent was silent and smooth.

The doors opened onto a vast reception area that felt less like an office and more like a private museum. Priceless Ming Dynasty vases stood on illuminated pedestals. Intricate Turkish rugs, their colors rich and deep, cushioned his every step. A massive, wall-sized aquarium glowed with the iridescent colors of blue-ring octopodes and exotic tropical fish — some of them creatures of such vibrant and surreal beauty that they seemed to have been dreamed into existence.

The Penthouse receptionist who greeted him was older and had a more aggressive bearing to her than Chloe — though the word seemed inadequate, like calling a thunderstorm 'damp'. She was a woman who had been sculpted by time into a monument of severe, uncompromising elegance. Her hair was a sheet of raven-black, shot through with bold, deliberate streaks of pure silver at the temples, pulled back into a tight, intricate chignon that looked to be a work of art in itself. Her face was a mask of aristocratic beauty, with high, sharp cheekbones and a jawline that could cut glass. Her eyes were the color of dark, aged sherry, and they held in them no warmth — only a sharp, bottomless intelligence that was far more intimidating than any overt hostility.

She was dressed in a tailored suit of the deepest charcoal gray, the kind of material that seemed to drink in the light rather than reflect it. It was a statement of power, yet it was cut with a subtle, dangerous femininity. The jacket was cinched tight at her waist, flaring out over hips that were undeniably womanly. The skirt was pencil-thin and severe, falling to just half an inch above the knee, a modest length that nevertheless served to draw the eye to the long, elegant line of her legs, clad in sheer, dark stockings and ending in a pair of lethally sharp stiletto heels. The jacket was open just enough to reveal a glimpse of a black lace camisole, a tantalizing hint of decadent softness beneath the unyielding armor of her suit.

Her posture was ramrod straight, the no-nonsense bearing of a strict algebra teacher who was ready to punish any minute infraction. Her very stillness was a form of power. A challenge.

Her gaze swept over him in a slow, deliberate appraisal that was neither friendly nor hostile, but something far more unnerving: analytical. It was the look of a master jeweler examining a raw, uncut diamond for its potential... and its flaws.

"Mr. Vance," she said. Her voice was a low, smoky contralto, a sound like aged whiskey and velvet. It held none of Chloe's playful warmth, only a deep, resonant power that seemed to vibrate in the very air around her. "You are expected."

Cornelius swallowed, his throat suddenly, inexplicably dry. The sheer force of her presence was like a physical pressure. "Yes, I..."

She cut him off — not rudely, but with an absolute authority that brooked no argument.

"Follow me. Mr. Ash does not appreciate tardiness." Her lips, painted a deep shade of burgundy, curved into something that was almost — but not quite — a smile. "And we wouldn't want to disappoint him on your very first meeting, now would we?"

She turned with a fluid, economical grace and led him down a surprisingly busy hallway.

Far from being the hushed, sterile environment he expected, the corridor was alive with the vibrant, confident buzz of immense success. The thick carpets swallowed the sound of footsteps, but not the low murmur of conversations, punctuated by confident laughter and the clinking of glasses from open office doors. Men and women in impeccably tailored suits moved with a relaxed but predatory grace, shaking hands, closing deals on their phones, their faces alight with the thrill of the game. It felt less like a stuffy old-money firm and more like a high-octane, impossibly exclusive social club where the currency was power.

As they walked, a man with a familiar, boyish face and famously thick glasses emerged from an adjacent corridor, a plush white towel draped around his neck and a tennis racket in his hand. He was dressed in immaculate white shorts and a polo shirt, his expensive athletic shoes squeaking softly on the plush carpet.

Cornelius did a double-take. He was almost certain this was none other than Gill Bates, the legendary billionaire founder of MacroHard!

Bates was laughing as he shook hands with a similarly-dressed man who looked like he just finished a tennis warm-up. "That was a hell of a match, Gill," the man said, his voice smooth as silk. Bates just grinned, a bead of sweat tracing a path down his temple. "You're getting better, Richard! Same time next week?" The other nodded, and Bates, catching Cornelius's eye for a fraction of a second, gave a small, collegial smile — as if they were members of the same exclusive club — before vanishing down a hallway marked with a discreet sign that simply read "Spa."

The strict receptionist led him to the end of a long hallway, stopping before a pair of imposing double doors made of a dark, almost black wood that seemed to absorb the light. The wood was polished to a mirror shine, and he could see his own distorted, pale reflection staring back at him. The brass plate next to it read: M. Ash, Vice President, Acquisitions & Special Projects.

His escort didn't knock. She didn't even pause. She simply placed a perfectly manicured hand on the ornate brass handle.

"Mr. Ash is through here," she announced to the room, her voice carrying a weight that seemed to pass right through the heavy doors. She pulled the door open, revealing the corner office beyond. She then turned her head slightly, her sherry-colored eyes meeting his one last time. There was no warmth in them, but there was a flicker of something else — a dry, clinical curiosity. "Try not to waste his time," she said, her voice a low, final command.

And with that, she released the handle, turned with the sharp, precise movement of a soldier, and walked away. The soft, rhythmic click of her stiletto heels on the plush carpet was the only sound, a sound that grew fainter and fainter until it was swallowed by the opulent silence, leaving him utterly alone on the threshold of the lion's den.

The room was enormous.

From where he stood, the figure of Ash by the far window seemed like a distant silhouette against the raging blizzard, a master of the universe observing his domain. The walk from the door to the seating area in front of the window felt like a journey across a foreign country. He passed a massive, polished desk of what looked like obsidian -- a desk so comically large that it felt like it could have served as an improvised landing strip for a small aircraft.

To his right, a fire crackled merrily in a marble fireplace wide enough to roast a whole ox.

And, on a low table near the seating area, there sat a heavy crystal decanter filled with an amber liquid, two glasses already waiting.

The entire space was designed to communicate one thing: that he, Cornelius Vance, was a very small man in a very large and dangerous world. As his feet sank into the plush fibers of an authentic Persian rug, Ash's voice filled the cavernous room, a low, melodious baritone that carried with unnatural clarity.

He still hadn't bothered to turn around.

"Remarkable, isn't it?" Ash began, his voice a disembodied sound layered over the silent, epic movie of the blizzard outside. "They say that out of the countless billions of flakes we are seeing, no two are ever the same. Each one is a unique, crystalline miracle. A fleeting testament to an infinite, chaotic geometry."

By the time he finished the last sentence, Cornelius had nearly reached the window. Ash still hadn't moved, his back a wall of perfectly-tailored charcoal gray.

"And yet," Ash continued, his voice dropping a fraction, becoming deeper, more intimate, "when one zooms out far enough, when one gets a high enough vantage point, all one can ever perceive... is a sea of white."

He turned then, a slow, deliberate pivot. For a moment, Cornelius saw a flicker of something ancient and profound in his eyes — a weariness that seemed older than the city. Older than the mountains themselves.

"To someone like me, Mr. Vance, there is nothing more mundane than uniqueness," he said, his gaze settling on Cornelius, sharp and analytical, as if seeing him for the first time. "But… I do sometimes wonder if that is truly so — or if some snowflakes really are more special than others."

This man's philosophical musings were a form of torture; a casual display of the seemingly infinite time Ash had access to, and the finite, numbered hours of freedom Cornelius had left. His jaw was so tight it ached.

"Mr. Ash, I have limited time. If we could please just get to the point?"

Ash's smile became one of pity. "Why, are you truly so eager to head to that federal prison of yours, Mr. Vance?"

Cornelius froze. "H-how did you...?"

"We make it a point to thoroughly understand the circumstances of all potential clients," Ash said smoothly. "And you, my dear boy, became just such a potential client the moment those cards of yours hit that felt."

Ash led Cornelius over to the sitting area and sat back in a large, comfortable-looking chair, the ancient leather groaning softly. He steepled his fingers, the picture of a benevolent senior partner about to offer a generous, if slightly condescending, severance package.

"Cornelius... may I call you Cornelius? The truth is, what happened at the game last night was something of an anomaly. A fit of whimsy. An… oversight on my part, if you will."

He poured them both a generous helping of the undoubtedly expensive alcohol, then took a slow, deliberate sip of the amber liquid, savoring the taste. From pure muscle memory borne of countless backroom negotiations, Cornelius did the same, enjoying the pleasant warmth of the beverage that might have cost as much as a down payment of a luxury vehicle.

"Understand this. The asset you... acquired... is not a simple piece of real estate. It's what we in the business like to call a 'legacy portfolio.' It comes with significant historical entanglements. Covenants, deed restrictions, liens, pre-existing tenancies of a most peculiar and... resilient nature."

He paused, letting the words sink in, his gaze never leaving Cornelius's face.

"Frankly, it requires a level of hands-on management that would be... well, let's just say it would be exceedingly burdensome for a man in your current legal and personal predicament. We at Aethelred feel a certain responsibility in these matters. A… duty of care, if you will. We don't wish to see a man of your talents further encumbered without your knowledge and informed consent!"

He paused for dramatic effect.

"And so… I have prepared a simple, clean exit strategy for you."

With a flick of his wrist, he gestured to a sleek, black briefcase on the table between them.

Cornelius reached over and unlatched it. The twin clicks of the polished chrome latches were sharp and final in the quiet room. He lifted the lid, revealing not complex legal documents, but neat, tight stacks of bearer bonds, their crisp, impersonal perfection a stark contrast to the ancient, chaotic energy of the deed.

"$9 million dollars," Ash said, his voice a soft, seductive whisper. "A simple, untraceable transaction. Just imagine it. Your restitution will be paid in full. And, together with your card winnings, you'll have a very comfortable nest egg waiting for you upon your... ah... sabbatical's conclusion. You can walk away right now! Free and clear, unburdened by this most… unfortunate acquisition. All you have to do is sign here," he pushed a single, elegant document across the table, "take the money, and return that deed you've brought with you."

Cornelius stared at the briefcase, at the neat stacks of paper that represented a clean slate, a second chance at a hollow life.

And he saw a trap.

His mind, a finely honed instrument of logic and risk assessment, raced through the scenarios. He pictured the gray, featureless walls of a prison cell, the slow, grinding erosion of his identity until he was nothing but a number. Then he pictured life afterwards, a ghost in the unforgiving city with a bank account full of tainted money, forever looking over his shoulder, the taste of ashes in his mouth.

That was the known path. The safe path.

He took out and examined the deed he brought along, gently tracing its ancient texture with his fingers. The mysterious document represented an unknown, a void, a terrifying leap into madness.

But it would be a choice.

His choice.

Besides, smart brokers do not simply offer a $9 million buyout to correct a "mistake." They do it to acquire an asset for pennies on the dollar.

He looked from the boring, safe, sensible pile of money to the ancient deed lying on the desk. He thought of the six upcoming years in a cage; of the lifetime of being a known, convicted felon that would follow.

It was a choice between a fairly comfortable, but hollow life after prison, or this one, single, insane chance at something else entirely.

He reached for the briefcase --

...

...

...

-- and pushed it away.

"I thank you for your concern, Mr. Ash, but I think I'll keep the deed if it's all the same to you."

Ash's smile didn't falter, but it changed. The mask of benevolence dropped away, replaced by something edgy. Predatory.

His eyes suddenly seemed to glitter in the firelight. "Are you quite certain, Mr. Vance?" he asked, his voice a silken purr. "This is a final buyout offer. Once you commit to this portfolio, you are... stuck with it, for better or worse. There will be no more easy exits."

A flicker of the old lawyerly focus returned to Cornelius's eyes, a muscle memory of a thousand hostile negotiations. He leaned forward slightly, meeting Ash's predatory gaze with a cool, analytical calm of his own. "No easy exits?" he echoed, his voice suddenly sharp, precise. "That's an interesting turn of phrase, Mr. Ash. Are you implying the property isn't liquid? That there are restrictive covenants tied to the land? Perhaps an issue with the title, a cloud that prevents a clean sale?"

Ash let out a low, appreciative chuckle, a sound of genuine amusement. "Covenants, liens, intractable tenancy disputes, overbearing and hostile neighbors... yes, you could say the property has all of those things, Mr. Vance. In a manner of speaking." His smile was all teeth now, a flash of white in the dim light.

"Does the prospect of a... challenge... change your mind?"

Cornelius met his gaze, the last vestiges of fear burning away into a cold, hard resolve.

So what if the land had attached legal issues? The government would just seize and try to sell it anyway, right? If something was left over , he'd just deal with it after he got out of prison.

"It does not, Mr. Ash. I'm certain."

A slow, satisfied smile spread across Ash's face. "Excellent!" He produced a fountain pen from his breast pocket. It was an exquisite thing of black lacquer and silver, but the nib was a single, needle-sharp sliver of what looked like obsidian. "Then we must make it official. The deed must be properly recorded and registered to the new owner. Please, sign your name here, at the bottom."

He indicated a blank space at the bottom of the ancient parchment. Cornelius took the pen. It felt strangely warm in his hand, as if it somehow held the residual heat of a forge. He uncapped it and, with a steady hand that surprised even himself, signed his name with the rich, dark-red ink.

Cornelius Vance.

The moment the signature was complete, the text flashed with a bright crimson light before settling down once more.

Some new kind of scanning technology? A way to digitize drafts without having to put them through a scanning machine? Yes, it must be something like that…

Ash clapped his hands together once, a sharp, final sound that echoed in the vast office.

"It is done!" he declared with a theatrical flourish that grated on Cornelius's nerves.

He leaned back in his chair and, with a casual flick of his wrist, tossed a heavy, ornate silver ring across the table. It spun in the air, a flash of silver against the dark wood, and landed perfectly in front of Cornelius. It bore a strange, intricate sigil, a knot of lines that seemed to shift and writhe at the edge of his vision. "The symbol of your new office," Ash said in an audible reply to Cornelius' questioning gaze, his tone dripping with false magnanimity. "It carries with it certain inherent authorities. I suggest not taking it off."

Cornelius picked up the ring, examining it with curiosity. Shrugging, he absently slid it onto his finger.

"Now," Ash continued, "how about we get you acquainted with your new holdings?" He leaned forward, speaking in a conspirational half-whisper. "Would you…. like to see them?"

"Oh, is this estate of yours close by, Mr. Ash? I'd love to see it, but you understand that I only have a few days before I…"

Suddenly and without warning, the sterile office air was replaced by the rich, loamy scent of damp earth and blooming night flowers. The muffled sounds of the office building were gone, replaced by the chirping of unseen insects and a soft, gentle breeze. The small table and two leather chairs were now standing not upon artificial floor, but in a lush meadow under a deep indigo sky... lit by two impossible moons.

And, in the distance, silhouetted against those twin moons, was a magnificent fairy-tale-style castle, complete with soaring, elegant spires.

The sudden shift hit Cornelius like a thunderclap without sound, a vertigo that twisted his gut and spun the world on its axis. One moment, the weight of Ash's office pressed around him — the crackle of the fire, the faint tang of aged whiskey in the air — and the next, it was all erased, replaced by a literal wonderland of impossibility.

His body reacted before his mind could properly catch up. The leather chair, once anchored to the solid floor of the penthouse, now teetered precariously on the uneven, dew-kissed grass of the meadow. Cornelius's weight shifted instinctively, a futile grab for balance, but the chair tipped backward with a soft, betraying creak. He flailed, his arms windmilling comically in the open air, and then he was falling — tumbling out in a graceless sprawl onto the cool, springy earth. The impact jarred his bones, sending a puff of pollen-scented dirt into the air as he landed on his back, the wind knocked out of him in a sharp gasp.

For a heartbeat, he lay there, stunned, staring up at the alien sky. Two moons?

There was no doubt about it. Twin orbs hung low and luminous, one a pale silver, the other a faint, ruddy gold, casting an ethereal double glow over the landscape. And beside them, stars wheeled in unfamiliar constellations, brighter and far more numerous than any he'd ever seen from the light-polluted haze of New York.

"What... what just happened?" he wheezed, scrambling to his feet with a violence born of panic. He whipped around, his head snapping left and right, eyes wide and wild as he scanned the meadow. The grass rippled like a living sea under the breeze, dotted with bioluminescent flowers that pulsed softly in hues of violet and sapphire. In the distance, the castle still loomed — impossibly grand, its spires piercing the night like jagged crowns, walls of pale stone veined with glowing ivy that seemed to wax and dim rhythmically, as if breathing.

"What is this?" he demanded, his voice cracking with a mix of fury and fear. He spun toward Ash, who remained comfortably seated in his own chair, unmoved and unflappable, that predatory smile still etched on his face. "Where the hell are we? How did — did you drug me? Is this some kind of hallucination? Virtual reality? Answer me!"

His hands clenched into fists, the silver ring on his finger suddenly feeling heavier, warmer, as if it pulsed in time with his racing heart. The chirping insects fell silent, as if the meadow itself held its breath, waiting for what came next. Cornelius's mind raced —scam, setup, madness — but beneath the terror, a spark of that old curiosity flickered to life.

God help him, what had he just signed up for?

Ash smiled warmly.

"Well, here she is. The Vespertine March. She's all yours now, Baron Vance," Ash said, his voice a smooth, conspiratorial murmur, as if they were old friends sharing a secret over drinks. "I can see that you're a touch... overwhelmed. Perfectly understandable. This is, after all, a rather abrupt introduction to your new holdings." His eyes glittered with that same ancient, predatory amusement, catching the double moonlight like polished obsidian. "Perhaps a rational conversation isn't quite what you need just now. Yesss… A bit of time to get acquainted with the land — alone — will do you some good."

Cornelius blinked, his jaw tightening as he tried to anchor himself in the lawyerly logic that had once been his shield. "Acquainted? With this? Wait! You can't just—"

Cornelius wanted to protest, to demand answers, but before he could utter a single syllable more, Ash was simply... gone. A brief, silent burst of harmless flame — tinged with the sharp, acrid scent of sulfur — flared where he had stood, the light searing Cornelius's vision for a split second. When his eyes cleared, there was nothing there but the meadow, the moons, and the distant spires of the castle. The air was still, the chirping insects resuming their soft chorus as if nothing had happened.

He was, once again, utterly alone.

 

[Superstes]

His hands, which a moment ago had been clean, were now smeared with dark, cool soil. He stared at them, at the dirt caked under his fingernails, as if they belonged to someone else. He looked around wildly.

Ash was gone.

The office was gone.

The city was gone.

Now, there was only the meadow: stretching out in all directions, a sea of silver-green grass bathed in the impossible light of two serene, luminous moons. One was a familiar, cool white, but the other was smaller: a delicate crescent of pale, ethereal lavender with a reddish border. The sky above was not the murky, light-polluted orange of New York he was used to, but a deep, clear indigo, spangled with constellations he had never seen before — stars so bright and close he felt he could reach out and touch them.

"What...?" he whispered, his voice a ragged croak. "Just what the hell is all this?"

Cornelius' expensive suit was now damp and grass-stained. He spun in a full circle, his eyes wide with a frantic, rising panic, searching for the door, for the walls of Ash's office, for anything familiar.

But there was nothing. Just the endless, silent meadow and the impossible sky.

"Hallucinogen," he said aloud, the sound of his own voice a thin, reedy thing in the vast quiet. "That's it! That bastard drugged me somehow. A very potent, very fast-acting hallucinogen… LSD, or mushrooms, or something? I'm going to sue those sons of bitches into oblivion for this!"

The lawyer in him, desperate for a logical explanation, seized on the idea. It was the only thing that made sense. This was a prank. A very elaborate, very expensive prank.

He tried to find the flaw in the illusion. He reached down and tore a handful of grass from the ground. He expected it to feel like plastic, to be scentless, to pixelate at the edges like a cheap special effect. After all, no illusion is perfect — he must still be in the office, and this must still be the carpet.

Right?

But it felt real.

The blades were stubbornly cool and dewy against his palm, and when he crushed them, a sharp, clean, overwhelmingly green scent filled the air.

His gaze was drawn, against his will, to the castle on the horizon. It was no miniature. No clever projection.

No, it was immense, a thing of stone and shadow and impossible, soaring spires that clawed at the twin moons. He could see the texture of the ancient, weathered stone, the dark shapes of banners stirring lazily in the gentle breeze, the faint, flickering orange glow of what might be a torch in a high window. It wasn't a picture. It wasn't VR. It was a place.

A real place!

A glint of silver caught his eye. He looked down at his hand.

The ring.

The strange, heavy ring Ash had tossed him. It was glowing faintly in the moonlight now, the intricate, shifting sigil seeming to pulse with a soft, internal light. The metal was no longer cool to the touch; it was warm against his skin, a steady, rhythmic warmth that felt unnervingly like a heartbeat.

He stared at the ring.

Then at the castle.

Then back at the ring.

And as he stood there, alone in a world that shouldn't exist, the last of his rationalizations crumbled into dust. This wasn't a prank. It wasn't a drug. It was real.

All of it.

The full weight of the words Ash had spoken crashed down on him with the force of a physical blow.

The symbol of your new office... Baron Vance. He had dismissed it as theatrics, as the empty, pompous title that came with a novelty deed. But it wasn't a joke! He had signed a contract… a contract with a man who could step through a door in a Manhattan skyscraper and emerge in a land with two moons! And in doing so, he hadn't just acquired a piece of property. He had acquired a title. An office.

And... a responsibility? He was now the Baron of this place?

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," Cornelius Vance whispered to the impossible, silent moons.

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, he squared his shoulders. There was only one thing to do.

He started walking towards the castle.

