The question hung in the freezing, blood-scented air, rhetorical and cruel.
Lilith stepped around him, her movements making no sound on the slush-covered cobbles. She gestured to the corpse slumped against the brick wall—the man whose chest cavity was still steaming in the cold air, the bone shank protruding like a grotesque handle.
"Look at you," she cooed, her voice dripping with a mock reverence. "My knight in shining... wool. Saving the damsel. It's almost poetic, Thomas. Truly."
She leaned in, inspecting the spray of arterial red that coated the front of Brandt's tunic.
"Of course," she whispered, the playfulness vanishing into a flat, cold statement of fact. "It doesn't matter why you did it. Or who you saved. You still pushed the bone in. You still watched the light go out. You're a murderer now, just like me."
Brandt forced his heavy, gritty eyelids open. He stared at her.
She wasn't wearing the black dress.
She stood amidst the filth of the alley, dressed in the rugged, practical gear of a northern hunter. She wore fitted leather breeches, a heavy tunic lined with silver fox fur, and high, sturdy boots that looked ready for the deep snow. A cloak of white wolf pelt hung from her shoulders, pristine and unstained by the gore surrounding them.
It was a perfect, seamless integration into the setting. She looked like she belonged in Rimescar.
And yet, the reality of what she was—a Remnant, a Demon, a Ghost—made the disguise jarring. It was like seeing a shark walking on land in a tailored suit.
It was wrong.
Lilith caught his stare. She paused, bringing a gloved hand to her cheek in a pantomime of shy embarrassment.
"Thomas," she chided softly. "It's rude to stare. Haven't I told you? A gentleman averts his eyes."
Then, the mask dropped. The shyness dissolved into a sharp, preening amusement.
She stepped back and twirled.
The heavy leather creaked softly, the fur cloak flaring out. She rested her hand on the hilt of a short sword at her hip—a weapon that hadn't been there a second ago—and drew it halfway out. The steel hissed against the sheath. She slammed it back home with a sharp clack.
"Well?" she asked, posing with a hand on her hip. "What do you think? I thought I should dress for the... fieldwork. Do I look the part?"
Brandt didn't answer. He couldn't. His chest was heaving, his lungs burning with every shallow breath. The adrenaline was crashing, leaving behind a hollow, trembling exhaustion that made his bones feel like glass.
He just looked at her, his eyes dead.
Lilith's smile faltered. A flicker of irritation crossed her perfect features.
"Oh, don't be boring," she snapped, her voice sharpening. "I don't visit that often, you know. It takes... effort. You could at least try to be a good host."
She gestured expansively at the alley—at the dead slaver, the unconscious girl, and the blood that was slowly freezing into a dark, sticky glaze on Brandt's hands.
"Look at this," she urged, her voice dropping to a sultry, intimate whisper. "This moment. This... intimacy. It's just us, Thomas. Just us and the consequences. Can't we share it? Can't you feel the thrill of it, just for a second?"
Brandt looked at the blood on his hands. It was cooling, turning tacky. It didn't feel thrilling. It felt dirty.
"No," he rasped.
Lilith stared at him. Her eyes widened slightly, a genuine flash of shock piercing her performance.
"No?" she repeated. "Just... no?"
She laughed, a short, incredulous sound. She stepped closer, invading his space, the scent of sandalwood overpowering the copper tang of death.
"My, my. You have changed. Just a moment in this new skin, and you're already so... decisive. The man on the train tracks would have analysed the morality for hours. He would have wept."
She leaned down, her face inches from his, her grey eyes searching his.
"But this one... this one just kills. Luckily for you... that makes things interesting."
Her gaze shifted. Her eyes lit up, as if a sudden, delightful thought had just occurred to her.
"Speaking of killing," she hummed. "Did you get it? The payout?"
Brandt closed his eyes. The System text was still burned into his retinas, hovering in the smoke.
'Experience,' he thought, the concept tasting strange. 'I got experience. And a Level Up.'
