The B1 level of the Somnium Sanctum smelled of damp stone, cheap aphrodisiacs, and the faint metallic tang of something slowly rotting out of sight. It was the gut of the great spire—the place where dreams were broken down, distilled, and refined before being served as delicacies to the gods above.
Soren sat on a rickety wooden stool, his slender fingers tracing the smooth curve of an ivory-colored fragment. High above him on a rotting mahogany shelf, a small violet vial of Ghost-Eye Herb caught the dim light—a quiet contingency plan he had been calculating for months.
To others, the fragment in his hand might have looked like discarded carving material.
To him, it was part of a spine—his mother's spine—dug out of a mass grave ten years ago and hidden ever since.
It was the only thing he had taken back from the world that had taken everything else.
Tonight, it was beating.
A slow, dull rhythm pulsed beneath his skin.
Thump.
Thump.
It did not take long for him to realize it was not his own heartbeat. The sound of heavy boots in the corridor approached in the same rhythm, step for step, as if the two had already been aligned.
The door burst open.
"Soren! You useless, pretty waste of skin—get up!"
Madam Mandragora stood framed in the doorway, her crimson silk dress almost luminous against the cellar's dim gray. She carried herself like a woman who owned not just the building, but every life inside it. Years ago, she had purchased what was left of a fallen noble child from the slaughter-pits. Since then, she had carved, trained, and refined him into something far more valuable than a corpse.
"A Tier-3 Executive from the Iron Syndicate just arrived," she said, her gaze dragging slowly over Soren's face, measuring, pricing. "He has a particular taste for damaged things. I told him I have something… exquisite."
She stepped closer and caught his chin between her fingers, nails pressing just enough to hurt.
"Why aren't you dressed?" she demanded. "Where is the Greek robe I bought you?"
Soren allowed his head to tilt under her grip, neither resisting nor yielding.
"The silk was torn, Madam," he said quietly. "I was mending it."
"Mending?" Her lips curved, but there was no humor in it. "You should be begging to wear it."
The blow came fast.
Not her palm, but the back of a heavy jeweled ring. The impact split the skin across his cheek, and a thin line of blood welled up, bright against the pallor of his face.
"Tomorrow," she continued, her voice lowering as she leaned close, her breath thick with wine and something bitter beneath it, "I'm transferring your contract to the Organ Harvest ward. They won't need your mind, Soren. Just your face… and your bloodline."
Her grip tightened.
"You're worth more in pieces."
The fragment in his hand burned.
Not with heat, but with pressure—like something unseen had begun to settle into place.
Mandragora had already reached for the glass decanter on the shelf when her movement faltered.
It was slight. Barely perceptible. But she did not bring it down.
Instead, she studied him.
"…No," she murmured.
Her eyes narrowed, and for the first time since entering the room, something like instinct replaced irritation.
"You're too quiet."
She took a half-step back, not retreating, but adjusting.
"What are you looking at?" Her tone changed—lower, sharper. "This isn't a place for dreaming. That look of yours… only people who are about to die have it."
The world broke.
Not gradually, but completely.
The stone walls dissolved into drifting fragments. The dim candlelight stretched into thin, trembling threads. The space between objects seemed to open, as though something beneath reality had been exposed.
Above Mandragora's head, a constellation took shape.
It was not stable. Its lines twisted and decayed, swollen with a kind of gluttonous gravity. Patterns of greed coiled through it, thick and suffocating, while darker currents gnawed at its edges.
And within that collapsing structure, there was a flaw. A narrow fracture, almost invisible unless one knew where to look. A place where everything would fail.
Soren leaned forward slightly, his voice barely above a whisper.
"I'm looking," he said, "at where you break."
Mandragora's pupils contracted.
"What—"
He pressed the edge of the bone into his own palm. A bead of blood welled up and fell.
The moment it touched the surface, something shifted—not in the room, but in her mind.
The cellar did not change. Yet she saw it change.
From the corners of her vision, figures began to emerge—small shapes dragging themselves out of shadow, their fingers pale and thin, their faces indistinct but terribly familiar. Voices whispered, layered, overlapping—accusations, pleas, names she had forgotten.
Her breath hitched.
"No—"
She staggered back.
That was enough.
Her heel found the slick sheen of lamp oil he had intentionally left unmopped hours ago. Her balance broke at the exact fraction of a second her mind violently tried to retreat from the nightmare.
Soren did not touch her.
He had already measured the angle of her terror, the decayed structural integrity of the shelf behind her, and the heavy iron tailor's shears resting precariously on the edge. He only shifted, one quiet step to the side, becoming the void she fell into.
Mandragora's hand struck the wood as she collapsed.
For a fraction of a second, clarity returned to her expression. She understood. This had never been an accident.
The impact came a moment later.
Wood cracked. Glass rattled.
A pair of long, rusted tailor's shears slid free and dropped. They did not need to fall far. They found the hollow of her throat cleanly.
The sound that followed was wet and unfinished.
Her body collapsed, crimson spreading outward, finally matching the silk she wore.
Silence settled over the room. Soren looked down at her without expression.
The fragment in his hand had changed. The jagged edge was gone, replaced by something smooth, deliberate—a flat surface like polished ivory.
Within his mind, an image formed. A solitary figure walking beneath a dim, unwavering light. No destination. No witness. Only the path ahead.
The Hermit.
There was no voice, no proclamation—only a quiet alignment, as though something that had always been his had finally turned to face him. And with it came a new way of seeing.
The dead did not vanish. They lingered, faint but present, like distant stars.
"Thank you for the lesson, Mother," Soren said softly. "In this place, silence is the only mercy left."
Bootsteps thundered in the corridor outside.
He turned.
High on the shelf, the violet vial rested exactly where he had left it. Ghost-Eye Herb. A compliance poison, used to dull resistance and blur perception. In sufficient quantity, it destroyed sight entirely.
Soren reached for it without hesitation.
There was no calculation left to make. Only recognition.
"Of course," he murmured. "Not a gift… a cost."
If one could see the structure of fate, then ordinary vision was not an advantage. It was a limitation.
He pulled the stopper free and tilted his head back.
The liquid burned as it touched his eyes—not with heat, but with a piercing, freezing intensity that seemed to spread inward rather than outward. Light shattered, colors collapsing into a single, blinding absence.
For a moment, there was nothing.
Then—something else.
A vast, pale expanse unfolded behind the darkness, threaded with faint lines and distant presences. Shapes moved beyond walls. Lives flickered through stone. The world had not disappeared; it had only changed its form.
Soren exhaled slowly.
He tore a strip of silk from his torn robe and bound it over his eyes, his movements unsteady in exactly the way they needed to be.
By the time the door burst open, his breathing was uneven, his posture collapsed inward.
"Mandragora! The Executive is losing patience—"
The Enforcer stopped.
Blood. A body. And in the corner, a boy clutching his face, his white robe stained, his sight concealed.
"They… they killed her…" Soren's voice trembled, fragile and unfocused. "I can't… I can't see…"
The Enforcer approached and lifted his chin, examining him.
The blindfold. The features. The bloodline.
The fear.
Something in his expression shifted—not to pity, but to valuation.
"A survivor," he said quietly. "A blind, high-blood survivor…"
A different kind of greed settled into his gaze.
"This just became far more valuable."
Behind the silk, in the pale geometry of his new sight, Soren smiled.
The hunt had already begun.