The journey across the meadow was his first lesson in this new world. His thousand-dollar, hand-stitched Italian leather shoes, designed for the polished floors of boardrooms and the plush carpets of penthouse offices, were immediately soaked by the heavy, silvery dew on the impossibly green grass. Within less than a hundred yards, the fine, mirror-polished leather was scuffed and stained, the soles sucking at the soft, damp earth with every step. It was a small, poignant humiliation, a stripping away of the symbols of his former life. He was no longer a Manhattan lawyer. He was just a man, lost and ridiculous in a muddy, expensive Italian suit, walking towards a literal fairy tale.

He reached the edge of a vast, ancient-looking forest that lay between the meadow and the castle like a slumbering beast. As he stepped under the canopy of the first great trees, the world changed once again. The light from the two moons was filtered through a thick latticework of leaves and branches, dappling the forest floor in shifting, hypnotic patterns of silver and pale lavender. The air grew still and cool, thick with the rich, loamy scent of damp earth, of moss that had grown undisturbed for centuries, and a faint, sweet smell like honey and decaying flowers. It was the smell of a world that was both deeply alive and impossibly old.

A powerful, almost aching sense of déjà vu washed over him, so intense it was physically staggering.

This place... he knew this place! Not from a memory, but from a story. A half-remembered dream.

The gnarled, moss-covered oaks, their branches twisted into wise, ancient shapes. The beds of glowing, phosphorescent fungi that pulsed with a soft, blue-green light. The way the moonlight slanted through the high canopy like the light through the stained-glass windows of a cathedral—it was all torn directly from the pages of The Whispering Woods, his favorite childhood picture-book of fairy tales.

He was struck by a sharp, vivid memory, a phantom echo from a life that felt a thousand years away: his mother's voice, warm and gentle, reading to him as he lay tucked in bed.

And the lost Prince walked beneath the silver-leafed boughs, where the moon-moss glows and the quiet things of the woods watch with eyes as old as the stones...

The nostalgia was a physical pain, a longing for a time when he was still a child. When magic felt possible. When his Mother was still alive and the world was a place of wonder and not a courtroom full of lies. When his life hadn't yet been calcified by cynicism and the cold, hard lines of the law.

He walked deeper into the woods, his footsteps muffled by the thick carpet of moss.

Suddenly, there was a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision. At first, he dismissed it as a moth, a trick of the strange, dual-moon light.

But then he saw it again — a darting spark of emerald green near a cluster of giant, crimson-capped toadstools. He stopped dead, every muscle in his body tensing. He squinted into the gloom. It wasn't one spark. It was three. They danced in the air, weaving intricate patterns around each other.

And they were not insects.

He could see them clearly now: tiny, perfect humanoid forms no bigger than his thumb, their slender limbs trailing ribbons of faint, glittering light. Their wings, like those of a dragonfly but spun from pure, iridescent moonlight, beat too fast for the eye to follow. As he stared, utterly transfixed, one of them noticed him. She stopped her dance and hovered in the air, her tiny head cocked to one side. Then, he heard it. A sound so unexpected, so impossible, that it sent a jolt of pure shock through his system.

Laughter.

It was faint, like the musical chime of ice in a crystal glass, but it was unmistakably laughter.

He let out a short, sharp yelp and stumbled backward, tripping over a gnarled root he hadn't seen. He landed hard on the mossy ground, his suit jacket riding up his back. For a moment, he just sat there, propped up on his elbows, gaping like a fool. Fairies, his mind supplied, the word feeling alien and absurd on his mental tongue. Honest to God fairies!

The lawyer in him, the rational, evidence-based part of his brain, immediately roared to life, a Plaintiff trying to tear down a flimsy, unbelievable witness.

Objection! Fairies aren't real! This is a violation of every known law of physics and biology!

He scrambled for a logical explanation.

Bioluminescent insects. A species of exotic, territorial firefly, perhaps. Swamp gas reflecting off the moon-moss, creating an optical illusion? More hallucinations?

He listed the possibilities in his head, a litany of rationalizations against the encroaching tide of madness. But the evidence before him was irrefutable.

Fireflies didn't have arms and legs.

Swamp gas didn't laugh.

The three tiny figures, seeing him sitting there on the ground, burst into a fresh peal of silvery chimes. They zoomed in closer, hovering just out of arm's reach, their tiny, mischievous faces now clearly visible in the gloom. They were beautiful, ethereal, and utterly, maddeningly real.

The cross-examination of his own sanity collapsed. He was left with one inescapable conclusion.

He was now in a world where fairies were real.

He pushed himself to his feet, brushing dirt from his trousers with a shaky hand. "Hey!" he shouted, his voice cracking. It came out louder than he intended, a desperate, raw sound in the sacred quiet of the woods.

The sprites, startled by his shout, scattered like a dropped handful of jewels. Their laughter, now tinged with alarm, echoed through the trees as they vanished into the shadows, leaving only a few fading motes of glittering dust in their wake. He was left standing alone, his heart pounding, his hand outstretched towards the empty air.

"No, wait! Come back!"

He leaned against a massive, ancient oak to catch his breath, the rough bark a solid, real thing under his palm — and felt a strange, tingling sensation on the back of his neck, as if he was being watched.

A knot in the bark was slowly, languidly blinking at him.

It was an eye!

An eye as deep and green as the moss itself — and for a fleeting second, he thought he even saw a face in the swirling patterns of the wood: a wise, ancient, and distinctly feminine face that watched him with a weary, wary curiosity before quickly melting back into the bark, leaving him to wonder if he had ever seen it at all.

As he ventured further, the initial wonder of the fairytale forest began to curdle into a subtle, creeping unease.

He saw a patch of flowers nestled in a small, sun-dappled clearing. They were stunningly beautiful, their bell-shaped blossoms a shade of luminous lavender he'd never seen before, each petal seeming to glow with a soft, inviting internal light. For a moment, he forgot everything — the prison, the poker game, the encounter with Ash — and was just a man captivated by a perfect, simple beauty.

He reached out a hand, his fingers tracing a path towards a single, perfect bloom… but, as his fingertip drew near, a fat, glowing, iridescent dragonfly, its wings a blur of color, zipped past his hand towards the same flower. The moment it touched the petals, the beautiful, bell-shaped blossom opened up — then promptly snapped shut with a wet, audible thwack, its delicate lavender petals transforming into a cage of dripping, needle-sharp, interlocking teeth.

He snatched his hand back as if burned, a cold knot of revulsion tightening in his stomach. He stared at the flower, which now pulsed with a faint, predatory rhythm as it digested its meal.

Just… what kind of a place is this? he wondered, a chill running down his spine that had nothing to do with the cool forest air.

He moved on — more slowly and carefully this time, his steps now more wary, his eyes scanning his surroundings not for wonders, but for threats.

He soon came to a stream that cut across his path... and suddenly realized that he was quite thirsty — but as he knelt to try the water, he hesitated. The water here wasn't clear and inviting. It ran sluggishly, a thick, slow current that seemed reluctant to move. A faint, oily sheen — like a slick of gasoline — swirled on its surface, catching the dual moonlight in sickly, rainbow patterns. He looked closer and saw that the smooth stones of the riverbed, which should have been clean, were coated in a thin, uniform layer of dark, slimy algae that seemed to pulse with a slow, unhealthy life of its own. It wasn't natural pollution — there was no sign of industry here, no smoke or refuse — but…

Could this be a kind of magical corruption, he wondered, some kind of blight or curse that choked the life from the land? Was this the kind of encumberment Ash was talking about?

He stood up, his thirst forgotten for the moment.

The beauty of the woods was still there, of course, but it now felt like a facade — a beautiful painting on a rotting canvas. Now that he was aware of it, he saw signs of sickness everywhere. It was a subtle, pervasive wrongness, present in the very bones of the land. His eyes were drawn to the trees themselves, the ancient, majestic oaks he had found so comforting just moments before. He looked at them now with new, suspicious eyes.

He saw it then.

It wasn't just that they were old and gnarled.

They were literally twisted.

Twisted into shapes of pure, unadulterated agony.

The thick root of one tree broke the surface of the earth in the perfect, unmistakable shape of a human face, its mouth wide in a silent, petrified scream. The branches of another were reaching for the sky like the desperate, skeletal arms of a drowning man, clawing for a salvation that would never come.

He realized with a growing horror that he wasn't looking at a merely sick or polluted land, but a tortured one.

What could possibly do something like this? he thought, a cold dread seeping into his heart. What kind of power could inflict such a deep, pervasive pain on the very fabric of a world?

What kind of power would even want to?

Closer to the castle — after, perhaps, a 40-minutes' walk — he came upon another clearing where a different stream pooled into a perfectly clear, tranquil pond. And here, the land felt much cleaner. Purer.

The water was so clear it seemed to magnify the smooth, multi-colored stones of the pond's floor. Water lilies with blossoms of a pale, pearlescent white floated on the surface, their petals glowing softly in the dual moonlight.

He was still parched, his throat dry with a thirst that was as much from adrenaline and fear as from exertion. He knelt at the water's edge, cupping his hands to drink.

And, as his reflection touched the water, a figure rose from the depths. It was a woman of impossible, breathtaking beauty, her form sculpted from moonlight and water. She was completely nude, her skin a luminous, pearlescent white, her long hair the color of deep green seaweed flowing around her, stirred by an unseen current. Her body was a masterpiece of idealized, sculpted femininity — a form far more perfect than any supermodel or classical statue he had ever seen. Her eyes were the color of the clear, deep water, and they held a flirty, playful light.

She smiled: a slow, languid, and deeply seductive smile that made his heart skip a beat.

"Well, now," she purred, her voice like the gentle, musical burble of the stream itself. "What's a big, strong man like you doing such a long way from home?"

Cornelius, who had faced down hostile judges and cross-examined corporate titans without flinching, found himself utterly speechless. He could only stare, mouth agape, his face flushing, his carefully constructed world of logic and reason completely short-circuited by the sheer, impossible sight of her.

She glided closer, the water parting before her without so much as a single ripple.

"You look thirsty," she said huskily, tilting her head. "Come closer. The water is deep and cool here. So very... refreshing."

She reached a shimmering, delicately webbed hand towards his cheek, her touch promising an encounter that was at once both terrifying and deeply, shamefully alluring.

But, just as her fingers were about to touch his skin, a second figure rose from the water behind her.

This naiad was older — her beauty more severe and classical, like the old Renaissance depictions of Greek Goddesses. Her eyes held the cold, deep wisdom of the riverbed stones.

"Nerida!"

The name was called out loudly — a sharp, crystalline sound, like a shard of ice falling into a warm, languid pool. She made a show of raising her own slender, pale hand from the water and pointing at her own ring finger — then gave a sharp, significant nod towards Cornelius.

The first naiad's gaze followed the gesture. She looked back at Cornelius — then down at the signet ring he wore — and her seductive smile faltered, replaced instantly by a cute, pouty frown. She let out an exaggerated, theatrical sigh.

"Oh, Lyra, you're no fun at all!" she complained to the older naiad. She turned her pout back to Cornelius, her eyes now holding a flicker of genuine annoyance. "I was just going to have a little fun with him, I swear! Maybe a swim. A nice, long swim." She winked, a gesture that now seemed infinitely more menacing than before.

Cornelius scrambled back from the water's edge, his heart pounding. He tried to regain some semblance of his lawyerly composure.

"Who are you? What is this place?" he demanded, his voice sounding a bit higher pitched than he would have liked. "What is this ring?"

The naiads just laughed in response, a sound like a thousand tiny bells chiming in the quiet woods.

"Oh, but that would be telling! You'll find out soon enough, my Lord Baron," Nerida said, her pout gone, replaced by pure, bubbling amusement. And with that, they both sank back into the clear waters, vanishing without so much as a ripple, leaving him alone and more confused than ever.

Cornelius dared not quench his thirst just yet, deciding to move on as quickly as he could.

 

[Subhelios]

This is extremely my shit, I await the next installment with bated breath.

 

[Superstes]

After another hour's walk, he emerged back from the woods onto a low hill overlooking what appeared to be a small village huddled in the castle's shadow. From a distance, it looked quaint: a perfect storybook hamlet. But as he drew closer, that illusion shattered. The cottages were crumbling, with gaping holes in their thatched roofs patched haphazardly with scrap wood and mud. Doors hung crookedly upon broken, rusted hinges. The cobblestone streets were choked with weeds and slick with more of that strange black slime.

The air, which in the woods had smelled of life, now smelled of damp, rot, vomit, and a kind of deep, pervasive, excrement-touched hopelessness that would have fit right in at the poorer stations of New York City Transit.

The few villagers he saw—a woman drawing water from a murky-looking well, her shoulders stooped with a lifetime of weariness; an old man listlessly mending a fence with wood that was looked already half-way rotted through—were gaunt and hollow-eyed. They were dressed in little more than patched, threadbare rags the color of dust and despair. They moved with a slow, beaten shuffle, their eyes fixed on the muddy ground in front of them, as if they lacked the strength or the will to look up at the world.

But then, there was a flicker of something different.

A small child, a boy no older than six with a wild mop of brown hair and clothes that were little more than artfully arranged holes, darted out from between two crumbling cottages. He was just as thin and smudged with grime as the others, but his eyes... his eyes were wide and bright, holding a spark of uncrushed, defiant curiosity. He stopped a few feet from Cornelius, his head cocked to the side like a small bird, and stared openly at the muddy but still fine fabric of his suit, a thing so out of place it was literally from another planet.

Cornelius smiled at him in what he hoped was a friendly and disarming manner. "Well, hello there, little guy! And who might you be?"

The boy smiled back and opened his mouth to respond. "Hello Mister! Are you...?"

But he never got to finish. A woman—presumably his mother—shot out from a nearby doorway like an arrow loosed from a bow. Her face was a mask of pure, primal terror. She grabbed the boy's thin arm — her grip iron-hard — and quickly yanked him back into the shadows of the cottage with a single, violent motion.

"What have I told you?!" she hissed, her voice a low, desperate sound, more fearful than angry.

"We do not speak to them! We do not look at them! Do you want them to take you, too?"

The door slammed shut, its rotting wood groaning in protest, leaving only the woman's panicked words hanging in the foul air.

Cornelius stood there for a moment, trying to process the woman's hissed warnings still ringing in his ears.

'Them.'

Plural?

Was he just the latest of 'them' then? Or did she mistake him for someone else — someone like Mr. Ash or like that… Nerida being, perhaps?

God, he had so many questions.

A few minutes later, Cornelius finally reached the castle.

It wasn't just a compound; it was a geological event, a veritable mountain of black stone that had been tamed and carved into a fortress. The walls rose far into the air, their surfaces weathered by ages of wind and rain — and yet, they seemed to hum with a faint, latent power. Intricate carvings, now softened by time, covered the stones — shiny glyphs interspersed with images of dragons, knights, and forgotten beasts locked in eternal combat. High above, crenelated battlements stood like teeth against the twin moons, and impossibly slender spires reached for the heavens, their tips seeming to scratch the very surface of the indigo sky. An absolutely massive portcullis, a grid of iron and dark wood, was raised, leaving a dark, yawning archway.

The sheer scale of it all was designed to make any visitor feel like an ant standing before a god.

He walked across a stone bridge that spanned a deep, dry moat choked with thorny, skeletal-looking weeds. The outer gates — two massive doors made out of solid iron — stood slightly ajar. They looked think and sturdy — heavy enough to repel a siege engine — yet they seemed curiously unguarded. He saw no sentries on the walls; heard no call of a night watchman.

The only sound was the mournful sigh of the wind blowing through the battlements.

"Hello?" he called out, his voice sounding small and thin, swallowed by the immense stone. It was eaten by the silence, receiving no echo, no reply.

He approached the gate and raised a hand to knock on the cold, unforgiving surface. But, before his knuckles could make contact, a low, groaning sound — like a giant waking from a long and troubled sleep — echoed from within. The massive iron hinges, thick as a man's arm and red with a thick coating of ancient rust, began to move. The gates swung inward, slowly, ominously, opening a path into the outer bailey.

No one had pushed them.

He carefully stepped inside.

The courtyard beyond was little more than a poorly-kept ruin. What must have once been a bustling, well-tended space was now a graveyard of neglect. Weeds with thick, thorny stalks cracked the flagstones. The roofs of the stables had caved in, their timbers lying in a splintered, chaotic heap. What once was a blacksmith's forge stood cold and silent, its anvil green with verdigris.

An air of profound, settled decay hung over everything.

It was then that he finally saw someone: a figure in black, moving with a hurried, almost furtive grace, emerged from a crumbling outbuilding that might have once been some kind of workshop. It was a hooded woman with the raven-black hair and pale, moon-like skin. She wore long, flowing robes of the deepest black, adorned with a delicate tracery of silver embroidery that glinted in the moonlight. She clutched a leather satchel to her chest, her movements swift and silent as she hurried across the courtyard towards the main keep.

"Excuse me! Miss?" Cornelius called out, his voice sharp with a desperation he couldn't hide. "Hello? Could you please help me? I'm trying to find whomever's in charge?"

She stopped with her back to him.

For a long, silent moment, she stood perfectly, unnervingly still. Then, she turned her head slowly sideways, as if looking at him over her shoulder — although she couldn't possibly see anything with that black hood on.

"Why bother?" she murmured, her voice — carrying surprisingly well in the twilight's silence — was a low, melodic whisper that was somehow colder than the stone around them.

And with that, she turned and continued on her way, those black robes melting into the shadows of the keep's entrance, leaving him standing alone in the ruined courtyard.

He finally reached the main doors of the castle proper: two massive slabs of dark, ancient wood bound with iron. He raised his hand to knock. But, as his knuckles approached the wood, the silver ring on his finger flared with a soft, warm light, casting a brief, gentle glow on the door. In response, the deep shadows pooled in the archway seemed to coalesce, to deepen, to gather themselves… until they coalesced into a single, man-shaped darkness. From this pool of unnatural gloom, a figure materialized, not with a sudden pop, but with the slower, silent rising of smoke.

He was an impossibly ancient, stooped man in a frayed, moth-eaten butler's uniform. His face was a roadmap of wrinkles, a cartography of sorrow and time. His eyes were a pale, watery blue — and they held in them the accumulated weariness of centuries, the look of a man who had seen far too many moons rise on the same unchanging misery. He seemed not a creature of flesh and blood, but more a being of dust and duty, of shadow and stone — as much a part of the castle as the walls themselves.

"So," the butler said, his voice as dry and brittle as old parchment. "You are the next one."

It wasn't a question. It was a weary, resigned statement of fact.

He performed a perfect, formal bow, a gesture of impeccable training that nevertheless was — somehow — the most insulting thing Cornelius had ever witnessed.

"I am called Malachi. I serve the castle."

He paused briefly, while looking Cornelius up and down.

"The Throne is in the Great Hall — just follow the main hallway straight down from the entrance… Just… Do try not to make too much of a mess, will you? It gets so very tedious tiding up after you are gone…"

"Now wait just a minute here," Cornelius began, his indignation finally boiling over. "I have questions. A lot of questions. Starting with who you are and what the hell is going on."

Malachi's watery blue eyes held a flicker of something that might have been weary amusement.

He didn't answer.

Instead, he simply began to dissolve, his form becoming translucent, the edges of his frayed uniform turning to smoke. The shadows in the archway seemed to rush back in, eager to reclaim him.

Cornelius should have been unnerved by the sight -- but he was getting desensitized to, and, frankly, a little ticked off by, all of the "weirdness" by this point. "Hey! Don't you walk away from me! We're not done here!" Cornelius shouted, taking a step forward.

But there was nothing to chase.

The butler was gone once again — melted back into the gloom from which he had emerged, leaving behind only the faint, musty scent of dust and decay.

Cornelius stared at the spot where Malachi had been, his mouth agape.

A man made of shadows. Go figure.

It was just one more impossibility in a day that was rapidly becoming saturated with them. Unnerved and more than a little frustrated, he turned his attention back to the massive doors of the keep. He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and stepped across the threshold into the main hall.

…

The air inside was cold and stale, thick with the smell of dust and the faint, mineral tang of damp stone. It was a cavernous space, the ceiling lost in the oppressive gloom far above. His muddy footsteps were loud, echoing slaps in the profound silence.

To his right, a grand staircase of dark, polished stone curved upwards into the darkness, its banisters thick with cobwebs, while the main hallway continued straight ahead.

The walls were lined with suits of armor and portraits of stern-faced men and women in archaic dress, their painted eyes seeming to follow him with silent, disapproving judgment. Unlike the ruined courtyard, this hall was in a much better state. It was a little dirty, yes — but the bones of its grandeur were fully intact. It was a place that had once been magnificent, a place that was waiting for the kind of proper master it had long since lost.

Cornelius followed the hall as it opened into an even larger chamber, drawn by the rather bright flicker of torchlight ahead.

The throne room was a place of faded glory. Soaring stone walls were hung with magnificent tapestries depicting epic battles and mythical beasts—dragons breathing fire upon armored knights, great ships sailing on seas of impossible blue—their vibrant colors now muted by a thick layer of gray dust and shrouded in the delicate, silken lacework of a thousand spiders. High, arched windows, were so grimy with the dirt of ages that they seemed to be made of smoked glass. The stone floor was made out of marble so black that it seemed to drink in the light of the liberally placed torches and braziers.

And on a raised dais at the far end of the hall was the throne itself: a huge, ornate chair of dark, almost black wood and tarnished silver, its arms carved into the shapes of snarling, demonic beasts.