It was absurd. It was gamification applied to murder. How was it possible? How could ending a life result in a numerical increase in his own existence?
"Stop thinking so loud," Lilith cut in, her voice amused. "I can still hear you, remember?"
Brandt opened his eyes. He glared at her.
"How?" he asked, his voice a rough croak. "How does it work?"
Lilith straightened up. She shrugged, a casual gesture that didn't quite fit the lethal surroundings.
"Honestly? I'm not sure."
She began to pace around the corpse, examining the angle of the bone shank with the eye of an art critic.
"You see," she said, her tone light, "I might have left out a... crucial detail. Back in the library."
Brandt stiffened.
"What detail?"
Lilith turned to him, her smile dazzling and entirely untrustworthy.
"That book I gave you," she said. "The one that unlocked what you call the System. It wasn't... strictly speaking... mine."
Brandt stared at her. The cold in his gut deepened.
"You stole it," he stated.
"Borrowed," she corrected cheerfully. "Permanently. But yes. Essentially, you are currently operating on stolen goods."
She stopped pacing. Her expression shifted. The amusement didn't vanish, but it cooled, hardening into something resembling caution.
"And the Owner..." she whispered, the word heavy. "He isn't very kind. And his followers? They are... devoted. And unpleasant."
She looked Brandt in the eye, her gaze intense.
"So, a piece of advice, Thomas. If you ever run into them? Don't talk. Don't negotiate. Kill them instantly. Or run until your heart explodes. There is no middle ground with them."
Brandt felt a wave of bitter resignation wash over him.
Of course.
It wasn't enough that he was trapped in a child's body in a frozen wasteland. It wasn't enough that a serial killer haunted him. Now, he was carrying stolen goods belonging to some entity called the Owner.
'Great,' he thought, the sarcasm a weak shield against the dread. 'Another variable. Another enemy I haven't even met yet.'
He looked at Lilith with pure loathing.
"You cursed me."
Lilith laughed. It was a bright, ringing sound that seemed to mock the very concept of consequences.
"Oh, stop pouting. It's worth it."
She gestured to the floating smoke text.
"Think about it. If the Owner guarded it so jealously... if he cared for it to that degree... it means it is powerful."
She leaned in, her voice dropping to a hiss.
"You should be thanking me."
She nodded toward the smoke.
"Go on. Imagine agreeing to it. I'm dying to see what happens to this broken little vessel of yours."
Brandt looked away from her.
[Level up Y/N?]
He hesitated for a fraction of a second.
His leg was screaming. His ribs were a cage of agony. His energy was gone, burned to ash in the fight. He was vulnerable.
There was no logic in the refusal.
'Yes.'
He mentally selected the option.
He felt... nothing.
Or rather, he felt the sudden, violent absence of sensation.
It wasn't warmth. It wasn't light. It was a glitch in the fabric of his reality.
In an instant, the pain simply... ceased.
The deep, sickening throb in his thigh vanished as if the nerve endings had been severed. The corset of fire around his ribs extinguished. The bone-deep exhaustion that had been weighing him down like a cloak of lead evaporated, leaving him feeling impossibly light.
It was jarring. It was unnatural. One moment, he was a broken thing, holding himself together with nothing but adrenaline and spite; the next, he was perfect.
He looked down at himself.
The blood—his own, mixed with the darker, cooling gore of the now corpse—was still wet on his tunic. The fabric was torn, revealing the skin beneath. The mud was still caked on his boots, heavy and freezing.
But beneath the gore, the skin was whole. The ugly, mottled bruises were gone, replaced by pale, unblemished flesh. The hairline fractures in his femur had fused without a scar, without a twinge.
He took a breath. His lungs expanded fully, deep and clean, without the sharp catch of a bruised intercostal muscle. His mana channels, which had been dry, aching, and dangerously close to rupture, were suddenly brimming with a cold, electric hum.
Brandt stared at his hands, flexing his fingers. The blood cracked as it dried, flaking off his knuckles. He stammered, his mind reeling at the implications.