And lounging on it, as if she owned the place, was a woman.

An impossibly, sinfully beautiful redhead, dressed in a stylish, form-fitting dress of the deepest crimson. She was like a modern Hollywood actress thrown into an old black-and-white film, providing a shocking slash of vibrant color against the surrounding monochrome.

She was idly filing her long, rather sharp nails with an emery board, the soft, rhythmic shhhk, shhhk, shhhk the only sound in the vast hall. She looked up as he entered, her eyes the color of molten gold, and they held a playful, predatory fire. A slow, deeply amused smile spread across her perfect, ruby-red lips.

"And there he is!" she exclaimed, her peppy, upbeat voice echoing in the vast, dusty hall. "The man of the hour!" She set her nail file aside with a delicate, deliberate motion and swung her legs over the arm of the throne, her posture a picture of relaxed, insolent power. She looked him up and down, a slow, appraising, and surprisingly appreciative gaze that took in his muddy shoes, his grass-stained suit, and his bewildered expression.

A genuine-sounding, throaty chuckle escaped her lips.

"A little muddy, I see, but hey — you made it in one piece, and that's what counts! I do like a man with persistence!"

She uncoiled from the throne with a fluid, feline grace and sauntered down the steps of the dais, her crimson dress clinging to every curve.

"Welcome to the Vespertine March, Baron Vance! As you can see, the property is a bit of a fixer-upper — but it's nothing a bit of elbow grease and… investment wouldn't fix. The place has potential!"

She stopped just in front of him, close enough that he could smell her perfume—a heady, exotic scent of night-blooming orchids and something else — something dark and musky that made the hairs on his arms, and… certain other things, stand up. His throat, which had already been parched even in the woods, suddenly felt as dry as desert sand.

He tried to muster the commanding presence he once had in a courtroom, but the words caught in his throat.

"Who... who are you?" he managed to croak out, the question sounding like a pathetic squeak in the vast hall.

Her smile widened, becoming even more dazzling. More predatory. She seemed delighted by his flustered state.

"Straight to business, then? Oooh, I like that." She extended a hand, her long, crimson-tipped nails looking like freshly painted claws.

"My name is Vionica. But please," her voice dropped to a low, conspiratorial purr, "my friends call me Vi! And I have a feeling we are soon going to become very, very close friends."

She took his hand, her grip surprisingly firm, her skin impossibly soft and warm to the touch. A jolt of pure electricity — of a dizzying, intoxicating energy — shot up his arm.

"As for my role here? Well… think of me as your personal concierge, Baron Vance," she continued, her thumb tracing a slow, deliberate circle on the back of his hand. "I'm here to help you live the good life — and to unlock the full potential of your new acquisition! We have some amazing service and upgrade packages I think you're going to adore. All optional, of course… For now."

She gave him a final, playful wink, releasing his hand but not his gaze.

The tingly, electric feeling in his arm remained.
_______________________________________________

AN: Guys, if you like the story and have an RR account, could you do me a HUGE favor and please rate it https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/138703/how-i-became-a-baron-in-a-fantasy-world ?

It would really help me out!

 

[Superstes]

Vionica watched Cornelius with predatory delight, her full lips curving into a pout that was equal parts invitation and mockery. "Oh, sweetie," she cooed, her voice a silken caress that echoed softly off the vaulted ceiling, "don't just stand there looking like a deer in the headlights. I know it can be overwhelming — new world, new title, new... me." She batted her long lashes, leaning in just close enough for him to feel the warmth radiating from her skin, a stark contrast to the room's bone-deep cold.

"But trust me, darling, you've landed in the lap of luxury! Or should I say... my lap?"

Cornelius swallowed hard, the dry rasp in his throat amplified by the oppressive silence. He straightened his grass-stained suit jacket, the fabric rough and damp against his fingers, clinging stubbornly like a second skin. The faint metallic tang of fear coated his tongue as he forced composure.

"Let's try this one more time. Who exactly are you?" he repeated, his voice echoing faintly, steadier now but laced with the gravel of exhaustion. "And what do you mean by 'concierge'? If this is some five-star resort, I must say that the service is terrible."

Vionica threw her head back and laughed — a rich, throaty cascade that bounced off the stone walls like crystal shattering on marble, filling the vast space with vibrant life. "Oh, I love a man who has a sense of humor. You'd fit right in with our team!"

She sauntered around him like a cat around a cornered mouse, her heels click-clacking sharply against the floor like the tick of a seductive metronome, her hips swaying with exaggerated allure. She trailed a finger lightly down his back, her touch electric, sending sparks — perhaps in a very literal sense — dancing along his skin through the fabric.

"As I've already told you, darling, I'm your personal liaison from Aethelred Capital's Special Portfolios and Metaphysical Assets Division. We handle a number of special little treasures for our parent company."

She leaned in, her breath warm and spiced with a dark, musky scent, her eyes locking onto his with playful intensity.

"A little enterprise called…. Hell. You might have heard of us? We're kind of a big deal downstairs."

Cornelius's mind reeled, the room spinning slightly as if the shadows themselves were closing in. The word hung in the air, as ridiculous as it was profound.

Hell.

He had grown up Catholic, a fact his politician father had always found electorally convenient. He'd endured years of Sunday school, sitting on hard wooden pews in a stuffy, incense-choked room, listening to a well-meaning but terrifyingly stern nun named Sister Mary Katherine. He had a vivid memory of her, a woman whose face seemed permanently etched with disappointment, pointing a bony finger at a lurid illustration in their catechism book. It showed bug-eyed, cartoonish demons with pitchforks gleefully tormenting souls in a sea of orange and red flames. Even as a child, the concept of it had seemed absurd, a fairy tale designed to scare children into putting an extra dollar in the collection plate. To his rational, evidence-based mind, Hell was a mere metaphor. A psychological state. A literary device. It wasn't a corporate entity with a "Metaphysical Assets Division" and a Vice President who frequented high-stakes poker games!

And yet…

The torchlight flickered across Vionica's face, highlighting the sharp angles of her cheekbones and the inviting curve of her lips. "Hell? As in the Hell?" he finally managed, his voice a disbelieving croak. "You're telling me I won a poker game… against the Devil?"

"Not the Devil himself, silly — Mr. Ash is more of a… mid-level executive with a flair for drama." She winked, her golden eyes twinkling like stars caught in honey. "But… close enough to feel the heat, I suppose." She fanned herself dramatically, her crimson nails flashing in the light.

"Now, thanks to some pesky celestial red tape —think angelic auditors and inter-planar treaties, it's all terribly tedious, honestly— we can't just waltz in and claim a little gem like the Vespertine March. So, we play through proxies."

She gazed at Cornelius coquettishly.

"Why, that's you, of course, Baron Baby! Unfortunately, given the current… deed restrictions, you are less owner and more... sexy regional manager. With a title and perks that'll make all the lower devils jealous!"

The lawyer in Cornelius, desperate for a foothold of logic, began connecting the dots aloud, processing the impossible facts as if preparing for a new case.

"So... you are telling me that this place, this… Vespertine March, is located in a restricted area, as you put it. Which means your... parent company... can't legally hold the title directly?"

She nodded.

"But when I walked here, the land looked somehow cursed. Blighted. And that implies…." He looked at her, his eyes narrowing as the theory formed. "The previous Baron. He made a deal with you… He put the land up as collateral, didn't he?"

"Spot on, lover!" Vionica beamed, clapping her hands with a sharp, delighted smack that echoed like a gunshot in the quiet. "I knew there was a reason Lord Ash chose you — your mind really is… special."

She spun on her heel, her dress flaring out in a whirl of crimson silk that whispered against the air. "Indeed. As long as that pesky debt's hanging around, the March is our cozy sub-realm under receivership. The land — and everything and everyone in it — is, legally, infernal property. Hence the endless dusk that paints everything in those moody purples and grays, the flowers that snap like hungry little divas, and that delicious undercurrent of despair to everything — it's like the land's throwing a perpetual pity party for itself!" She pouted again, tracing a finger along the throne's carved arm, her skin sizzling softly on contact against the tarnished silver with a faint, metallic hiss.

Cornelius closed his eyes, the final, terrible piece of the puzzle locking into place.

"And when I signed my name to that deed," he said, his voice flat and dead, "I didn't just accept the title of Baron. I accepted the debt too. I'm legally bound to the terms of the original agreement."

"Bingo!" Vionica confirmed, her voice dripping with cheerful, merciless validation. "What a towering intellect. No wonder you got paid the big bucks!"

A cold fire ignited in his chest. A part of him, the part that had been beaten down and betrayed, wanted to collapse. But another part, the part that had clawed its way to the top of the most competitive legal field on Earth, refused.

Let's think of this rationally. I am not a victim, he thought, a familiar, cold resolve washing over him. I am a party to a contract. And no contract is airtight.

Cornelius paced, his footsteps thudding dully on the black marble, each step sending vibrations up his legs. "Then show me the original contract! Terms, clauses, principal, interest — I want to review everything."

Vionica's grin turned wicked, her teeth flashing white in the dim light. With a theatrical snap of her fingers — accompanied by a faint crackle like static electricity — a thick, 9-foot-long scroll appeared on top of the throne and unfurled dramatically, the parchment crackling like dry leaves underfoot, its edges glowing with an eerie, blood-red sheen.

"Oh, anything for you, handsome! But, you should know — this is not about paying back boring old gold. No amount of mere material wealth will help you here. Oh no, we're talking about a metaphysical debt — the aura and destiny of the Barony itself."

She gestured grandly at the gloomy hall, her crimson nails like slashes of blood against the gray air.

"The original Baron, a rather ambitious fellow named Lord Alaric, took out a… line of credit with us. A karmic loan, if you will. He borrowed a vast amount of personal luck and prosperity…"

Vionica stretched her hand dramatically into the air, before making a fist.

"… against the future Misery of the land itself. And indeed, he got his money's worth. The man lived a spectacular life — conquering his enemies, marrying a beautiful princess, having gorgeous and strong children… the works! Stars and Stones, he never even had a bad hair day! A real winner, that one."

She rolled her eyes.

"But, one day, there came a time to pay up. Every ounce of his good fortune was a debit against the soul of the Vespertine March itself! He siphoned the very joy from the soil to fuel his own success. Now his soul is being entertained by us, of course — but the bill has yet to be settled. And the interest never stopped accumulating."

She began to pace dramatically.

"This entire land is now wallowing in Misery, Cornelius. Misery as thick as fog rolling off a swamp. To settle the debt, you must balance the scales. Flip the land's condition. Once the very air here sings with genuine joy, prosperity, and happiness, just as it once had, then — and only then — will the account be settled."

"…and if I fail?" Cornelius pressed, his voice cutting through the air like a knife, the contract scroll's ancient ink seeming to physically writhe under his gaze.

Vionica glided towards him once again, her movements fluid and hypnotic. She stopped just before him, her golden eyes locking onto his.

"You've got one year, stud," she said, her voice dropping to a low, intimate purr. "One year as the absolute ruler of this land. One year during which everyone and everything in the Vespertine March must obey you. Every servant shall heed your commands. Every natural resource shall be at your disposal. However… should you fail to bring joy and prosperity back to this holding?"

She paused dramatically, her lips curving into a slow, wicked smile.

"Why, then the land simply stays our gloomy playground, awaiting the next Baron to try his luck! And, as for you? Oh, darling, your soul will be forfeit, of course! A small processing fee for this opportunity of a lifetime." She blew a kiss, her lips pursing with exaggerated flair, the gesture sending a phantom warmth across Cornelius' cheek.

"But why sweat the small stuff? I have an alternative proposition for you, my lord — and one I think you might be very interested to hear!"

"Go on," he said, his voice a low growl, his mind racing, already analyzing, searching for the angle, the weakness, the loophole.

Vionica's smile turned from playful to something more serious, more direct. She placed a hand on his shoulder, her touch a brand of heat against the fine wool of his suit. "Why chase an impossible joy when misery is so much easier to work with — and so much more rewarding too? My offer is this."

She looked Cornelius straight in the eyes, her golden gaze intense, hypnotic.

"Sign on with us directly. Full-time. Ditch that silly little deadline. Your soul would still be forfeit of course, but there is no rule that says you can't enjoy the experience." She leaned in, her voice a conspiratorial whisper. "Think about it, Cornelius. You're a lawyer. You know a bad deal when you see one. This 'save the kingdom' quest? It's a sucker's bet designed for you to fail — and we both know it. I suppose you could spend the next year struggling, fighting against the very nature of this place, and in the end, you'll be dragged downstairs as just another in a long line of screaming, powerless souls — a slave, just as many predecessors before you."

She paused dramatically.

"Or... you could join the winning team. Embrace the reality of your situation! You're already one of us in spirit; all that's left is the paperwork. We could start you out in a management position on day one!"

She smiled seductively.

"And, as a tiny little signing bonus — you can be Baron here for life! Rule in style, with demonic goodies galore — power that sizzles, luxury that melts in your mouth. And, do you think you know luxury?" she scoffed, a genuine, pitying laugh in her voice. "You've had your fancy suits, your expensive scotch. It's nothing. All of Earth's luxuries, all of its fancy foods, expensive cars and hotels, recreational substances and pleasures of the flesh... all of these are a pale, pathetic shadow of the true pleasures Hell can provide. And, once you've tasted true luxury darling, believe me, you'll never want to live without it."

She ran a hand through his hair before stepping away, playful once more.

"Just think about it, handsome. It would be a win for both of us: I get a nice performance bonus, the Barony continues to crank out misery for the home office, and you can be sipping cocktails in paradise!"

She paused, frowning theatrically.

"Well, OK, technically speaking you'll be sipping cocktails in hell, but that's just semantics, right? Po-tay-toe, po-ta-to."

She stepped closer again, her body heat enveloping Cornelius like a sultry fog, her voice dropping to a husky whisper. "You've already kissed your old Earth life goodbye, and your soul will join us regardless of what you do. Why shouldn't you try to make the best of things? For once, why not be on the winning side?"

Her words struck a nerve, a raw, festering wound deep within.

Why not be on the winning side indeed?

For a dizzying moment that stretched to a near-eternity, the offer seemed intoxicating. Cornelius' entire life had been a masterclass in being on the losing side of rigged games. He remembered standing in that courtroom, watching Steve Blackwood — his former boss and mentor — give the performance of his life on the witness stand. Blackwood, a man who had once praised his ruthlessness, who had called him a "killer" at the negotiating table, now looked at the jury with the wide, innocent eyes of a wronged man, his voice trembling with manufactured sincerity as he methodically, expertly, pinned every last crime on his brilliant, loyal subordinate.

Blackwood had been on the winning side.

He remembered the click of the phone as his father, the aspiring congressman, hung up on him. The sound was so small, so final. "A criminal son is a political liability I cannot afford," he'd said, his voice not angry, but cold and flat — the voice of a man making a calculated business decision.

His father had always been on the winning side.

And Amelia. He remembered her standing in the sterile, white-on-white minimalism of the apartment, her face a mask of cool, pragmatic sympathy. "It's about the optics, Cor," she'd said, her voice devoid of the warmth he had once loved. "My career, my social standing... I can't be tied to this."

Amelia had chosen the winning side too.

All of them, every single one, had made a calculated choice to sever him from their lives, to sacrifice him for their own benefit. They had all joined the winning team, and done so without an ounce of hesitation.

And what had his loyalty, his integrity, his naive belief in the system gotten him? A prison sentence, a mountain of debt, and a one-way ticket to this cursed, forgotten corner of reality.

Vionica was right, he realized. He had already lost everything. Why not make the most of it?

For a moment, he let himself imagine it: the power, the luxury, the sweet, intoxicating taste of finally — finally — being the one who couldn't lose. The temptation was a physical thing, a warm, seductive poison spreading through his veins.

But then, through the haze of that temptation, the lawyer in him stirred. The cold, analytical part of his brain, the part that had been trained for years to deconstruct arguments, to find the weakness in a flawless-looking case, to always disbelieve offers that appeared too good to be true, began to whir to life.

He looked at Vionica, at her dazzling smile, at her eager, predatory eyes.

And he recognized the tactic.

This was a high-pressure sales pitch — the same strategy he'd seen a thousand times in hostile takeovers and settlement negotiations. You create a false dichotomy: the "sucker's bet" versus the "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." You minimize the costs while exaggerating the benefits. You appeal to emotion, to pride, to despair… anything to make the target forget to read the fine print.

And, perhaps most importantly, you only try to sell that hard when you're truly desperate.

The realization hit him with the force of a physical blow. A party in a position of absolute strength can dictate the terms. They don't need to seduce. They don't need to flatter. They don't need to sell.

But Vionica was selling.

Hard.

She was acting like a desperate used car salesman trying to convince a customer to buy a lemon before he had a chance to look under the hood.

Why?

Why try so hard to get him to take the "easy way out" if his failure was already a foregone conclusion? If the quest to save the Barony was truly such a "sucker's bet," she would simply smile, wish him luck, and wait for the clock to run out -- or make a soft pitch and wait for him to reach out to her.

Unless...

Unless the "sucker's bet" wasn't the quest.

Unless she wasn't afraid he would fail.

She was afraid he would succeed.

The realization ignited a spark of pure, cold fury in the ashes of his despair. This wasn't a negotiation. It was a con. Just another powerful, smiling entity trying to manipulate him, to play him for a fool, to trick him into signing away his last and only asset because they thought he was too broken, too stupid, too desperate to see the trap. The same rage he had felt in the courtroom, the same impotent fury from his father's phone call, the same bitter resentment from Amelia's rejection — it all coalesced into a single, white-hot point of defiant clarity.

Righteous anger boiled in Cornelius's chest, hot and sharp like steam from a kettle.

"How can a one-sided agreement like that possibly be enforceable? I do not believe it!"

Vionica's laughter exploded like fireworks, her body shaking with mirth as she tossed her red hair, the strands catching the light like flames. "Oh, you are so naive, cutie. We don't use courts to interpret and enforce little deals like these. Our contracts… are magically binding, and self-executing."

She blew another kiss, her form dissolving into swirling crimson mist that swirled around him like a teasing caress, carrying her scent before dissolving in the air. Her disembodied voice continued to echo in the chamber.

"Mull it over, darling. I'll be around in case you have questions — just call out my name! I'll be dying to hear from you!"

And with that, she was gone.

The throne room plunged back into heavy silence, broken only by the sporadic crackle of torches and the distant drip of water echoing from some unseen crevice. Cornelius stared at the now empty dais, his skin still tingling from Vionica's touch, fists clenched until his nails bit into his palms.

 

[Superstes]

Cornelius stood alone in the vast throne room, the silence pressing against his eardrums like deep water. The torches guttered in their sconces, their flames dancing and flickering in response to air currents he couldn't feel. What he could feel — still — was the ghostly warmth of Vionica's touch on his skin where she'd patted his cheek.

He looked down.

His reflection stared back at him from the polished surface of the black marble floor, a distorted ghost-image of a man who looked nothing like the confident BigLaw associate he'd been just weeks ago. His suit was ruined —grass-stained, mud-spattered, the fine wool damp and clinging to his frame. His hair, usually meticulously styled, was disheveled. His eyes, reflected in the dark mirror of the floor, looked haunted.

What the hell am I going to do?

The question echoed in his mind, but he already knew the answer. He would do what he'd always done when faced with an impossible problem: gather information. Understand the situation. Assess the assets and liabilities.

He would treat his new predicament like a new case.

He took a breath, squared his shoulders — a gesture that was becoming almost reflexive, a physical manifestation of willpower over panic — and did something that felt utterly absurd. He called out into the empty air, his voice sounding small and thin in the cavernous space.

"Malachi! Get over here! I'd like a tour now, if you don't mind."

His words seemed to hang in the air for a moment, absorbed by the thick, dusty tapestries that lined the walls. Then they faded, swallowed by the oppressive quiet.

For a long moment, nothing happened.

Cornelius stood there, feeling increasingly foolish, wondering if he'd misunderstood how the whole "shadow butler" thing worked. Maybe you had to ring a bell? Perform some kind of ritual? Light a candle and chant his name three times while—

The shadows in the far corner of the throne room began to move.

Not shift or waver the way shadows do in flickering firelight, but move — deliberately, with purpose and intent. They darkened, thickened, coalescing like smoke gathering itself into form. The temperature in the immediate area dropped by what felt like ten degrees. Cornelius could see his breath misting in the suddenly frigid air.

And then Malachi was simply there, effortlessly, as if he'd been standing in that corner the entire time. The ancient butler materialized like a photograph developing in reverse, his form solidifying from shadow into substance. His moth-eaten uniform somehow looked even more threadbare in the uncertain torchlight — the black fabric faded to a charcoal gray in places, the silver buttons tarnished and dull.

But his eyes — watery, pale blue eyes — were alert. And as they studied Cornelius, standing there in his ruined suit in the middle of the empty throne room, something flickered across the butler's features. Something that, on any other face, might have been surprise.

"A… tour, my lord?"

Malachi's voice was like pages of an old book being turned — dry, brittle, a whisper of sound that nevertheless carried clearly through the vast chamber. There was the faintest note of something in his tone. Confusion, perhaps. Or disbelief.

"Yes," Cornelius said, working to keep his voice steady. "A comprehensive one, if you would. I'd like to understand just what I'm working with here. The layout, the condition of the buildings, the resources available. Everything."

The silence that followed stretched for several heartbeats. Malachi simply stared at him, his head tilting slightly to one side with the curious, mechanical precision of a bird examining something unexpected and potentially fascinating.

"How very... refreshing," the butler said at last.

There was something in those two words — a weight, a significance — that made Cornelius pause.

"Refreshing?" he echoed.

"Indeed, my lord! The last three Barons showed no interest whatsoever in such tedious matters." Malachi's expression remained perfectly, inhumanly neutral, but his voice took on the quality of a museum tour guide reciting well-rehearsed facts about unpleasant exhibits. "They had… other priorities."

Despite everything — despite the twin moons, and the impossible world, and the casual revelation that his soul was collateral in a demonic loan agreement — Cornelius felt a flicker of curiosity. A detached, professional interest in understanding the men who'd held this title before him.

"What kind of priorities?" he asked.

"Well, there was Baron Thaddeus — the gentleman who held the title immediately before you. He spent most of his tenure hunting!"

The word hung in the air for a moment. Cornelius felt a small, fragile hope kindle in his chest. Perhaps the man had been a sportsman. Someone who'd at least engaged with the land, understood its ecosystems, maybe even managed its wildlife populations responsibly!

"Hunting?" he asked, trying to keep that irrational hope from bleeding into his voice. "What did he hunt?"

"The villagers, my lord."

The hope died instantly, as Cornelius felt his stomach drop, a cold, sick feeling spreading through his gut.

"Ah."

"Indeed." Malachi continued in that same perfectly neutral, almost conversational tone, as if he were discussing nothing more controversial than the weather or a preference in tea.

"He found it greatly entertaining. Made quite a sport of it, really! He would give his chosen quarry a head start — usually an hour at sunset — and then release the hounds. He kept score in a ledger in his study. Five points for a clean kill. Ten points if he managed to bring them down alive. A negative fifteen if they made it past dawn. He subtracted the fifteen points on only three occasions. The hounds were quite efficient, you see."

Cornelius stared at the butler, searching desperately for any hint of dark humor, any suggestion that this was some kind of elaborate hazing ritual, some macabre joke played on new Barons to test their mettle.

But Malachi's weathered face remained a mask of perfect, professional neutrality. The watery blue eyes held no mirth; neither horror nor judgment — only the weary acceptance of someone who had witnessed far too much to be shocked by anything anymore.

"The villagers learned quickly to be indoors before dusk," Malachi continued, as if compelled to finish the account. "Those who were not... well. The hounds had to be fed regardless. Waste not, want not, as Baron Thaddeus was fond of saying."

"Jesus Christ!" Cornelius breathed.

Malachi paused, his head tilting slightly. "Oh, that is the name of a God from your world, yes? In all fairness, Baron Thaddeus never claimed to be the religious type. He was quite upfront about his spiritual affiliations — or, rather, lack thereof."

Cornelius felt a hysterical laugh bubbling up in his throat and ruthlessly suppressed it. This was insane! He was standing in a cursed castle in another dimension, learning about his predecessor's hobby of hunting peasants, from a butler who travels through literal shadows.

Get it together, Vance. You need information. You need to understand what you're dealing with.

"And… the Baron before Thaddeus?" he asked, his voice sounding remarkably steady to his own ears.

"Ah. That would be Baron Willem."

The faintest hint of something that might have been distaste crossed Malachi's features — a brief tightening around the eyes, a slight downturn at the corners of his thin-lipped mouth. It was gone in an instant, but Cornelius had spent years reading micro-expressions in hostile witnesses. He'd seen it.

"Baron Willem," Malachi continued, "was more… sedentary… in his inclinations. He preferred to feast. And to engage in… other carnal pursuits. Continuously. For months at a time. The kitchens were kept in constant operation, preparing elaborate seven-course meals every four hours, around the clock. Meanwhile, the villages outside were struck by famine due to a blight that had damaged the grain harvest. The granaries were requisitioned entirely for the Keep, you understand. The people starved while Baron Willem dined on roasted peacock and wine-poached pears."

The butler's voice remained perfectly level, but Cornelius thought he detected something underneath the words. Anger, perhaps. Or disgust.

"And, as for the other pursuits," Malachi continued, "Baron Willem maintained a — stable, I believe would be the polite term — of… companions. Servants from the villages, primarily, though he occasionally imported more exotic acquisitions from the neighboring kingdoms. The bedchambers required cleaning twice daily."

Malachi paused, his gaze distant, as if looking at something far away or long ago.

"Baron Willem was with us for all of approximately eight months before he choked to death on a quail bone during one of his feasts. No one attempted to dislodge it. The servants simply... watched. Then, they reported the death to me, and I attended to the proper arrangements."

The image Malachi's words painted was visceral and horrifying. Cornelius could almost see it: the bloated Baron clutching at his throat, his face turning purple, while the exhausted, brutalized servants stood in a silent circle and simply waited for it to be over.

He couldn't find it in himself to feel sorry for the man.

"And before this… Willem?" he asked, though part of him wasn't sure he wanted to know.

Malachi nodded. "Baron Erasmus."

This time, something that was definitely interest — perhaps even a perverse sort of academic curiosity — flickered across Malachi's features.

"Now, Baron Erasmus was unique among the recent title-holders. He lasted a mere three weeks — oh, but what memorable weeks they were!" The butler's tone became almost conversational, as if he were recounting a particularly interesting anecdote at a dinner party.

"Erasmus arrived here with grand ambitions, you see. He had studied thaumaturgy — the theoretical magical arts — at some dubious academy in the southern kingdoms. He believed he could use the Keep's resources, particularly the Lady Seraphina's alchemical equipment and libraries, to achieve something extraordinary."

"What did he try to do?"

Malachi shrugged.

"Some kind of transcendence, my lord? Or so his notes claimed. He wished to transform himself into something "beyond human." A perfected form. An ideal existence freed from the limitations of mortal flesh."

Malachi's expression remained neutral, but there was something in his voice — a dry, sardonic note. "His execution, however, was... suboptimal."

"Suboptimal?" Cornelius repeated flatly.

"Indeed, my Lord! The ritual required a number of rare components — most of which I suspect he did not actually possess, despite his assurances to the contrary. He also required an intricate binding circle and the proper lunar alignments, neither of which he adequately prepared."

Malachi paused, as if considering how best to phrase the next part.

"Oh, the transformation most certainly did occur, my Lord. It simply… did not occur in the manner Baron Erasmus had intended."

"What did he turn into?" Cornelius asked with dread, though he was quite certain he wouldn't like the answer.

"We… don't actually know -- but his new form was certainly… non-standard. Walking through doorways became problematic. As did sleeping. And eating. And... maintaining a coherent sense of spatial orientation."

Malachi's voice remained perfectly calm, but Cornelius felt a chill run down his spine that had nothing to do with the cold air.

"He spent his remaining days — we believe it was days, though time seemed to become somewhat negotiable in his presence — screaming. A most distressing sound, I assure you."

"You said his 'remaining days,'" Cornelius said, seizing on the past tense. "So he's...?"

"We aren't entirely certain of that either, my Lord. He crawled away into the walls at some point, and we never found his corpse — though, some servants still heard the scratching in the walls for quite some time after the screams stopped."

Malachi's expression became thoughtful. "But it's been quiet lately. For several months now! I do hold out hope that he finally expired." The butler paused, then added with perfect, deadpan sincerity. "…Though, I confess, I'm uncertain whether death, in the traditional sense, is a meaningful concept for… whatever he became."

Cornelius stared at the ancient butler, trying to process the casual horror of what he'd just heard.

A man who'd hunted villagers for sport.

A man who'd feasted and raped while people starved.

A man who'd transformed himself into some kind of nightmare creature that might still be alive — in a sense — somewhere in the walls of the castle.

These were his predecessors? These were the men who'd held the title of Baron of the Vespertine March before him? The bar, he reflected with grim humor, was set remarkably low.

"Right," he said, his voice sounding remarkably calm in his own ears. "Well. I promise to be considerably more boring in my activities."

"...That would be most appreciated, my lord."

Something in the way Malachi said it — a slight softening in that dry, papery voice — suggested genuine relief.

The butler turned with surprising grace, his movements fluid despite his apparent age. "Shall we begin the tour, then? I should warn you, my Lord, that the Keep is... extensive. And not all of it is in what one might call habitable condition."

"I'd be surprised if it were," Cornelius said, falling into step beside the shadow-butler. "Given the track record you just described."

"Quite so, my Lord. Quite so."

 

[Superstes]

They began to walk, their footsteps echoing in the vast throne room — Cornelius's expensive Italian leather shoes making wet, squelching sounds against the black marble (the mud and dew from the meadow and forest still hadn't completely dried), while Malachi's feet made no sound whatsoever, as if his feet were gliding an inch above the floor rather than walking on it.

And perhaps, for all Cornelius knew, they were.

The tour began in earnest, and with each new room, each new corridor, each new wing of the castle, Cornelius began to understand the true scale of what he'd inherited.

Glimmerfall Castle… was enormous.

It was a sprawling complex of interconnected buildings, towers, courtyards, and keeps that had clearly been built, rebuilt, expanded, and modified over centuries by a succession of architects with wildly different ideas about aesthetics, functionality, and… the proper use of load-bearing walls.

The castle was a study in contrasts — a monument to faded glory and systematic neglect, where pockets of palatial grandeur survived like islands in what was otherwise an ocean of decay.

They left the throne room through a massive archway carved with intricate reliefs of ancient battles — warriors in elaborate armor locked in combat with creatures that Cornelius couldn't quite identify, their forms blending features of dragons, demons, or, perhaps, things that predated both. The stone was worn smooth in places by centuries of hands trailing along its surface, the details softened by time until the warriors and monsters seemed to merge into one another, locked in an eternal struggle where victory and defeat had become indistinguishable.

The main corridor beyond was wide enough to drive a small car through, its vaulted ceiling soaring at least twenty feet above their heads. Once, it must have looked magnificent. Cornelius could see traces of frescoes on the walls — faded paintings depicting pastoral scenes, courtly life, mythical beasts — but they were nearly obscured by water damage, great dark stains spreading across the plaster like bruises on ancient skin. In some places, the plaster had fallen away entirely, revealing the rough stone beneath.

"The Grand Gallery," Malachi announced, his voice echoing in the vast space. "Originally commissioned by Baroness Isadora the Third in the year 447 by the local calendar. She was quite fond of art, you see. The frescoes were painted by a master from the southern kingdoms — a famous artist named Therion, if memory serves. He is said to have spent thirty years on them; with the Baroness visiting daily to observe his progress."

"What happened to it?" Cornelius asked, gesturing at the water damage.

"The roof," Malachi said simply. "Baron Willem ordered sections of the mythril-plated roofing in "nonessential" areas stripped and sold to fund his... activities. The rain has been getting in for quite a few months now. I've done what I can to place buckets and redirect the worst of the flows — but I am, alas, only one butler."

They passed through a series of smaller chambers — sitting rooms, parlors, what might have once been a music room judging by the rotted remains of what looked like a harpsichord in one corner. Each room told the same story: grandeur abandoned, beauty left to rot, the slow victory of entropy over elegance.

But it was when they reached the Grand Ballroom that Cornelius truly began to understand the scope of the tragedy.

The doors to the ballroom were magnificent even in their decrepitude — massive panels of dark wood, each one carved with elaborate scenes of celebration and festivity. Dancing figures. Musicians. Tables laden with food and drink. The carvings were so detailed that Cornelius could make out individual expressions on the tiny wooden faces, could see the folds in their clothing and the instruments in their hands.

Malachi placed one pale, long-fingered hand on the door and pushed. The hinges groaned in protest, a sound like a giant waking from troubled sleep, and the doors swung slowly inward.

The ballroom beyond took Cornelius's breath away.

It was a space designed for joy, for celebration, for grand occasions and glittering parties. The floor was parquet, an intricate pattern of different-colored woods forming geometric designs that spiraled out from the center of the room like frozen ripples on a pond.

Or… at least, they had been.

Now the wood was warped and buckled, the carefully fitted pieces separating from one another, creating gaps and ridges across the surface.

The walls were covered in more frescoes — these ones better preserved than those in the gallery, protected by the sheer height of the room from the worst of the water damage. They depicted celestial scenes: gods and goddesses reclining on clouds, musicians playing golden instruments, dancers frozen in eternal revelry. The colors were even still vibrant in places — brilliant blues and golds, deep crimsons and emerald greens — but they were fading, the figures becoming ghostly, transparent, as if they were slowly disappearing back into the walls from which they'd been born.

Massive marble columns supported the vaulted ceiling, each one carved with elaborate sculptures — masterful stonework that must have taken years to complete.

And above it all, there was the ceiling itself: a massive dome painted with a mural of the night sky, constellations picked out in platinum and gold leaf that still caught the light from Cornelius's torch and glimmered faintly, like distant stars.

It should have been breathtaking. And it was — but for all the wrong reasons.

Because in the far corner, a section of that magnificent ceiling had collapsed entirely. A gaping wound in the dome showed the actual night sky above, the twin moons visible through the hole, their light spilling down to illuminate the pile of rubble and shattered plaster below.

The debris had never even been cleared. It lay in a massive heap, chunks of painted plaster showing fragments of constellations, pieces of carved marble that had once been part of the supporting structure all jumbled together like the ruins of some ancient, fallen civilization.

And growing from that rubble, fed by the rain that poured through the open ceiling, was a small forest of luminous mushrooms: pale, ghostly things that glowed with a faint phosphorescence in the moonlit shadows.

"The last ball held here was approximately ninety years ago," Malachi said, his dry voice echoing in the cavernous chamber. "Baroness Adelaide — an accomplished demonologist and summoner in her own right — commissioned it to celebrate her daughter's betrothal to a prince from the Eastern lands. It was to be the event of the century! She spared no expense. There were musicians from five kingdoms, exotic foods, rare wines, flowers imported at tremendous cost, elaborate decorations. More than two thousand guests were in attendance, representing the finest noble families in all the realms."

He paused, his watery blue eyes distant, as if seeing that night play out in his memory.

"What happened?" Cornelius asked in morbid curiosity.

"The ceiling collapsed during the second waltz. A structural failure in the supporting beams, allegedly weakened by moisture and age — though some suspected deliberate sabotage. Seventeen deaths. Thirty-four injuries. The prince survived, though his intended bride did not. He returned to his kingdom the following day and declared the engagement null and void. Baroness Adelaide never recovered from the loss. She locked herself in her chambers and refused all visitors. She died three months later. Some said from grief. Others that she was poisoned by her successor."

Malachi's gaze shifted to the pile of rubble.

"The debris was never cleared. There seemed little point! No one wanted to hold celebrations anymore."

Cornelius stared at the ruins, at the ghostly mushrooms growing from the shattered dreams of a grand celebration, and felt a weight settling on his shoulders. This wasn't just neglect. This was accumulated sorrow. Centuries of it, layer upon layer, like sediment slowly burying something that had once been beautiful.

They moved on.

The library was next — and if the state of the ballroom had been merely tragic, then the library was downright criminal.

It was a massive, five-story chamber with a vaulted, cathedral-like ceiling supported by graceful flying buttresses of carved stone. The walls were lined with built-in shelves from floor to ceiling, the dark wood gleaming faintly even under decades of dust. Winding spiral staircases of wrought iron connected the levels, their railings worked into elaborate patterns of vines and leaves. Massive stain-glass windows — miraculously still intact — were beginning to let in the light of dawn, casting long rectangles of pale, rainbow-colored illumination across the floor.

Once, this room had held knowledge. Wisdom. The accumulated learning of generations.

Now, most of the shelves… were empty.

Great gaps yawned like missing teeth in an old man's smile, the wood a bit lighter where books had once sat. And what remained was almost worse than nothing: mildewed, rotting volumes, their leather bindings cracked and peeling, their pages stuck together in solid blocks of decomposed paper. The smell was overwhelming — a thick, organic stench of decay that made Cornelius's eyes water.

"Baron Willem sold off most of the collection to fund his lifestyle," Malachi said, and Cornelius could hear the faintest edge of anger in the butler's carefully neutral voice. "Rare manuscripts, illuminated texts, grimoires of significant power. All went to the highest bidder. What remains here are primarily agricultural treatises…"

Cornelius spied the title on a particularly large decaying volume. Advanced Crop Rotation for Temperate Climates. The one next to is boldly proclaimed that it was A Comprehensive Guide to Sheep Husbandry.

"…and a surprisingly large collection of devotional texts, which apparently no one wished to purchase. There is also," and here the faintest hint of what might have been amusement crept into Malachi's voice, "a complete collection of Baroness Isadora's erotic poetry in the restricted section behind the false wall on the second floor, though I would not recommend it unless Your Lordship has a particular tolerance for overwrought metaphor, questionable structure, and rather… anatomically improbable scenarios involving shepherds and various woodland creatures."

Despite everything, Cornelius felt a startled laugh escape his lips — a short, sharp bark of genuine amusement that echoed strangely in the empty library. Malachi's expression didn't change, but Cornelius thought he saw the faintest twitch at the corner of the butler's thin lips. Something that, on another face, might have been a smile.

They continued through the castle.

The conservatory was next: it was a massive glass structure attached to the eastern wing, its iron-framed walls and ceiling designed to let in maximum sunlight. It should have been a jungle of exotic plants, a riot of color and life.

Instead, it was a graveyard.

The glass was cracked in places, several panes missing entirely, letting in the cold early morning air. The beds that had once held lush vegetation now contained only skeletal remains — dried stems and branches reaching toward the ruined ceiling like the fingers of the damned, frozen in their final plea for mercy. The air smelled of old earth and decay.

"Baron Thaddeus found maintaining the plants tedious," Malachi explained in open disgust. "He redirected the staff assigned to the conservatory to the kennels. For his hounds."

They passed through the kitchens — vast, well-organized spaces that could have served a household of hundreds. Enormous ovens built into the walls stood cold and dark, their interiors coated with months of accumulated grease and ash. Preparation tables — massive slabs of scarred wood — stood empty save for dust and the evidence of mice or other small creatures that had made homes in the shadows. Iron pots and copper kettles hung from racks on the ceiling, tarnished and dull.

But despite the abandonment, despite the decay, the bones of the kitchen were more than sound. The ovens were built into the stone walls themselves — they would still function. The tables, though scarred and dirty, were solid. The copper cookware could be cleaned. Polished.

Restored.

"This place has potential," Cornelius murmured, running his hand along one of the preparation tables, his fingers coming away gray with dust. "The infrastructure is still here. With work, with investment, this place could be great again. The bones are good."

"The bones, my lord," Malachi said, his voice soft, "are all we have left."

And for the first time, Cornelius detected something unmistakable in the ancient butler's tone: profound, bone-deep sadness.

They moved through storage rooms and pantries, most of them bare. Through servants' quarters — small, cramped cells that must have housed dozens of staff once, now mostly empty and cold. Through a chapel with beautiful stained-glass windows depicting scenes from some mythology Cornelius didn't recognize, the colored light casting mournful shadows across empty pews.

The sleeping quarters varied wildly in condition. Some were little more than shells, the furniture long since removed or rotted away, leaving only dark impressions on moldering carpets where beds and wardrobes had once stood. Others — particularly what Malachi identified as the Baron's primary suite and several guest chambers — were in a surprisingly good condition.

"We try to keep the essential rooms in working order," Malachi explained as he led Cornelius through a surprisingly well-maintained bedroom suite. The bed was made with fresh linens (fresh by the castle's standards, anyway — the sheets looked clean but felt slightly damp to the touch, as if the humidity in the castle prevented anything from drying completely). The furniture was dusted. A fire was even laid in the fireplace, ready to be lit. "It's what we do, my lord. It's what we've always done. We maintain. We preserve. We wait for a Baron who might actually care enough to do something with what remains."

The subtext was clear: We've been waiting a very long time.

It was when they reached the workshop spaces that Cornelius's interest truly sparked.

The room was unlike anything he'd ever seen. It was a sprawling, spherical chamber at least three stories in height, with windows on all sides letting in the light of the early morning sun. The walls were lined with shelves containing hundreds — no, thousands — of bottles, vials, jars, and containers of every conceivable size and shape. Each one was carefully labeled in a neat, precise hand, the ink slightly faded but still legible: Nightshade Extract, Powdered Moonstone, Essence of Morning Dew (Collected First Dawn of Spring '68), Dragon's Breath Residue (Handle With Extreme Caution).

The center of the room was dominated by a massive workbench covered in elaborate glassware — complex arrangements of alembics, retorts, condensers, and distillation columns connected by a bewildering array of glass tubing. Solutions bubbled gently in several containers, heated by what appeared to be magical flames that burned without fuel, giving off a soft, steady aquamarine light. The air smelled of strange things: acrid chemicals and dried herbs, something floral and sweet underneath, and something else — something sharp and almost metallic that made the inside of Cornelius's nose tingle.

Unlike most of the castle, this room felt alive.

Bottles glowed softly with internal luminescence — pale blue, soft green, warm amber. The bubbling solutions sent small puffs of colored vapor up the glass tubes, creating miniature clouds that dispersed near the ceiling. The magical flames cast dancing shadows across the walls, making the bottles seem to shift and move in the peripheral vision.

"The laboratory has been in near-continuous operation for close to two centuries," Malachi said, his voice holding a note of something that might have been pride. "It is maintained by the Lady Seraphina. She is... particular… about its condition."

"Lady Seraphina?" Cornelius repeated, filing the name away.

"Indeed, my Lord. You will meet her shortly."