This wasn't just healing. This was a restoration to a factory setting. It was a mechanic that ignored biology, time, and consequence.
His profiler's mind, always hunting for the advantage in the chaos, instantly weaponised the mechanic.
'I can bank this,' he realised, a cold thrill shooting through him. 'I don't have to use it immediately. In a future fight... I can wait. I can fight until I am broken, until my mana is dry and my blood is gone... and then I can activate it.'
It was a second life. A tactical nuke disguised as a level-up. A "Get Out of Jail Free" card written in the code of the universe.
More smoke curled into the freezing air, twisting and forming new letters that replaced the old text.
[Congratulations! You have levelled up]
[You have received one skill point]
[You have received a new status MP]
Brandt frowned slightly, his breath misting through the floating words. 'Skill point... MP...'
MP was obvious. Mana Points. A quantifiable metric for the mana he had been feeling blindly. It turned the vague hum in his veins into a fuel gauge.
But a skill point? Was it a currency to upgrade his abilities? To buy new ones?
He willed the status screen to appear. The smoke obeyed instantly.
[Name: Brandt Rimescar]
[Age: 9 Years, 9 Months]
[Level: 2]
[Health: 40/40]
[MP: 18/18]
[Skills:] [Silent Acquisition (Passive)]
[Titles:] [Curse of the Remnant]
[Experience: 0/20]
He felt a rush—a dark, addictive spike of dopamine. It was progress. Tangible, measurable progress in a world of chaos and pain. He wanted to explore it. He wanted to know what the skill point could do. He wanted to hunt more, to see the numbers climb higher.
But then, the smell of the alley intruded.
The copper. The rot. The steam rising from the open chest cavity of the man slumped against the wall.
He looked past the screen.
Alise was still slumped against the brickwork, a small, unconscious bundle in the mud. The red line on her throat was a stark, screaming reminder of how close she had come to the end.
The thrill died, replaced by the cold, heavy weight of reality.
He wasn't a gamer. He wasn't a hero. He was a brother standing over a dead body in a pool of freezing sludge.
He walked over to her, his boots splashing softly. He knelt, checking her pulse. It was strong. Her breathing was even, though shallow. She was alive.
'Luck,' he thought, the word tasting like ash. 'She was lucky.'
Was it luck?
He felt a prickle on the back of his neck. A phantom cold that had nothing to do with the weather. He thought of Lilith.
'Did she know? Did she... steer me here?'
The suspicion was a knot in his gut. Had she manipulated the timing? Had she distracted him in the keep just long enough for Alise to run? Was this whole scenario—the kidnapping, the fight, the kill—just a set piece she had arranged for his development?
He turned his head to look at her. He wanted to confront her. He wanted to scream at her.
She was gone.
The spot where she had stood, preening in her hunter's leathers, was empty—just wet cobblestones and shadows.
But her voice, a ghostly whisper, brushed against his ear one last time.
"I'm excited for our next encounter, Thomas. After all... isn't this fun?"
Brandt jerked his head toward the sound, but there was nothing there—just the wind howling down the alley.
He grit his teeth. He didn't care if it was fun. He didn't care if it was a game. He cared that he was alive.
He turned his attention to the corpse.
It stared back at him with glassy, shocked eyes. The bone shank was still buried in his chest.
Brandt felt a wave of nausea, but he pushed it down. He needed to be practical. He needed to be a cleaner.
He reached out and patted down the man's rags. It was a gruesome task. The wool was stiff with filth and fresh blood. He found a small pouch of copper coins and a single, tarnished silver piece.
He took them.
'Reparations,' he thought coldly.
He stood up and moved to Alise. He couldn't leave her here, and he couldn't walk into the keep covered in blood, carrying her while she was unconscious, without a damn good explanation.
He needed a narrative.
He couldn't be the hero who killed a man with a bone. That raised too many questions. It revealed his strength, his coldness, his Awakening.
He needed to be the victim.