Immediately adjacent to the laboratory was a ritual chamber, and, where the laboratory had been merely impressive, the ritual space was more unsettling. It was a perfectly circular space, carved from a single piece of black stone that reflected the torchlight like polished glass. The walls were covered — covered — in elaborate sigils and magical formulae, carved directly into the stone and then inlaid with what looked like glowing silver. The patterns were impossibly complex, spiraling and interconnecting in ways that made Cornelius's eyes hurt if he tried to follow them for too long. They seemed to shift when he wasn't looking directly at them, as if the geometry itself refused to remain static.

The floor was inlaid with more patterns: massive circles within circles, geometric shapes that seemed to exist in more than two dimensions, spiraling paths that led the eye inward to the center of the room where a simple stone altar stood.

Upon that altar lay a massive grimoire, easily three feet tall and two feet wide, bound in what Cornelius sincerely hoped was not human leather. It lay open, its pages covered in cramped, spidery script that seemed to writhe and move in the torchlight. As Cornelius watched, a word slowly writhed itself out of position and rearranged itself on the page, the letters sliding into an entirely new configuration like living things.

He took an involuntary step backward.

"I would strongly advise against touching anything in this room, my lord," Malachi said, his tone carrying an undercurrent of genuine warning. "The Lady Seraphina has placed certain... safeguards. For the protection of those who might otherwise be tempted to meddle with forces they do not understand."

"What kind of safeguards?" Cornelius asked, unable to tear his eyes from the shifting text in the grimoire.

"The kind that are both immediate and permanent, my lord. Lord Erasmus ignored similar warnings regarding a different ritual space. You've already heard tale of how that concluded."

Cornelius needed no further discouragement. He backed out of the ritual chamber carefully, making sure not to touch anything. Not even the doorframe.

They continued the tour through many more rooms, more chambers, more evidence of faded glory and systematic neglect. But it was when they began to descend — taking a narrow stone staircase that spiraled down and down, the air growing progressively colder and damper with each step, the walls weeping moisture that gleamed in the torchlight — that Cornelius felt a growing sense of unease.

"This passage leads to the lower levels, my lord," Malachi announced as they reached the bottom of the stairs. "The foundations of the Keep. And… the dungeon."

 

[Superstes]

AN. Holiday Schedule: I'm off the Week of Thanksgiving and the Weeks of Christmas and New Year.
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The contrast was immediate and jarring.

Where the rest of the castle had been a study in neglect and decay, the dungeon was… pristine.

The stone walls were clean, fitted so perfectly that Cornelius couldn't slide a knife blade between them. The floor, rather than being covered in the grime and filth of centuries, was swept smooth, the flagstones scrubbed until they were nearly polished. Fresh torches burned in sconces along the walls, their flames steady and bright, casting warm, almost cheerful light across the space.

The air was cold, yes — the kind of bone-deep cold that came from being underground, insulated from any source of warmth — but it was so clean! It smelled faintly of metal and oil and something else, something sharp and chemical that Cornelius couldn't quite identify.

Cells lined both sides of the main corridor, their iron bars gleaming with fresh oil, the locks well-maintained and clearly functional. Some of the cells were small, barely large enough for a person to lie down. Others were larger, and were capable of holding multiple prisoners. All of them were empty.

All except one.

But it was the equipment that made Cornelius's blood run cold.

The dungeon wasn't just well-maintained, he realized -- it was curated. Organized with the meticulous care of a master craftsman's workshop. All along the far wall hung an array of implements that would have made a medieval inquisitor weep with joy. They were arranged by size and function, each one hanging from its own dedicated hook, carefully spaced, almost artfully displayed.

There were simple tools: iron shackles in various sizes, chains with links so heavy they'd be impossible to break, locks that gleamed like jewels. Small iron cages — too small to comfortably sit or stretch out — made for locking subjects in painful stress positions.

And there were the more… specialized instruments: canes and whips of every size, shape, and description; thumbscrews with adjustment mechanisms so precise they could crush bone by degrees; boot-crushers lined with tiny spikes that would slowly, incrementally, destroy the bones of the foot; tongue-tearers with serrated edges; branks — iron masks designed to silence and humiliate; strange pear-shaped devices whose function Cornelius preferred not to contemplate…

In one corner stood an iron maiden, its door open to reveal a forest of spikes within, each one positioned with anatomical precision to cause maximum pain while avoiding immediate death. The hinges were well-oiled; the spikes sharp.

In another corner, dominating the space like a monument to suffering, was a stretching rack. It was a work of art in its own twisted, horrifying way: the wooden frame was carved from dark, heavy wood and polished to a high sheen. The leather straps were supple and looked recently treated. The crank mechanism that would slowly pull the victim's limbs from their sockets was greased up and clearly functional — Cornelius could see the gleam of fresh lubrication on the metal gears.

Braziers stood ready, filled with hot coals, with iron pokers and brands arranged next to them in neat rows, organized by size and shape. Each one had been recently polished. They gleamed in the torchlight like surgical instruments in an operating theater.

Everything — every single implement in this chamber of horrors — had been maintained with loving, meticulous care.

The rest of the castle might be falling apart, but the dungeon? Oh, the dungeon was ready for business!

Cornelius felt his stomach turn, a wave of nausea rising in his throat. He'd seen cases involving torture in his previous life. Had read depositions, seen photographs. But this? This was different. This was immediate and real and right in front of him. This was a place designed specifically to inflict suffering, and it had been maintained with the kind of dedication most people reserved for hobbies they loved.

"The dungeon, my lord," Malachi said unnecessarily. "As you can see, it has been kept in excellent working order."

Before Cornelius could respond, a figure emerged from a side chamber with the eager energy of a golden retriever hearing the word "walk."

He was a massive man, easily six and a half feet tall, with shoulders like a bull and arms corded with muscle that strained against the fabric of his shirt. He wore a leather apron over his clothes, the apron spotlessly clean, with not a stain or mark on it. His hands were enormous, with thick fingers that nevertheless moved with surprising dexterity as he wiped them on a cloth.

But it was his face that was truly unsettling.

He had the face of a cherub — round, with ruddy cheeks, bright blue eyes, and a small, upturned nose. When he smiled, which he was doing now with enthusiastic abandon, dimples appeared in his cheeks. He looked like he should be running a bakery or playing Santa Claus in a department store — not standing in a torture chamber surrounded by horrifying instruments of suffering.

"My Lord Baron!" he exclaimed, practically bouncing on his toes as he hurried forward. "Oh, what an honor! What a tremendous, spectacular honor! I am Griswold, my Lord! Dungeon Keeper and Master Torturer here at Glimmerfall Keep, at your absolute service!"

He executed an elaborate bow, his movements surprisingly graceful for such a large man, one hand sweeping out to the side while the other crossed over his chest. When he rose, his face was alight with an enthusiasm that bordered on manic.

"I have been maintaining the facilities in eager anticipation of your arrival, my lord!" He gestured expansively at the gleaming instruments surrounding them, his voice swelling with professional pride. "As you can see, everything here is in absolutely perfect working order! The rack has been freshly oiled — the mechanism moves as smooth as butter now, barely a whisper of sound! The brands are properly tempered — I had a master smith from the Ironpeak clan come check the metallurgy for me just last month! And, just last week, I've just acquired a simply marvelous new set of flaying knives from a master craftsman in the southern reaches!"

He rushed over to a workbench and picked up a case, opening it to reveal a set of knives that gleamed like mirrors in the torchlight.

"Here! Look at this, my lord! Just look at this craftsmanship! The blades are folded steel, sharpened to a razor's edge! The balance is exquisite! And the handles — here, just feel this grip!" He held one out, his face glowing with the genuine enthusiasm of a craftsman showing off his tools. "Rosewood with a textured leather wrap — it handles like an absolute dream! Even with blood-slick hands, you'd never have to worry about losing your grip!"

Cornelius felt his mouth go dry. The contents of his stomach lurched in place, threatening to make a sudden, violent exit.

"That's... that's not going to be necessary, Griswold," he managed, his voice coming out higher than intended.

The torturer's face fell, his enthusiasm dimming like a snuffed candle. His shoulders slumped slightly.

"Oh. Of course, my lord. Of course. You'll want to settle in first, find your bearings. I completely understand! It's important to learn the ropes — ah, speaking of ropes, I've also recently acquired some beautiful hemp rope, treated to resist fraying, you understand — which will be absolutely perfect for—"

"No," Cornelius interrupted, more firmly this time. "I mean it's not going to be necessary at all. I won't be requiring your... services."

Griswold blinked, confused. "Not... at all, my lord? But surely you'll want to at least see a demonstration? I've been developing some new techniques I'm simply dying to show someone! See, it turns out there's this fascinating thing you can do with a combination of a brazier, a bucket of cold water, and precisely timed intervals that—"

Griswold trailed off as if thinking of something, before his face immediately lit up again, like the sun breaking through clouds. He spun toward the cells, his earlier disappointment forgotten in a surge of professional excitement.

"Ah! Yes! Yes, of course! How silly of me! I was so excited about the Baron's arrival that I nearly forgot!" He gestured toward the occupied cell with the proud bearing of a sommelier presenting a rare vintage. "This one was caught just this evening, my Lord! Apparently, the ringleader of a group of thieves from the village! We apprehended her attempting to steal from the granary stores — though, unfortunately, the others were able to escape."

He strode toward the central cell, and Cornelius followed with a growing sense of dread.

"Well," Griswold amended as they approached, his face becoming momentarily thoughtful, "not that there was much to steal in the granary anyway. The reserves have been rather... depleted of late. But theft is theft, my Lord! We certainly can't have people just taking what isn't theirs, can we? No sir! Social order would crumble!"

The cell came into view, and Cornelius felt his breath catch.

A woman stood in the center of the small space, and despite the circumstances — despite the chains, the cell, the imminent and very credible threat of torture — she radiated a defiant, almost incandescent fury that seemed to push back against the very walls surrounding her.

She was young, perhaps mid-twenties, though the hardship of her life made it difficult to be certain. Her hair was the color of dark mahogany, thick and lustrous despite being tangled and matted with dirt. It fell just past her shoulders in wild waves that framed a face that was striking in its fierce beauty. High cheekbones. A straight, aristocratic nose. A jawline that managed to be both delicate and strong. Full lips that were currently pressed into a thin line of barely suppressed rage.

But it was her eyes that truly arrested him.

They were the color of storm clouds — a deep, slate gray that seemed to shift between lighter and darker shades depending on how the torchlight hit them. And they burned with an intensity that made the very air around her seem charged. Electric. Not with fear. Not with despair.

With fury.

With defiant, unbroken rage that seemed to fill the small cell and project outward like heat from a forge.

She had a fresh bruise blooming across her left cheek — an ugly purple-black mark the size of a fist that stood out starkly against her sun-bronzed skin. Her lip was split, a thin line of dried blood running down her chin. There were scrapes on her arms, visible through the tears in her rough-spun tunic. Signs of a struggle. Signs that she hadn't gone quietly.

Her clothes were little better than rags — a tunic that might once have been brown but was now so faded and stained it was the color of dirt, patched in multiple places with scraps of different fabrics. Rough trousers that were rolled up at the ankles and held in place with a length of rope that served as a belt. Her feet were bare, the soles callused and tough, but Cornelius could see fresh cuts across them, as if she'd been running through rough terrain.

But despite the rags, despite the dirt and the bruises and the chains around her wrists — heavy iron shackles that looked far too large and heavy for her slender wrists, held together by a thick chain that allowed only minimal movement — there was something about her that suggested she'd been beautiful once.

No, not once, Cornelius corrected himself. She was beautiful still.

Strikingly so, in fact.

It was the kind of beauty that poverty and hardship had tried their best to extinguish — but couldn't quite manage. Like a candle burning in the wind: battered, threatened, but somehow still refusing to go out.

Her figure, even obscured by the shapeless, ragged tunic, suggested a natural athleticism. She stood with the balanced stance of someone accustomed to physical labor, her shoulders squared, her weight evenly distributed. Her arms, while thin from hunger, were corded with lean muscle. These were hands that had worked, had fought, had refused to give up.

She glared at Cornelius as he approached, her storm-gray eyes tracking his movement with predatory focus. She didn't cower. Didn't shrink back. She stood her ground in the center of that small cell as if daring the universe itself to try and break her.

"Oh yes, that one's definitely the ringleader," Griswold said, and Cornelius could hear genuine professional admiration in his voice. "Didn't go quietly, oh no! It took three of the guards to bring her in! She fought like a cornered wolf!" He shook his head, his cherubic face glowing with appreciation. "Gave one of them a black eye, broke another's nose, nearly took the third's ear off with her teeth before they managed to subdue her. Such spirit! Such… fire!"

He turned to Cornelius, rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

"You don't see that kind of defiance often anymore, my Lord! Most people just... break. They see the dungeon, they see the implements, and they just collapse. No fight left in them, which is no fun at all! But this one?" He gestured at her with something approaching reverence. "Oh, she's special. I can tell she's got that rare quality — that refusal to accept reality, that stubborn insistence on hope even when hope is clearly pointless. It's beautiful, in its way. Almost a shame to break it, but..." He smiled widely, his dimples deepening. "...that's what makes it so satisfying when you finally do!"

Cornelius felt physically sick.

"My Lord, if you'd like — and I completely understand if you're busy at the moment, but if you feel up for it — I could demonstrate some of my techniques on her! Nothing permanent, of course! Just some basic interrogation methods. We can start with the lighter implements, ease her into things. Maybe remove a couple of fingernails, or do some light water work, nothing that would cause lasting damage initially. Just enough to demonstrate what's possible, what information can be extracted with the proper application of—"

"No!"

The word came out sharper than Cornelius intended, cracking through the dungeon like a whip.

Griswold stopped mid-sentence, his mouth still open, his eyes widening in surprise.

"Absolutely not!" Cornelius continued, his voice harder now, edged with something that surprised even himself. Anger. Real, genuine anger at the casual cruelty, at the matter-of-fact discussion of torture techniques as if they were a cooking demonstration.

"Let her go. Right now."

Silence crashed through the dungeon like a physical force.

The sudden absence of sound was so complete, so absolute, that Cornelius could hear his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. Could hear the faint drip of water somewhere in the depths of the dungeon.

Griswold stood frozen, his expression one of complete, uncomprehending shock. He looked like a man who'd just been told that gravity had reversed, that up was down, that everything he understood about the fundamental nature of reality was suddenly wrong.

Even Malachi's watery blue eyes widened a fraction of an inch — which, for the eternally composed butler, was the equivalent of a theatrical gasp of astonishment.

In the cell, the woman — Griswold had never mentioned her name, Cornelius realized with a flash of anger — stared at him with an expression that shifted rapidly through surprise, suspicion, and something that might have been cautious, fragile hope.

"My Lord," Malachi said carefully, his voice measured, choosing his words with obvious care, "this woman was caught in the act of theft from the Baronial stores. According to the current laws of the March, she is subject to interrogation and punishment — up to, and including execution, at your discretion. The law is quite clear on this matter."

"I am the Baron here, aren't I? That means I am the law!" Cornelius roared, and felt a strange sense of liberation in saying it. After a lifetime of living by the laws of others, of arguing laws, of being crushed by laws wielded as weapons by those in power — it felt so good to simply… reject a law that he deemed unjust. "Look at her, Malachi. This is no criminal. This is no common thief! She's starving!"

He gestured at the woman, at her painfully thin frame visible even through the shapeless tunic, at the sharp angles of her collarbones, at the hollow look that suggested chronic hunger.

"She wasn't stealing for profit or malice. She wasn't stealing to get rich or to hurt someone. She was stealing food because she's hungry. Because she's desperate. Because the alternative is slowly wasting away." His voice rose with anger he hadn't realized he'd been holding back. "Any law that punishes that — that calls survival a crime — is unjust. And I will suffer no such laws in my domain!"

He was being theatrical on purpose now, pretending he was at an oral argument. He hoped the little speech he'd improvised would be good enough here.

He turned to Griswold, whose cherubic face had gone pale.

"Open the cell. Right now!"

"But my Lord, I haven't even had a chance to—"

"Now, Griswold."

The torturer's shoulders slumped in profound, almost comical disappointment. He looked like a child who was just told that this year's Christmas was canceled.

"Yes, my Lord," he said quietly, his voice small and sad.

He moved to the cell with the dejected air of a man performing a funeral, pulling a heavy ring of keys from his belt. The keys jingled softly — a surprisingly cheerful sound in the oppressive atmosphere of the dungeon. He unlocked the cell door, the mechanism turning with a well-oiled click, and pulled it open.

The woman didn't move immediately. She stood frozen in the center of the cell, her eyes locked on Cornelius's face, clearly trying to determine if this was some creative new form of torture — getting her hopes up before crushing them.

Griswold approached her with his ring of keys, reaching for the shackles on her wrists. She flinched slightly when he got close — an involuntary reaction — but forced herself to stand still, to hold out her wrists without being asked.

Soon, the unlocked shackles fell away with a dull clatter against the stone floor, the heavy iron cuffs landing with a finality that seemed to echo through the chamber.

"You're free," Cornelius said, trying to make his voice gentle despite the anger still thrumming through him. "You can go now."

Still she didn't move, suspicion warring with hope on her bruised face. For a long moment, she just stood there, rubbing her wrists where the iron had chafed them raw, staring at Cornelius with an expression he couldn't quite read. Then, moving slowly, cautiously, as if the floor might give way beneath her at any moment, she walked out of the cell.

She stopped just outside, facing Cornelius. They stood perhaps three feet apart — the disgraced Manhattan lawyer in his muddy designer suit and the village rebel in her rags.

Up close, she was even more striking. Her eyes held depths he hadn't noticed from a distance. Intelligence. Calculation. The sharp, analytical gaze of someone who'd learned to read people quickly, to assess threats, to make split-second decisions that meant the difference between survival and death.

She was also taller than he'd expected, nearly matching his own height. And now that she was standing at her full height rather than tensed in the defensive crouch of a caged animal, he could see that beneath the hunger and the exhaustion, she carried herself with a kind of unconscious pride. The bearing of someone who'd been a leader, who'd commanded respect, who'd refused to be broken by circumstances that would have destroyed lesser people.

"Why?" she asked, her voice hoarse and rough, as if she hadn't spoken much recently.

Cornelius met her gaze steadily. "Because torture is barbaric. And because it is a ruler's job to feed his people. I won't punish you for trying to survive."

Something shifted in her expression — a crack in the armor of her hostility. Her eyes narrowed slightly, studying him with sharp intelligence. It was the look of someone reassessing a situation, of someone who'd been prepared for one thing and had encountered something altogether different.

She gave him a brief, assessing nod — not of agreement or trust, but of acknowledgment. A recognition that maybe, just maybe, the new Baron might not be like the monsters who'd recently preceded him.

"I'm Anya," she said abruptly. Not a thank you. Not a gesture of gratitude. Just a statement of fact. An exchange of information. "If this ain't some sick game..." She paused, her jaw tightening. "...then we should talk. Later. Come find me in the village."

And then she turned and ran.

She moved with surprising speed despite her obvious exhaustion and hunger, her bare feet making barely a whisper of sound on the stone floor. She was up the stairs and gone in seconds, disappearing into the darkness above like a shadow fleeing the dawn.

Cornelius watched her go, still feeling the intensity of those storm-gray eyes, the assessment in her gaze, the promise of a future conversation.

Griswold watched her disappear with the mournful expression of a puppy watching its master leave for work.

"But… but I polished everything!" he said sadly to no one in particular, his voice small and lost in the vast dungeon. "Even the thumbscrews. I oiled every hinge. I sharpened every blade. I was so ready!"

For a moment, Cornelius almost felt bad for him.

Almost.

 

[Superstes]

AN: Remember. Patreon exists.
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They climbed back up from the depths of the dungeon to the main levels of the Castle. The transition from the pristine horrors below to the decaying grandeur above felt dreamlike, surreal, as if they were moving between different worlds entirely.

They passed long stretches of stone that had once been grand, lined with tapestries that had long-since rotted to fragments and sconces that held torches or candles that guttered and smoked more than they illuminated. The light of the outside filtered through occasional windows, but weakly, as if even celestial bodies were reluctant to fully commit to brightening a place this forgotten.

Cornelius walked beside Malachi — or rather, walked while Malachi accompanied him, because the ancient butler's method of locomotion was less "walking" and more "manifesting sequentially in different locations along the path." It was subtle enough that you might not notice if you weren't paying attention, but once you started watching for it, it became impossible to ignore.

Malachi would be beside him, slightly behind and to the left in the traditional position of a servant accompanying a master. Then Cornelius would blink, or glance away to examine some feature of the corridor, or simply lose focus for just a moment. And when he looked back, Malachi would suddenly be ahead of him, near a corner or a doorway, positioned as if he'd walked there naturally.

Except… there would be no footsteps, no sound of movement, no sense that time had passed during the transition. Just… instantaneous relocation.

Like an old-time analog film with frames cut out.

Like reality briefly editing itself to place Malachi in a new position without the tedious necessity of him actually traversing the space between.

And shadows seemed to gather around him too — not dramatically, not like some theatrical effect, but subtly, as if the darkness between torches was slightly denser where Malachi stood. As if the pools of shadow along the walls reached out slightly toward him with tendrils of deeper black. When the butler moved with that strange flickering manifestation of his, those shadows would ripple slightly, disturbed by his passage through them, or… maybe by his passage as them, as if he wasn't moving through the darkness but as darkness, his substance fundamentally the same as the shadows themselves.

"Malachi?" Cornelius said carefully, keeping his tone casual and conversational rather than interrogative, trying to sound like someone making friendly small talk rather than someone preparing to potentially pry into private matters.

"Might I ask you something that may seem… impolite?"

The butler's pale face showed no change in expression at the question — Cornelius saw the same careful, neutral mask of professional service he always wore. The same slight smile that might have been genuine courtesy or might have been just the shape his face naturally held when not actively expressing something else.

Up close, in the uncertain light, Malachi looked more obviously not-quite-human than he did in darker areas or when you weren't paying direct attention. His skin was pale — not the healthy pallor of someone who spent too much time indoors, but the bloodless white of paper or parchment, with a translucent quality that let you see the suggestion of what might be veins or might be just darker lines beneath the surface, though they didn't pulse or move the way real veins would. His eyes were that same pale color, a kind of washed-out light blue, set deep in sockets that were ever-so-slightly too pronounced, giving him an uncanny skull-like quality that was more suggestion than obvious feature.

His hair was thin and colorless, combed back from a high forehead with the kind of precision that suggested either great care or possibly that it never moved from that position regardless of wind or activity. And his clothing — the butler's uniform that was moth-eaten and frayed and generally looked like it was about to fall apart — hung on his thin frame in a way that suggested the fabric might be partially incorporeal, might be made of the same shadow-stuff that seemed to comprise his basic substance.

"Of course. You may ask anything you wish, my Lord," Malachi said, his voice a dry, papery sound, like wind through dead leaves or like old books being opened, like something that should have weight and moisture and the physical properties of human speech but somehow lacked all of those qualities while still remaining perfectly comprehensible.

"…I exist to serve the Baron. Questions are hardly an imposition. Indeed, understanding is the foundation of effective governance… So please, ask what you will, and I shall do my best to answer."

Cornelius took a moment to digest that, and consider how to phrase his question.

"The way you move," he finally ventured, gesturing vaguely at the corridor they'd just traversed, at the space between where Malachi had been and where he now stood… then at the shadows that seemed to cling to him like a second layer of clothing.

"Through shadows. Appearing and disappearing. It's not exactly… normal human movement, is it? I've been assuming it's magic of some kind, but I realized that I don't actually understand what you are doing. Or… what you are?"

Malachi was quiet for a moment, his ancient face thoughtful, his expression cycling through micro-expressions too subtle to read clearly.

The silence stretched long enough to become uncomfortable, and Cornelius found himself wondering if he'd crossed some line, if he'd asked something that shouldn't be asked, if the politeness he'd tried to wrap around the question hadn't been sufficient to make it acceptable.

But finally, Malachi spoke, his voice carrying that same patient, unflappable quality.

"What a perceptive question, my Lord," he said, and if there was any offense taken, it didn't show in his tone. "And one that few Barons have thought to ask. Most simply accept my presence as yet another peculiarity of the Keep — background scenery that performs useful functions but requires no deeper understanding. They notice that I appear and disappear, that I move strangely, that I am not quite human in appearance or behavior. But they categorize me as 'magical servant' or 'butler ghost' or some other simple label and move on without curiosity about the specifics."

They turned a corner into another long corridor: this one was lined with portraits of previous Barons rendered in oils on canvas that had survived much better than the tapestries — protected, as they were, by their frames and the varnish that sealed the paint against outside moisture. The painted eyes seemed to follow them as they passed, a trick of perspective and lighting that Cornelius knew was just art technique but which still felt uncomfortable, still created the sensation of being watched by the accumulated judgment of those who'd held this position before him.

Malachi appeared beside him again, and gestured toward the shadows that pooled in the spaces between torches, the darkness that seemed deeper and more present than simple absence of light should be.

"I move through shadows because shadows are, in a sense, what I am made of," he paused, as if considering how to explain the concept. "Or perhaps more accurately, shadows are merely the visible manifestation of my presence. The darkness between spaces. The gaps in illumination where the stone breathes. Where the building's essence is most apparent."

Cornelius tried to process that, tried to visualize what it would mean to move through walls, to exist as some kind of distributed presence throughout a structure.

"I… don't understand," he admitted, feeling like he was back in law school trying to grasp some particularly abstract legal principle that made sense to people who'd been studying it for years but felt like nonsense to newcomers. "Building's essence? Are you saying you're... what, that you are the Castle? That this building is your body?"

"In a very real sense, yes," Malachi confirmed, seeming pleased that Cornelius was engaging with the concept rather than just dismissing it as incomprehensible magic.

"Though… it is more complex than simple equivalence. I am not, nor have I ever been, truly alive — not in the sense that you are alive, or that the villagers are alive, or even in the sense that Lady Seraphina was once alive before she became what she is now. I was never born. Never had parents or childhood or the biological processes that define living beings. Never drew first breath or cried as an infant or learned to walk and speak through the gradual accumulation of neural connections and physical development."

He paused at one of the windows, looking outward, his form silhouetted against the indigo twilight outside, and Cornelius realized that he could see through him slightly —not dramatically, not like looking through glass, but subtly, like looking at something through a very thin veil or gauze, where you could just make out the stone of the window frame visible through the very edges of his body as if he was made of smoke or fog given temporary solidity.

"I am… the spirit of the castle," Malachi continued, his pale hands clasped before him in that gesture of formal service that he seemed to default to whenever he wasn't actively performing some task. "A magical construct brought into being centuries ago by Baron Brona, whose name has been largely forgotten by history but whose work remains. Lord Brona wanted a perfect servant. Someone loyal beyond question. Efficient beyond human capability. Utterly incorruptible due to lack of weaknesses and desires that make humans vulnerable to bribery, or coercion, or… simple moral decay. And most importantly…"

He looked away from the window and gazed Cornelius pointedly in the eyes.

"…someone bound absolutely to the Keep and its master, unable to betray or abandon or act contrary to the interests of whoever held the title of Baron. And so… he created one," Malachi continued, his voice carrying neither pride nor resentment, just simple statement of historical fact.

"Lord Brona wove magic into the very stones of this place and gave it shape and purpose and a kind of consciousness that could think and act but not truly feel or desire beyond the parameters of its creation. The spells involved were extensive — they took years to complete, requiring the expenditure of significant materials and… sacrifices."

Malachi paused, as if reminiscing about the past.

"When Lord Brona completed the working, I simply... was. I became conscious without having been unconscious before. Found myself aware and thinking and in possession of knowledge and language and social protocols without having learned any of them, all of it embedded into my very essence as part of the initial creation. One moment I did not exist. The next moment I did, fully formed and functional, standing in these halls with the knowledge of what I was and what I was for."

Cornelius felt his throat tighten, imagining what that must have been like.

"I am bound to the castle," Malachi continued, and now there was something in his voice — not quite emotion, but perhaps the echo of where emotion might have been if his constructed nature permitted it. "These stones, these walls, these corridors and rooms and towers and dungeons — all of them are my body in a more fundamental sense than this —"

he gestured at his human-shaped form, at the translucent figure that approximated a butler,

"— this… projection is. What you see when you look at me is merely a manifestation, a way for the castle's consciousness to interface with beings who expect human-shaped servants, who need someone they can talk to and give instructions to and perceive as separate from the environment."

He moved forward, and Cornelius saw it happen clearly this time — saw the way Malachi's form didn't so much walk as dissolve slightly at the edges, becoming less defined, less solid, merging with the shadows along the wall before reconstituting several feet ahead, snapping back into solidity and human shape like a polaroid photograph developing in reverse. The whole process took less than a second, barely noticeable if you weren't watching for it… but once seen it was seen, it was impossible to unsee.

"So, if I understand you correctly, you can move through shadows because..." Cornelius prompted.

"Because I don't move through physical space in the conventional sense," Malachi confirmed, seemingly pleased that Cornelius was following the logic. "I am always present throughout the entire castle simultaneously — in the way that you are always present in your entire body… even though your conscious attention might be focused on your hand, or your foot, or some other part of it at any given moment."

Malachi gave Cornelius a significant look.

"Your hand exists whether you're thinking about it or not. Similarly, I exist in every part of this Castle whether my conscious attention is focused there or not."

He gestured at the corridor ahead, at the shadows between torches, at the darkness that seemed to pulse and breathe with subtle rhythm.

"When I move in your sight, I'm simply shifting which manifestation you can perceive, allowing you to "see" me in different locations while the underlying presence remains constant throughout the structure. Or, to put things another way… I do not walk from point A to point B. Instead, I cease allowing you to see me at point A, and begin allowing you to see me at point B, with no actual transition through the intervening space because I'm already present in both locations – and, indeed, in all locations – simultaneously."

The implications of it all were dizzying.

Cornelius tried his best to imagine existing in that way, tried to conceive of being present everywhere in a building complex at once, and his mind slid away from the concept like feet on ice. What Malachi just described was simply too alien to human experience.

…

They continued the tour in silence after that, climbing higher, ascending a narrow spiral staircase that wound up one of the Keep's towers. The stairs were worn smooth by centuries of feet climbing up and down, the stone hollowed out in the center of each step. The walls were close on either side, and Cornelius had to duck his head in places where the ceiling pressed down.

Finally, they emerged into a corridor that felt different from the rest of the castle.

The air here was colder — not in the way of the damp cold of the lower levels, but a dry, sharp cold that made his breath visible in the dim light. The temperature had dropped by what felt like a full twenty degrees. The walls seemed darker here too, the shadows deeper, as if the light from the torches couldn't quite reach into the corners.

And there was… something else.

Something Cornelius couldn't quite name.

A feeling.

A kind of… pressure against his skin, against his mind, like the sensation right before a thunderstorm when the air becomes heavy and charged and every nerve ending starts screaming that something is about to happen.

Could it be?

Magic.

He was feeling magic!

The corridor ahead was lined with doors, each one marked with strange symbols that seemed to shift and writhe when he looked directly at them. The symbols glowed faintly, pulsing with a soft, internal light that cycled through colors — blue to green to purple to red and back again. Looking at them for too long made his eyes hurt, made his head feel strange and disconnected.

"Ah. This area is… the Lady Seraphina's quarters," Malachi announced, his voice dropping to something barely above a whisper, as if speaking too loudly might wake something better left sleeping. "She occupies this entire tower. In addition to the laboratory and the ritual chamber you saw earlier. These rooms are… her private chambers and her research spaces. I would advise caution here, my Lord. The Lady does not welcome intrusions, and is not particularly fond of speaking with new Barons."

"Well, whoever this 'Lady Seraphina' is, I will need to meet her eventually, won't I?" Cornelius said, trying to inject more confidence into his voice than he felt. His skin was crawling now, every instinct screaming at him to turn around, to go back, to leave this place and never return. "Better now than later, right?"

Malachi inclined his head, the gesture neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

"As… you wish, my Lord. I shall leave you here. The Lady... prefers to handle visitors herself. Simply call out if you require my assistance."

And with that, the butler dissolved back into shadow, the darkness rushing in to reclaim him, leaving Cornelius utterly alone in the cold corridor.

He stood there for a moment, trying to gather his courage.

The central door before him was larger and more ornate than the others — dark wood carved with elaborate patterns that seemed to depict some kind of… astronomical phenomena? Stars and moons and comets, spiraling galaxies, eclipses and alignments. The craftsmanship was exquisite, the detail almost impossible to credit to human hands.

He raised his hand and knocked firmly on the wood.

The sound echoed strangely in the corridor, as if the knock had somehow traveled further than it should, bouncing back from impossible distances.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then a voice called from within. It was female, melodious, with a quality that reminded him dark honey produced by meat-eating corpse bees — which he had foolishly tried on a dare in his youth: sickly sweet, but bitter underneath.

And it was absolutely dripping with existential malaise.

"Go. Away."

Cornelius blinked.

"I apologize, but I'm afraid I can't do that just yet. My name is Cornelius Vance and I'm the new Baron here. We should talk."

There was a pause.

He heard what might have been a book being closed with more force than strictly necessary.

"Ah. It's you."

The voice somehow managed to convey both crushing boredom and visceral disgust in just two words.

"How absolutely… delightful. Let me guess the next few hours of my eternal, meaningless existence: you're here to paw through my things like a child in a toy shop. You'll demand I brew you some ridiculous love potion to make someone desire you, or, perhaps, some equally pointless immortality elixir so that you can come to suffer forever like I do. And then, when I refuse — because I always refuse, and you all always make the same demands — you'll either try to fuck me or kill me. Or both, if you're feeling particularly ambitious."

She paused, and Cornelius could hear the rustling of pages.

"Let's… just skip to the end, shall we? Whatever tedious drama you're planning, I'm in the middle of reading a fascinating treatise on the heat death of the universe, and I'd prefer not to be interrupted. The knowledge that all of this — this conversation, this castle, this entire wretched existence — will eventually end in cold, silent entropy is one of the few comforts I have left."

Cornelius stared at the door, momentarily at a loss for words.

"I... what? No, I wasn't going to—"

"Then. Go. Away!"

Each word was enunciated with perfect, scathing clarity, delivered like a judge pronouncing sentence.

"Oblivion comes for all things, Baron. You'll fail like the others. They all fail. They strut and posture and make grand pronouncements about how they'll be different. And then they die. Or they go mad. Or they get dragged kicking and screaming into whatever future Hell has prepared for them. The land will stay cursed. The people will continue to suffer. And I? I will still be here, trapped in this gods-forsaken prison of stone and magic and eternal, crushing fucking boredom, waiting for the next idiot Baron to show up."

There was another pause, shorter this time.

"Why waste my time — and yours — pretending otherwise? Just… leave. Come back when you're ready to die or damn yourself. I'll still be here. I'm always here. I'll always be here, because that's all I can ever be!"

The finality in her voice was absolute. The conversation ended before it could begin.

Cornelius stood there in the corridor, staring at the elaborate carved wood, trying to process what he'd just heard.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered under his breath. "What the hell is her problem?"

A soft, delighted laugh rippled through the air behind him, intimate and amused, accompanied by a familiar musky, seductive scent.

"Ooooh you poor sweetie," Vionica's voice purred with honey, silk, and barely contained mirth. "You really don't know, do you?"

Cornelius spun around.

The demon had materialized in the corridor behind him, appearing as if she'd always been there and he'd simply failed to notice. She was leaning against the wall with one hip cocked, her crimson dress a slash of impossibly vibrant color against the gray stone, bright as fresh blood on snow. The dress seemed to drink in the pale light from the shifting symbols on the doors and transform it into something warm. Vibrant. Alive.

Her golden eyes sparkled with amusement and something that might have been genuine sympathy. Her smile was soft, almost kind, though still edged with an undeniable predatory curve.

"Know what?" Cornelius demanded, still trying to calm his racing heart. Supernatural beings appearing behind him without warning was becoming distressingly routine.

Vionica pushed off the wall with liquid grace and sauntered toward him, her heels clicking softly on the stone floor. Each step was deliberate, controlled, impossibly elegant. The sound echoed strangely in the cold corridor, seeming to come from multiple directions at once.

"About your little girlfriend in there, of course!" She gestured toward the door with one perfect, crimson-tipped nail, her movements economical, precise. "Oh, darling, she has every right to be pissy! She's earned her attitude, trust me."

She stopped just in front of him, close enough that he could feel the heat radiating from her skin. She smelled of danger and desire in equal measure.

"You see, Seraphina isn't just some random witch who happens to live in your castle," Vionica continued, her voice dropping to a more intimate, conspirational register. "She's not an employee or a resident or a tenant. What she is … is a fixture of the estate."

"A fixture?" Cornelius repeated, his lawyer's brain immediately seizing on the term.

In property law, a fixture was something permanently attached to real estate. Like… a chandelier. Or a built-in bookshelf. Something that couldn't be forcibly removed without damaging the property itself.

But surely, surely she couldn't mean—

"Mmhmm! In the legal sense. In the magical sense. In every sense that matters!"

Vionica's expression softened slightly, becoming almost pitying.

"When dear old Alaric made his deal with us, he needed collateral, you see. Substantial collateral. A metaphysical debt of that magnitude requires security, you understand. Assets to seize if the terms aren't met."

She paused, letting the words sink in.

"And so, he pledged his firstborn child to the land itself. Made her part of the property. Legally, magically, irrevocably binding her to the Vespertine March."

Vionica's voice took on a darker edge.

"Seraphina is a part of this estate in every way. She literally, physically cannot leave the land. The binding prevents it, you see. Try to step beyond the boundary, and the magic snaps her right back like a rubber band."

She paused, as if lost in contemplation.

"It's apparently rather painful – not that the pain stopped her from trying it quite a few times in the early years."

Cornelius felt something cold settle in his stomach.

"Wait, she can't leave? Ever?"

"Never ever!" Vionica confirmed with an overly peppy tone. "And! Oooh, and this is the best part, dear — because she's tied to the contract, she can't die, either! Can't age. Can't sicken. Can't even sleep! She's just been stuck here, watching Baron after Baron come and go, for over two hundred years now!"

The words hit Cornelius like physical blows, each one driving home the full horror of what was being described.

Two hundred years.

Two hundred years?

He tried to imagine it: being locked in one place, unable to leave, unable to die, unable to do anything but watch as the world changed outside your prison while you remained static, eternal, trapped. Watching strangers come and go. Watching people live and love and die while you continued on, unchanging, unable to join them or follow them.

Watching Baron after Baron arrive, over and over and over.

For more than two centuries.

And her own father did that to her?

No wonder she was bitter! This situation would drive anyone mad. The fact that Seraphina was somehow still coherent, still functional enough to even have a conversation, spoke to a strength of will that Cornelius couldn't even begin to comprehend!

"Two hundred years?" he said, his voice coming out rough. "She's been imprisoned here… for two hundred years?"

"Yep! Give or take a decade or two." Vionica examined her nails casually, as if they were discussing nothing more significant than the weather. "So, can you really blame her for being a little dark? For being just a touch nihilistic? I mean, she's basically a fancy chandelier at this point — expensive, decorative, and permanently attached to the real estate. Of course, chandeliers, at least, don't have to be conscious of their situations."

Cornelius felt rage kindle in his chest — hot, righteous, burning with an intensity that surprised him. Not at Vionica. After all, she was just the messenger, just the account manager explaining the terms.

His anger was directed at Seraphina's father.

At this… Alaric.

At the kind of man who would sell his own child into eternal slavery to fuel his own temporary success.

At the system that would allow such cruelty.

At the casual inhumanity of treating a person as property, of binding someone to the land like a piece of fucking furniture.

"That's monstrous," he said, his voice low and hard, vibrating with suppressed fury. "That's absolutely monstrous!"

Vionica shrugged, the gesture somehow elegant despite its callousness.

"That's contracts for you, babe. She was part of the deal. Very clearly outlined in the paperwork, too — Paragraph forty-seven, subsection C, if memory serves."

She pointedly cleared her throat.

" 'The Firstborn Child, and any and all direct descendants therefrom, shall be bound as fixtures of the estate in perpetuity, serving at the pleasure of the title-holder, until such time as the debt is fully satisfied.' It's quite airtight. We had our best infernal lawyers review it — and believe me, Hell's legal department doesn't fuck around."

She paused, tilting her head slightly, her golden eyes studying him with sudden interest.

"Well," she amended, "it's mostly airtight. I mean, nothing's truly perfect, now is it? There's always some loophole somewhere, some interpretation nobody thought of, some… weird combination of circumstances that creates an out. That's the nature of contracts — they're written by imperfect beings trying to predict the future, and the future is notoriously difficult to predict. But it's close enough to airtight that it might as well —" she waved her hand dismissively.

The weight of it all crashed down on him suddenly. The absurdity. The impossibility. The sheer, overwhelming wrongness of his entire situation.

This was impossible to deal with. Absolutely impossible!

He was kidnapped, and bound by a magical contract to save a cursed land or forfeit his soul. Given responsibility for thousands of lives. Expected to somehow fix problems that had festered for centuries.

He did not wish to be here anymore.

And, come to think of it…

He'd been transported to another world against his will, hadn't he?

"How dare you do this? How dare you do any of this?" Cornelius snapped, rounding on her, his carefully maintained composure finally cracking.

"This is kidnapping. You people kidnapped me! You snatched me from my home world, transported me without my consent, and bound me to a contract I never had the opportunity to properly review or negotiate!"

He was pacing now, his legal training taking over, his mind organizing the grievances into something like an oral argument.

"There was no adequate notice! No opportunity for due diligence! No chance to seek independent legal counsel! You didn't give me time to prepare, to gather resources, to even collect my personal effects! You just… grabbed me and threw me into this… this nightmare!"

His voice was rising, months of suppressed fury and fear and helplessness finally finding an outlet.

"That's not a valid contract! It can't possibly be! No, it's fraud! It's…"

He was interrupted by the sound of her laughter.

Not a polite chuckle.

Not a dismissive snort.

But full, genuine, delighted laughter that rang through the chamber like bells.

Vionica doubled over slightly, one hand pressed to her stomach, her whole body shaking with mirth. The sound was so unexpected, so full of pure, unrestrained amusement, that Cornelius stopped mid-rant, staring at her in confusion.

"Oh my," she gasped between peals of laughter, wiping at her eyes where tears of mirth were forming. "Oh my, babe, you think—" More laughter. "You think we kidnapped you?"

"Well… yes? Obviously! You transported me to another world without my permission, with no way to come back!"

"Darling," she said, still giggling, her voice warm with genuine amusement, "you misunderstand!" She stood up straight, smoothing her dress, her smile still wide and genuine. "You can leave whenever you want! In fact, you've always been able to leave whenever you wanted — ever since the moment you put on that ring!"

Cornelius felt his anger falter, confusion replacing fury.

"What did you say?"

"The ring, sweetie!" She gestured at the silver band on his finger, the one Mr. Ash had given him. "Did you think it is merely a cute piece of jewelry? It's not just a symbol of your office. It's a very expensive, and very powerful magical artifact: an Artifact of Tongues and of Passage, to be exact. That ring is a key. It lets you travel between the Vespertine March and Earth whenever you like, and to seamlessly communicate with the locals when you do so – no matter what native language they happen to speak!"

Vionica looked at Cornelius like he might have been mentally challenged.

"Or… wait, did you honestly think that everyone in this dimension spoke native-level English with a New England accent?"

Cornelius felt the heat or embarrassment gather on his cheeks, and she rolled her eyes in amusement.

"You want to go back? Just wave your hand and visualize a passage. Concentrate on where you want to go — like, say, the Aethelred Capital offices in Manhattan — and boom! There'll be an instant portal waiting for you. You can pop back and forth as much as your little heart desires!"

She sauntered over to him, her heels clicking on the stone floor, her golden eyes twinkling with amusement.

"We didn't trap you here, Cornelius. You're free to leave at any time! By Asmodeus, you could even leave right now if you wanted! By all means, go back to Earth. Back to your empty apartment. Back to your stupid little federal prison sentence."

She tilted her head, her expression becoming more serious.

"But here's the thing, handsome — and I need you to really hear this part, because it's important."

She stepped closer: close enough that he could feel the warmth of her skin; see the genuine intensity in her eyes.

"Being on Earth doesn't absolve you of your contractual obligations here. The debt still exists. The deadline still looms. You signed that contract in your own blood. You took on the Barony. You accepted the terms — whether or not you understood them at the time."

Her voice was gentle now, almost sympathetic.

"So, if you go back to Earth, if you spend the next year sitting in federal prison – or even in some nice, padded cell trying to pretend none of this is real – do you know what happens then?"

She paused, letting the question hang in the air.

"We'll still come to collect when time's up! Make no mistake, handsome: the year will pass — whether you choose to spend it here or not — and when the deadline expires, we'll still show up to settle accounts."

She stepped back, her form beginning to shimmer slightly, becoming translucent around the edges.

"You know, my dear Cornelius," she said, her voice taking on a more serious tone, "I might not look it, but I've been doing this job for a long time. Centuries. I've seen hundreds of souls come through our system. And I've learned to read people. To understand what makes them tick, what drives them, what they really want underneath all the bluster and bravado."

She moved closer again, her eyes locking onto his with an intensity that was almost uncomfortable.

"You're going to come around eventually," she said softly, intimately, as if sharing a secret. "You're smart. Talented. Pragmatic. You're a survivor. Once you see how impossible your situation truly is, once you really understand that the game is rigged and there's no way to win it, you're going to take the easy path. You're going to sign on with us full time. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not even next week. But eventually. Because it is the only solution that makes any rational sense."

She traced one finger down his chest, her touch light as a feather.

"And when you do — when you come to me and finally admit that you need our help, that you're ready to make a real deal — I promise I'll make the terms of your new employment contract as favorable as possible. Because I like you, Cornelius. I genuinely do. You're interesting! You're clever! And I just know that you'll make a wonderful addition to our team!"

She smiled, and there was something in it that might have been actual affection.

"Until then, though? I'll keep making my pitches. I'll keep offering you exits and shortcuts and reasonable-sounding compromises. Because that's my job. And I'm very, very good at my job."

She winked.

"But don't worry, sweetheart — I'll make sure you thoroughly enjoy the process of being corrupted!"

She giggled at him, and then dissolved into crimson mist, her form breaking apart like smoke on the wind, the particles glittering in the pale light from the door symbols before dispersing entirely. Just like that, she was gone, leaving behind only the faint musky and the echo of her laugh hanging in the cold air.

…

Cornelius stood alone in the corridor, staring at the space where she'd been.

You're going to come around eventually.

Vionica's words echoed in his mind. And the terrifying thing was, part of him recognized the truth in them.

The devil woman was right — she was very good at her job.

Every interaction with her was a carefully calibrated test, a gentle push toward accepting the inevitable. She was breaking him down slowly, methodically, wearing away his resistance one pitch at a time.

At least, if he let her.

He turned back to Seraphina's door, looking at the elaborate carved patterns, thinking about the woman on the other side. A woman who'd apparently been trapped on this land for two hundred years. A woman who'd watched Baron after Baron fail. A woman who'd given up hope because hope was just another form of torture when you knew it was pointless.

I'm going to help her, he thought, and felt the resolution settle into his bones like a physical thing. I don't know how yet. But I will find a way.

 

[Superstes]

Having finally gotten several hours of desperate, fitful sleep, Cornelius now stood before a shimmering portal.

His hand was still raised, the golden light casting strange, dancing shadows across the Baron's private suite. The oval of luminescence hung in the air like a tear in the fabric of reality itself, impossibly bright against the dim stone walls, and through it, he could see the familiar marble lobby of Aethelred Capital: a cold, sterile expanse of polished stone and recirculated air that smelled of floor polish and money and Manhattan's particular brand of sanitized prosperity.

Home!

Or... at least, what had been home, anyway. What was supposed to still be home, technically speaking, given that he'd only been gone for... how long? It felt like days, like weeks even, but in reality, it was… What, a few hours? Maybe? Time felt slippery here. Unreliable. Like trying to hold water in cupped hands or like the way jet lag made your internal clock argue with the evidence of your eyes.

For a long moment, he simply stood there, frozen in indecision, poised between worlds like a man standing at a crossroads with no map and no clear idea which path led where. He could feel the pull of both directions, each one tugging at different parts of him.

Earth represented the familiar, the known, the comfortable. Everything he understood about how the world worked, about cause and effect, about the rules of reality. Physics that made sense. Economics he could calculate. Legal systems he'd spent years learning to navigate. Everything that his rational, educated, twenty-first-century mind knew how to process and understand.

But it also represented everything he'd lost.

And here, in the Vespertine March, he had... what, exactly?

Responsibility he'd never asked for, certainly. An impossible task that bordered on the absurd: save a dying Barony or forfeit his soul -- as if those were reasonable stakes for anything. A deadline that ended with literal eternal damnation. A castle full of creepy torturers and revenants and wall-scratching horrors and weird shadowy servants who'd watched Baron after Baron fail. A land so corrupted and blighted that nothing useful would grow, where even the water was poisoned, where people starved despite being surrounded by what should have been fertile farmland.

But.

But he also had something he hadn't had in months, maybe years: agency.

The ability to make choices that had weight and consequence and meaning. The power to actually do something, to help people, to matter in a way that didn't depend on billable hours and client satisfaction scores and whether the partner who reviewed your work was having a good or a bad day.

And he had people who needed him!

That last thought surprised him with its intensity, with how much it mattered to him despite everything. He barely knew these people! After all, he'd been in the Vespertine March for a handful of hours at most. He'd met exactly three residents of the Barony — four if you counted Griswold, the cheerfully sadistic Master Torturer who… probably shouldn't be counted for most purposes.

But he'd seen the evidence of their suffering everywhere he looked.

And something in him, some part that had survived the betrayals and the courtroom and the lonely apartment with its empty walls and the echoing silence of abandonment, had looked at all that suffering and thought:

I can fix this.

Not all of it. Not perfectly. Not magically or instantly or in some fairy-tale way where he waved his hand and everything was suddenly better.

But he could definitely do something.

Maybe it was just arrogance.

Maybe it was desperation for purpose, for meaning.

Maybe it was just the lawyer in him, seeing an unjust situation and wanting to argue against it, to find the loophole, to win the unwinnable case through sheer stubbornness and attention to detail.

But whatever it was, it felt more real than anything he'd felt in months. More honest. More true.

Slowly, deliberately, Cornelius lowered his hand.

The portal flickered, wavered like heat shimmer on summer pavement or like a reflection disturbed by a stone thrown into still water. Then it collapsed in on itself with a soft whoosh. The golden light dispersed into motes that hung in the air for a heartbeat like fireflies before disappearing back into darkness.

The room was suddenly darker in the absence of that otherworldly glow. Cornelius felt the weight of the decision.

He'd just turned his back on the easy. On the familiar. On the path of least resistance. On the possibility of spending his remaining free time in his own world, in his own apartment, pretending for a little while longer that none of this was real.

He had decided to stay and solve the impossible problems of Vespertine March instead.

That didn't mean, however, that the option of going back to Earth served no purpose.

He needed to deal with the immediate crisis. He saw from the Anya incident that the people of his Barony were starving. The granaries were empty – or close to it. And the land was blighted and might not even be capable of producing crops. If he didn't solve the food problem, his subjects would definitely die.

Well, more of his subjects would die, anyway.

And if that happened? Any chance of gaining their trust, their cooperation, their help in the larger task of saving the Barony — that would die with them.

He needed food.

Lots of it.

Enough to feed the entire population of the Vespertine March, whatever that happened to be, until he could find a way to implement longer-term solutions.

And suddenly, a plan began to form.

He had anywhere between two and three million dollars in cash sitting on his kitchen counter back in Manhattan. His poker winnings. Money that would otherwise just disappear into the system: Uncle Sam would seize it, dissolving it into the abyss of his legal troubles.

But here?

Here, that money could do some good. Here, it could save lives! He couldn't grow crops overnight. He couldn't magically heal the blighted land.

But what he could do… was go shopping.

After all, the ring gave him access to Earth's industrial abundance — food, supplies, resources that could make an immediate, tangible difference here. Modern logistics applied to medieval problems. Twenty-first-century solutions to what were, fundamentally, basic distribution and resource management challenges.

A bulk food run.

Costco meets feudalism.

It was absurd enough to actually work!

But he'd spent his entire legal career learning one fundamental truth, one lesson that had been beaten into him by senior partners and cases that fell apart because someone had made assumptions instead of asking questions: never negotiate without understanding what the other party actually needs.

Never assume you know the problem without talking to the people who live with it every day.

Never walk into a settlement conference without having done your homework, without knowing the opposing side's pressure points and priorities.

Information was power.

Information was leverage.

Information was the difference between a deal that worked and a deal that collapsed the moment real implementation began.

He needed information before he needed supplies.

He needed to understand the scope of the crisis, the exact size and specific needs of the population, the practical logistics of distribution, the cultural factors that might affect how aid was received and utilized. Otherwise, he might become like a well-meaning idiot who showed up to a disaster zone with truckloads of completely inappropriate aid: winter coats in summer; bottled water for people with cholera, who needed oral rehydration salts and antibiotics; food that nobody could eat because of cultural or religious restrictions or even simple allergies.

He'd seen it happen in pro bono cases he'd worked on. Well-intentioned charities that did more harm than good because they'd assumed they knew what "poor people" needed without bothering to ask said "poor people" themselves.

Meals with ingredients that spoiled quickly in an area without refrigeration.

Supply drives that sent school books written in the wrong language.

Disaster relief that shipped heaters to people who were literally dying of thirst.

Good intentions without information were just another form of harm. Just another way of imposing your assumptions on people who didn't have the power to refuse.

Besides, there was another consideration.

A more practical one that his lawyer's brain had already identified and flagged as critical: if he disappeared to Earth right now, in the middle of the night, before anyone had even properly seen him, before he'd established any kind of relationship with the population — he'd look like any other Baron before him.

He'd look like he'd fled his responsibilities.

And when he came back with trucks full of mysterious food from an otherworldly Costco? His subjects would be suspicious. They might be convinced the food was poisoned or cursed or part of some elaborate, cruel game designed to torture them with hope before crushing it…

…Because that was exactly the kind of thing some of the previous Barons – those who've chosen to embrace Hell's karmic debt rather than try to fight against it – might have done!

Baron Thaddeus might have given the people food - then turned around and hunted them after they'd eaten, enjoying the sport of chasing prey that was too full to run away quickly.

Baron Willem might have provided some scraps – and then demanded payment in the more carnal forms that would make Cornelius's stomach turn just thinking about it.

Baron Erasmus might have... well, who knew what Baron Erasmus would have done before he went and turned himself into a wall-scratching horror?

The point was…

The point was, showing up with aid before establishing any baseline of trust with the people was a recipe for disaster. He'd never gain their cooperation. Never build the foundation of mutual effort that he'd need to actually accomplish anything meaningful in the long term.

No.

First, before he tried to "help" in any way, he needed to talk to Anya. The woman from the dungeon, who had apparently organized the attempted food heist.

She'd said they should talk, didn't she?

He glanced at the window, at the twin moons hanging in the indigo sky like a pair of watching eyes. It was well into the evening now… but something told him that Anya wasn't the type to keep regular hours. People who led rebellions, who organized food thefts, who willingly risked torture and imprisonment — such people didn't sleep in normal schedules.

And if she'd just escaped from a torture chamber, if she'd just been released by a Baron who claimed to be different from all the others — well, maybe she wouldn't be sleeping anyway.

She'd be up. Processing. Planning. Trying to figure out if this was hope or just another trap.

He needed to find her. Talk to her. Understand what the villagers actually needed, what the real problems were beyond the obvious "everything is terrible" observation.

He needed to get a sense of the numbers, the logistics, the practical realities of feeding a population in a blighted land. Learn what resources they still had, what capabilities they'd maintained, what infrastructure remained functional.

And then?

Then he could go shopping.

Cornelius straightened, rolling his shoulders to ease tension he hadn't realized he'd been carrying. His ruined thousand-dollar suit — grass-stained, mud-splattered, and now stiff with dried filth — felt like a second skin he desperately wanted to shed. He looked down at himself and grimaced.

He looked like a homeless stockbroker.

Like someone who'd been mugged in Central Park and had been wandering around for days.

Not exactly the image he wanted to project for a first real meeting with the locals.

The Baron's personal suite was enormous: three interconnected rooms that could have housed a small family comfortably. The main chamber where he stood was dominated by a massive four-poster bed with heavy velvet curtains. Thick rugs covered most of the stone floor, their patterns faded but still visible — intricate geometric designs in blues and golds that must have once been stunning. The furniture was dark, heavy wood, elaborately carved with motifs that seemed to tell stories he didn't quite recognize.

A door on the left led to what Malachi had called the "washing chamber," which… turned out to be surprisingly sophisticated for a medieval fantasy castle. There was a large copper tub, already filled with water that steamed gently — apparently the servants, or Malachi himself, had prepared it in anticipation of his return, though he'd never heard or seen anyone do it. The water was heated by some kind of magical mechanism built into the floor beneath the tub: a series of carved runes that glowed faintly red and emanated a gentle, consistent warmth.

Some kind of applied magic? Impressive!

There were also pitchers of cold water for adjusting temperature, soft cloths for washing, and several bars of soap that smelled faintly of lavender and something else, something earthy and herbal that he couldn't quite identify.

Cornelius stripped off the ruined suit with relief, letting the expensive fabric fall to the floor in a heap. He'd paid three thousand dollars for that suit. It had been custom-tailored by a tailor in the Garment District who'd taken measurements with the precision of a surgeon. The material was from Italy, the stitching was perfect, the fit had been impeccable.

And now it was garbage.

Destroyed in a single day of walking through alien terrain in shoes designed for boardrooms, not meadows and forests and blighted fields.

There was probably a metaphor somewhere in that. Something about how the trappings of his old life were useless here, how the armor he'd worn in corporate America provided no protection in this new reality.

But he was too fucking tired to try to work out the symbolism.

…

The bath was glorious!

He sank into the hot water with a groan that was almost embarrassing in its intensity, feeling the heat seep into muscles he didn't know he'd tensed. The warmth was perfect, and the magical heating mechanism kept it consistent even as he settled in.

He scrubbed himself thoroughly, watching the water turn progressively darker as days' worth of dirt and sweat and grass stains and fear and exhaustion dissolved away. His hands were scratched from pushing through underbrush. His feet were blistered from the walking. His shoulders ached from tension he'd been carrying since… well, ever since he could remember, actually.

The water couldn't fix any of that, not really. But it could make him feel human again. Clean. Civilized. Ready to face whatever came next.

He stayed in longer than he probably should have, letting his mind wander, processing everything that had happened. The poker game. Mr. Ash. The impossible new world. Vionica and her cheerful, unrepentant manipulation. Malachi and his dry recitation of past horrors. Griswold and his polished torture implements. Seraphina's bitter voice through the door, two hundred years of despair compressed into a few bitter sentences.

And Anya. Anya with her bruised face and her large storm-gray eyes and her refusal to be broken.

Finally, reluctantly, he dragged himself out of the tub.

He dried himself with towels that were fluffy and surprisingly soft, worn smooth by years of use, and padded barefoot into the adjacent room.

The walk-in closet was the size of his Manhattan bedroom. Even larger, maybe! The walls were lined with wardrobes and shelves, all of them full of clothing that must have belonged to the previous Barons. Most of it was elaborate formal wear that looked like it weighed fifty pounds — doublets with silver embroidery, cloaks lined with fur, hats with feathers that looked ridiculous to him, even on the wooden stands that held them.

There was hunting attire, complete with actual silver buttons and leather patches and elaborate stitching.

There were casual clothes that were disturbingly stained with substances Cornelius refused to think too hard about.

There were robes that looked like they belonged in a wizard's tower.

There were even a few items that seemed to be outright costumes. A jester's outfit. A set of armor that looked far too ornate to be functional.

Cornelius poked through the options with growing dismay. He needed something that wouldn't make him look ridiculous, that would be comfortable enough to walk in, that would be appropriate for talking to villagers who were starving and desperate and had every reason to distrust nobility.

But everything here screamed "oppressive noble," "decadent aristocrat," or simply "person who has never done a day of manual labor in their life."

Finally, after nearly twenty minutes of searching, he found a combination that he thought might work.

It was in the back of one of the wardrobes, as if someone had deliberately hidden it away or forgotten it existed. The outfit was simpler than most of the others, less ostentatious, and it looked like it had been made for someone who actually expected to move around rather than pose in front of mirrors.

Dark trousers made of heavy wool: well-tailored but practical. They were slightly too large in the waist — the previous owner had apparently been significantly broader than Cornelius — but there was a leather belt hanging nearby that would easily solve that problem.

A white linen shirt with simple stitching and no elaborate embroidery, just clean lines and good fabric.

A dark vest in a deep charcoal gray, fitted but not restrictive, with simple buttons made of horn rather than silver or gold.

And boots.

Real boots, not the silly decorative things most of the outfits came with. No, these were sturdy leather, well-made, broken in enough to be comfortable but not so worn as to be falling apart. They, too, were slightly too large — he'd have to wear them with thick socks — but they'd work!

He dressed carefully, taking his time, adjusting everything until it fit as well as it was going to. The clothes felt strange after a lifetime of modern fashion, but…

But they were comfortable in their own way, and, when he looked at himself in the full-length mirror that stood in one corner, he had to admit he looked... appropriate.

Not like a corporate associate forced into historical cosplay.

But like someone who might actually belong in this world; who might actually be the Baron of the Vespertine March.

The vest in particular was nice. It fit well across the shoulders, emphasized a frame that had gotten a bit soft during the long hours at his desk but was still basically trim. The dark colors suited him, made him look more serious, more substantial. He looked, he realized with some surprise, like someone you might trust with responsibility. Like someone who might actually have a plan.

Even if "the plan" was "go to Costco and buy a few tons of rice."

Cornelius took one last look at himself in the mirror, squared his shoulders, and headed for the door.

It was time to find Anya.

 

[Superstes]

Finding Anya turned out to be easier than he'd expected.

Partly because Malachi materialized out of the shadows as Cornelius was making his way through the castle's labyrinthine corridors, causing him to jump and nearly shout in surprise.

"My Lord," the ancient butler said in his dry, papery voice. "I noticed you had washed and changed. Will you be requiring dinner? The kitchens are, admittedly, rather bare, but I believe we could manage a simple meal."

"I — no, thank you, Malachi. I'm actually looking for—" Cornelius paused. Was asking about her going to cause problems?

But then he remembered: he was the Baron. He didn't need to hide what he was doing or who he was talking to.

"I'm looking for a woman named Anya," he said, trying to project confidence. "You know, from the village? She was the one I released from the dungeon earlier."

Something that might have been approval flickered across Malachi's weathered features.

"Ah. Yes. I believe the young lady returned to Thornhaven immediately upon her release. You would have seen the village already, of course. It is approximately a twenty-minute walk down the main path from the gates. As it is getting late, I can provide you with a lantern if you wish -- though the moonlight should be adequate for navigation."

"Thank you, Malachi. A lantern would be great."

The butler produced one seemingly from nowhere — Cornelius was starting to suspect that the Spirit of the Castle had access to either teleportation or some kind of pocket dimension for storing useful objects — and handed it over. The lantern was a simple iron-and-glass construction, heavy and practical, with a thick candle inside that burned with a steady, warm light.

"If I may offer advice, my Lord?" Malachi said, his voice carefully neutral. "The villagers are... wary of Barons. Understandably so, given the history. They will not welcome you with open arms simply because you released a prisoner. Trust must be earned, and that process is slow. I recommend patience and consistency rather than grand gestures."

"I'll... keep that in mind," Cornelius said, meaning it. "Thank you, Malachi."

The butler inclined his head and dissolved back into shadows, leaving Cornelius alone with his lantern in the vast, echoing corridor.

The walk from the Keep back to the village took longer than twenty minutes. Either Malachi's sense of time was warped by centuries of service, or he measured distance differently than modern people did, or Cornelius was just walking slower than expected while carrying a lantern and trying not to trip on the uneven path.

The path itself was ancient, flagstones worn smooth by centuries of feet walking back and forth between castle and village. In places, the stones had cracked or broken, and hardy weeds had forced their way through the gaps, creating small obstacles that were easy to miss in the dim light.

The fields on either side of the path were barren. Worse than barren, in fact: they were twisted, corrupted, wrong in ways that made Cornelius's eyes hurt if he looked at them too long. The few plants that survived were blackened, skeletal things that seemed to writhe slightly in the breeze, as if in pain. The soil itself looked sick, covered in patches of that same strange, slimy corruption he'd seen in the forest stream — a dark, oily substance that gleamed wetly in the moonlight and smelled of rot and chemicals and something else, something that his brain identified as "wrong" even though he couldn't have explained why.

This was what Baron Alaric had done. This was the price the land paid for one man's extraordinary prosperity. Every ounce of his good fortune had been borrowed against the health of this soil, of these fields that should have been golden with grain, of this earth that should have been rich and fertile and life-giving.

It was theft on a metaphysical level. Stealing from the future to pay for the present. Like taking out an adjustable-rate mortgage with predatory terms, enjoying the low initial payments while the balance ballooned exponentially, until -- eventually -- the whole thing collapsed under the weight of accumulated interest.

Except in this case, it wasn't a house that got foreclosed. It was an entire land, and its population, that paid the price.

The village itself appeared gradually as Cornelius crested a small rise in the path. At first, it was just a cluster of lights in the darkness — warm orange glows from windows and lanterns that looked small and fragile against the vast indigo sky. Then, as he got closer, the details emerged.

Thornhaven was a collection of perhaps forty or fifty structures clustered around a central square dominated by a questionably-smelling well. The buildings were in various states of decay: thatch roofs patched with whatever materials could be scavenged (like scraps of cloth, pieces of wood, and what looked like flattened tin cans -- though that couldn't possibly be right because this was a medieval fantasy land... or was it?), walls reinforced with loose wood and stone, doors hanging crooked upon broken hinges or missing entirely.

A few of the structures showed signs of recent fire damage, the blackened timbers stark against the weathered wood of the surrounding structures. Cornelius wondered if that had been Baron Thaddeus's doing — had he tried to burn people out of their homes during his hunting games? Or had these been accidents, fires started by people too exhausted and hungry to maintain their hearths properly?

But despite the late hour, despite the obvious poverty and exhaustion that hung over the place like a shroud, the village was alive with activity. Torches and lanterns burned in the square, casting pools of warm, flickering light against the surrounding darkness. People moved between the buildings with dignity and purpose.

There were perhaps twenty-five or so people visible in the square. Men and women of various ages, all of them thin (some painfully more than others). All of them were dressed in rough, patched clothing that had been mended so many times the original garments were almost unrecognizable. Nevertheless, they were moving, working, talking to each other in low voices.

Organizing something.

And in the center of it all, illuminated by the largest bonfire, was Anya.

She'd changed since he'd seen her in the dungeon. Someone had found her cleaner clothes, still rough-spun and patched -- the kind of working clothes that people wore when they couldn't afford to own multiple outfits -- but at least not falling apart. Her tunic was a faded blue, one that might have once been bright but was now the color of old denim, worn soft by years of washing. Her trousers were brown, tucked into boots that were worn but functional.

Her dark mahogany hair had been pulled back into a loose braid that hung over one shoulder, revealing the strong lines of her face and making the ugly bruise on her cheek stand out even more starkly against her clean skin. She'd washed away the dried blood and dirt, and in the firelight, with her storm-gray eyes reflecting the flames, she was genuinely striking.

Not beautiful in the conventional sense, not in the way his Amelia had been beautiful — all carefully maintained perfection, expensive cosmetics, designer clothes, the kind of beauty that required money and leisure time and access to the right products. No, her beauty was different. Harder. And somehow more real for it.

Anya's beauty was in the strength of her jawline, in the fierce intelligence in her eyes, in her casual confidence -- the way she held herself like someone who'd never learned to be ashamed of taking up space. She had a certain aura of proud dignity about her, one that poverty and hardship hadn't managed to extinguish. She commanded attention without trying, without using any of the tricks that people used in boardrooms and courtrooms to project authority.

She was speaking to a group of villagers, a dozen men and women of various ages, all of them listening with the focused intensity of people receiving orders from a trusted commander. Her voice carried across the square, clear and strong despite the roughness he'd heard back in the dungeon.

"—need to move what's left to the west cellars," she was saying, gesturing with her hands. "They're drier, yeah? Less chance of rot or vermin getting in. And we split everything into equal shares — don't care who's stronger or who thinks they deserve more! Everyone gets the same! Let's make it last as long as we can."

There was no hesitation in her voice, no uncertainty. This was someone who'd led before, who'd made hard decisions and lived with the consequences. Someone people trusted enough to follow even when the situation seemed hopeless.

One of the men in the group — an older man with a graying beard and shoulders that suggested he'd once been much larger before hunger had whittled him down — spoke up.

"And what of the Baron? The new one. You think he's really different like you said? Think he'll help?"

Anya's expression flickered — something between hope and caution. "Don't know yet," she said honestly. "He let me go when he didn't have to. Talked different than the others. But talk's cheap, and we've been fooled before. So we plan like we're on our own, yeah? We don't sit around waiting to be rescued. We take care of ourselves. Same as always."

"But what if he does help?" This came from a younger woman, maybe early twenties, with a baby on her hip. The child was thin, too quiet, the kind of worrying quiet that suggested it didn't have the energy to cry.

"Then we're grateful and we take it," Anya said firmly. "Pride's a luxury we can't afford. If he offers help without strings, we take the help. We feed our kids. We get strong enough to work on fixing things proper-like. But we stay smart, yeah? We don't get dependent. We don't forget that we saved ourselves for years without no Baron giving a shit about none of us! We'll just... see what happens."

Cornelius stood at the edge of the square, listening. Something in his chest tightened at her words, at the way she was trying to protect her people from disappointment while still leaving room for the possibility that things might actually improve.

He must have made some sound, or maybe just moved in a way that caught the light, because Anya's head snapped around suddenly, her eyes finding him immediately in the darkness.

The effect on the crowd was immediate and dramatic. The murmur of conversation died instantly, replaced by a thick, heavy silence. Every face turned toward him, every eye locked onto the figure in well-made clothing standing at the edge of their firelight.

He could feel their fear.

Their hostility.

Their desperate hope warring with their hard-earned cynicism. To them, he was The Baron —the symbol of their oppression, the latest in a long line of narcissists, incompetents, and monsters alike who'd used them, abused them, hunted them, or left them to starve while living in luxury up at the Keep.

The fact that he'd released Anya from the dungeon was a point in his favor. But it was only a single point against what was probably decades or even centuries of brutal pattern recognition. His singular instance of kindness could have been a trick. A setup for some elaborate cruelty that would hurt even more because they'd dared to hope.

Several people shifted their weight, preparing to run. An older man placed himself protectively in front of the young woman with the baby. A teenage boy's hand moved toward something at his belt — probably not a serious weapon, exactly, but maybe a small knife or other tool that could serve as a weapon if needed.

Cornelius took a breath and stepped forward into the firelight, his hands raised in what he hoped was a universal gesture of peaceful intent.

"I'm looking for Anya," he said, keeping his voice calm, non-threatening, the same tone he'd used in mediation sessions when everyone was on edge and any aggressive move would blow up the whole negotiation. "I want to talk to her."

For a long moment, no one moved. The villagers looked to Anya, clearly awaiting her signal, ready to follow whatever lead she gave. Fight or flight, their bodies were primed for either, all of them coiled tight with tension.

Anya studied Cornelius with her sharp, analytical eyes, her expression cycling through surprise and calculation. She was assessing him, weighing what his presence meant.

Trying to decide if this was danger or opportunity.

Then she said something that surprised him: "Everyone, go home."

Her voice held absolute authority, the kind that came from proven leadership rather than granted title. The kind that said I've earned your trust through actions, not words, and when I tell you to do something, it's because I've thought it through and I'm doing what's best for everyone.

"Get what sleep you can," she continued, her tone firm but not harsh. "We start moving the stores at first light. Need everyone fresh for that, yeah? It's hard work and we can't afford mistakes."

Some of the villagers hesitated, their eyes moving between Anya and Cornelius, clearly torn between following her orders and their instinct to protect her from potential danger.

"Go," she said more firmly, her voice taking on an edge. "Don't worry, I've got this. You really think I can't handle one soft noble who probably never threw a punch in his entire life?"

That got a few nervous chuckles, though the laughter was thin and uncertain. Slowly, reluctantly, they dispersed. But not before Cornelius caught several dark, warning looks thrown his way. The message was clear: If you hurt her, we'll find a way to make you pay. Your position and power and magic be damned.

Within moments, he and Anya were alone in the square, the bonfire crackling between them: just fire and darkness and two humans trying to understand each other.

Anya crossed her arms, her stance wide and balanced, ready to fight or flee at a moment's notice. She didn't look defeated or grateful or any of the things he might have expected from someone who'd just been rescued from a torture chamber. She looked... dangerous. Like a wolf that had been caged briefly and released, but was still a wild animal.

"You got some balls, I'll give you that much," she said, her voice rough-edged and direct in a way that suggested she'd never learned — or never bothered with — the kind of polite, circumspect way of speaking that was common in more privileged society. "Coming down here at night. And alone, to boot! Many of the Barons before you never even saw the villages except from horseback when they were hunting. And Baron Willem? He always sent guards if he wanted something. Never came himself."

She paused, considering. "Not... that he could have made the trip so easily with that bulk of his."

"Well, I'm not most Barons," Cornelius said, and even to his own ears it sounded inadequate, hollow -- a bit like one of his Fathers' campaign slogans.

"Yeah, so you say."

She tilted her head, the firelight catching the planes of her face, turning her into a study in light and shadow — the dark purple-black bruise on one cheek, her eyes reflecting flames, her expression skeptical but not entirely closed off.

"But words are cheap as dirt, yeah? And trust? Trust costs more than I got to spend. So let's cut the shit, Baron. Why don't you tell me what you really want. Why are you here? What do you think I can do for you?"

There was a challenge in her voice, a test.

She was waiting for him to make demands, to reveal the ulterior motive, to prove that he was just like all the others — that the release from the dungeon had been manipulation, that there was always a price, always an angle, always something he wanted that he'd try to take from her.

Instead, Cornelius did something that clearly surprised her: he sat down.

Right there on the cobblestones, in his borrowed noble's clothing, next to the bonfire. He lowered himself to the ground with none of the hesitation or concern for dignity that a real noble would have shown: just sat down cross-legged like they were camping or having a picnic, and looked up at her.

"I want... to understand," he said simply, honestly, in the same tone he'd have used in an initial client consultation back when he'd been a real lawyer with a real practice. "I want to know what the people here actually need. Not what I think you need or what some abstract economic theory says you should need, but what you actually need. I need to understand how many people there are. What the specific problems you are facing are. I need the details. The stuff that actually matters when you're trying to figure out solutions."

He gestured to the space across from him on the other side of the bonfire.

"And... I'd really appreciate it if you could sit down and explain all of it to me. Because right now, I am completely clueless. I am not even from this world, Anya. And now, suddenly, I've obtained this power I don't understand, over people I don't know, in a situation I barely get even the basics of. And making decisions from that position — from ignorance pretending to be knowledge — well, that's how you make everything worse instead of better."

Anya stared at him for a long moment, her expression cycling through suspicion, confusion, and what might have been the very beginning of reluctant respect.

"You talk all weird," she said finally, bluntly, but there was curiosity in her voice rather than hostility. "Not like a noble. Not like anybody I ever met. All those big words strung together like you're reading from a book nobody else can see."

Cornelius smiled slightly.

"I'm not a noble. Where I come from, I was a lawyer. That's someone who..." He paused, trying to think of how to explain it in terms that might make sense to her. "Someone who... argued about what rules meant. Who read complicated documents and looked for problems. Who tried to figure out what people really wanted underneath what they said they wanted, so trade deals could actually work instead of falling apart."

"Huh."

Anya considered this, her head tilted. Then, slowly, like she was making a decision that might come back to bite her but was worth the risk, she followed his lead, sitting down beside him next to the fire.

"So you want information," she said slowly, working through it. "Want me to tell you about stuff. Why? So you can..." She frowned, searching for the words. "So you can squeeze us better? Figure out exactly how much you can take before we all just die off?"

The bitterness in her voice was earned, Cornelius realized. Not paranoia but pattern recognition. Years — probably her entire life — of watching powerful people take and take and take until there was nothing left. Of seeing Barons extract every possible ounce of value from the population before moving on to the next source of exploitation.

"No," he said, meeting her gaze directly across the flames. "So I can help. Actually help. Not symbolic bullshit or empty promises or tossing you scraps and expecting gratitude. I am talking about real, practical, immediate help that addresses actual needs and makes lives concretely better in ways you can measure."

He leaned forward slightly, trying to project sincerity without being aggressive about it.

"Anya, I have resources. Access to things you probably can't imagine, things from where I originally come from that might not exist here. But resources without information are useless. Worse than useless, actually — they're actively harmful. I could show up tomorrow with ten tons of wheat and find out everyone here gets sick from eating wheat. I could bring farming equipment to a community that doesn't farm. I could solve problems that don't exist while ignoring the ones that do."

He saw her eyes narrow with interest despite herself, despite her wariness.

"What... kind of resources?" she asked carefully, her voice guarded but curious.

"Food," Cornelius said simply. "Lots of food. More food than you've probably seen in one place in your entire life. Food I can buy cheaply where I'm from and bring here by the ton. Enough to feed everyone in this village for months and months while we work on the bigger problems."

Anya's breath caught.

Just for a second, just a quick hitch in her breathing that she tried to hide, but he saw it. Saw the way her eyes widened fractionally, the way her hands tightened where they rested on her knees.

"Months of food," she repeated, her voice very carefully neutral, like she was afraid that expressing too much hope would make it disappear like smoke. "You saying that you can just... get that? Just, what, make it appear?"

"Not appear, exactly... I'd have to go get it. Transport it back here. It would take some time and effort. But yes, basically. I can get it." He held her gaze. "But first I need to understand what I'm dealing with. I need information. Real information, not guesses or assumptions."

He pulled his knees up slightly, settling into a more comfortable position.

"So help me understand, Anya. Please. Tell me about the Barony. About the people here. About what I can do to help."

She was quiet for a long moment, staring into the flames. The firelight played across her features, highlighting the sharp lines of her cheekbones, the shadows under her eyes.

When she spoke, her voice was softer, more tired, like she was letting down a shield she'd been holding up for so long that she'd forgotten how heavy it was.

"What you need to understand... there's three places," she said finally. "Three... groups of people, I guess. There's here in Thornhaven. Then, there's Ironvein up in the mountains. And Stillwater down by the river."

She picked up a stick from near the fire and began drawing in the dirt, sketching out a crude map with the practicality of someone who'd done this before, who'd planned supply routes or food theft runs or escape routes or any number of things that required visualizing geography.

"This," she marked a spot with an X, "is Thornhaven. Where we're sittin' right now. Forty-three buildings, most of them barely standing." She paused, her jaw tightening. "Hundred and seventeen people. Used to be way more, like four hundred maybe? Before the hunting. Before the hunger. Before people started runnin' away to other kingdoms or just... givin' up."

Cornelius felt his stomach drop. One hundred and seventeen people. That was all that remained of what had been a community of four hundred souls? A population reduction of over seventy percent through systematic abuse or criminal neglect.

"The land around here," Anya continued, her voice flat, reciting horror like a shopping list because to feel it too deeply would break her, "it used to grow everything. Grain, vegetables. The ground was good. Water was good. Everything worked right. We fed everyone, and even had extra to trade." She gestured at the blighted fields surrounding them with a sharp, angry movement. "Now? Nothing grows right. Soil's dead. Poisoned. We try planting and stuff comes up all... twisted. Can't eat it. Animals won't touch it neither — we had livestock once, but they all just... died screaming."

Her voice cracked slightly on that last word, and Cornelius saw her swallow hard, pushing down emotion that would make her vulnerable.

"We live on what's left in the old stores," she said, her voice steadier now, back under control. "And whatever we can get from the forest — mushrooms mostly, and the water plants from the cleaner streams. But it's not enough. It's never enough. We've been starving slow for three years now."

She moved her stick to another point on her crude map, further up toward where the mountains would be.

"This here's Ironvein. Mining town, built into the mountainside near the ol' silver mines. About sixty people there, give or take. Miners and their families, couple smiths for working the ore. They're tough folk — have to be to live up there."

"Are they starving too?" Cornelius asked quietly.

Anya shook her head, but it wasn't a gesture of negation so much as uncertainty. "Probably not as bad as us. They got mountain goats up there. Rabbits. Fish from the underground rivers. More variety, you know? And they're far enough out that the Barons mostly left them alone — not worth the effort to mess with folk who could disappear into mine shafts an' caves."

She frowned, staring at the X she'd drawn to mark Ironvein.

"But their water's bad. Same poison that's in our soil, it's in their groundwater too. It's making people sick — not killing them fast, but slow. I hear they lost a few kids in the last two years to... don't know the word for it. Wasting sickness? Where ya just get thinner and weaker and nothing helps?"

Cornelius felt cold. Some kind of chemical poisoning. Or some magical or metaphysical equivalent of it, anyway. It made some sense for children to be among the most vulnerable, their developing bodies least able to cope with... whatever was causing it.

Anya's stick moved again, down toward what Cornelius assumed was a river flowing away from the mountains.

"And this is Stillwater. It's a fishing village, couple hours' walk downstream from here. Maybe eighty people there."

"They fish?" Cornelius asked.

"Used to." Anya's expression darkened. "But the water down there, it's worse than here. Worse than anywhere! Whatever's poisoning everything, it all flows downstream and gets concentrated. The fish are all wrong now — mutated or something. Some are poison -- kill you if you eat them. Others are mean in ways fish shouldn't be. They lost three fishermen to attacks from catfish that grew huge teeth and started to hunt in groups like wolves."

She looked up from her crude map, meeting his eyes across the fire.

"That's us. Three dying groups of people. Maybe two hundred and sixty souls altogether. Maybe less." Her voice was hard, but underneath the hardness was grief. "The stories say, we used to be over six thousand two centuries ago. Six thousand people across the whole territory! The rest died off or ran away."

The weight of it pressed down on Cornelius like a physical thing. Just two hundred and sixty people. That was all that remained.

"What do you need?" he asked quietly. "Right now, immediately. What would make the biggest difference?"

Anya looked at him with those big storm-gray eyes, and he could see her struggling with herself — wanting to hope, terrified of hoping, not sure if expressing her needs would make her vulnerable to manipulation.

"Food," she said finally, simply. "Real food. Enough food so that people can stop thinking about their bellies all the time. So the kids can grow. So the sick can get strong. So we can start to fix things instead of just trying not to die."

She leaned forward, her voice intense.

"But I'm not stupid, yeah? I know that much food, that's worth more than we got. Worth more than this whole territory probably! So what's the price? What do you want for it?"

She paused, then added with brutal honesty: "I'll give myself if that's what it takes. If you want me for yourself, I'll do it. For the food. For the people. I'll do whatever you want."

The offer hung in the air between them, stark and painful. She meant it, he realized. She was ready to trade herself — her body, her freedom, whatever else he demanded — if it meant her people would have a chance.

The thought made him physically ill.

"No," he said firmly. "Absolutely not. There's no price like that! No debt, no servitude, no... no need for anything like that."

She looked suspicious, her eyes narrowing. "Nothing's free. There's always a cost."

"The... cost..." Cornelius said slowly, "is that I need you all alive. I need you healthy. I need you able to work with me to fix this place. And I need you to trust me, at least a little bit. At least enough that we can cooperate."

He paused, trying to find words that would make sense to her.

"Where I come from, we have this idea called 'enlightened self-interest.' It means that sometimes the best way to help yourself is to help other people first. I'm stuck here for a year whether I like it or not. I need this Barony to not be dying. I need the population alive and healthy enough to work, to rebuild, to help figure out how to fix the bigger problems. And I can't do that if everyone's dead or if everyone hates me because I acted like every other Baron who came before."

He met her eyes.

"So yeah, I'm helping you for selfish reasons. But the help is still real. The food is still food. And people still get to not die. Is that enough?"

Anya stared at him for a long time.

"You are a strange one..."

He could see her thinking, weighing his words against her experience, looking for the trap, the lie, the inevitable betrayal.

"If you're lying," she said finally, her voice quiet but absolutely certain, "if this is some kind of game — I'll kill you. Don't care about no magic or titles or demon deals. I'll find a way to do it."

"...Fair enough," Cornelius said, and found that he meant it. He offered her a hand in greeting.

"Let's be properly introduced. My name is Cornelius. Cornelius Vance."

She looked at the proffered hand for a long moment before seizing his forearm in what must have been a local custom.

"...Anya of Thornhaven."

They sat in silence for a moment, the fire crackling beside them.

"Alright, Cornelius Vance," Anya said. "What do you need to know?"

And so Cornelius began asking questions, and Anya began answering them, and slowly, piece by piece, he started to understand the full extent of the mess he was dealing with.