The wooden carriage didn't have suspension, or maybe it did and the empire just hated prisoners, because every rock on that muddy road felt like it was trying to relocate my kidneys straight to my throat.
Outside, the crowd was making that specific wet, slapping sound that only happens when a bunch of bored peasants throw overripe tomatoes at a wooden box, their screams about the "traitorous bitch" sounding exactly like the bleating of sheep waiting for the slaughter.
I didn't care about the tomatoes or the yelling, honestly; I was too busy staring at the neon purple screen floating three inches from my nose, which was written in a font that looked suspiciously like a corrupted version of Comic Sans.
The thing smelled like someone had forgotten a handful of cheap rubber bands on top of a hot router, a sharp, industrial ozone stench that made the back of my throat itch like I'd just swallowed a handful of dry glitter.
There was no friendly anime girl or a polite AI explaining the mechanics, just a block of jagged text that felt less like a tutorial and more like a collection agency notice from a bank you've been avoiding for six months.
[INFINITY GREED SYSTEM: Soul Synchronization 100%. Bloodline of Greed unlocked.]
The letters were actively vibrating against my retinas, leaving little trails of yellow after-images that made me miss the blue light filter on my old office monitor, even if it never stopped the migraine after a twelve-hour shift.
To unlock anything useful, the screen informed me in its ugly, glowing text, I needed Sin Points, which could be acquired through wealth accumulation, causing general ruin, or total domination of a region.
It was basically the exact same business model as the multinational corporation I used to work for back in São Paulo, just with more magic and less corporate sustainability bullshit in the company manifesto.
I tried to scroll down to see if there was a free trial or a welcome pack, but the system just gave a wet, static pop that left a metallic taste under my tongue, like I'd been sucking on an old battery.
"Enjoying the view, your highness? You won't see many tomatoes where you're going, just monsters that'll peel you like a banana before the sun even goes down," the guard on the left said, his voice a grating mix of bad tobacco and a desperate need to feel important.
He was leaning against the iron bars of the rolling cage, picking something out from between his teeth with a fingernail that had a crescent moon of black grease under it, looking at me with that classic small-man authority.
His armor had a patch of orange rust right on the shoulder joint that looked like a dried bloodstain from a distance, but up close, it just screamed that the imperial logistics division was pocketing the maintenance budget.
"You should really get that rust checked out on your pauldron before the humidity makes the metal weld itself to your collarbone, because that's a bitch to clean," I said, my voice sounding flat and bored even to my own ears, lacking any of the high-pitched screaming the guy was clearly hoping for.
"Besides, with what the empire pays a third-class escort guard, you probably can't afford the grease to fix it, let alone the tetanus shot you're going to need when the skin on your shoulder starts rotting off."
His greasy finger stopped halfway to his mouth, and his face took on that specific, blank look of a person who had a script ready in their head and just realized the other actor was improvising.
I could see the gears in his head grinding with the heavy, slow rotation of a rusted water wheel, his chest puffing out as he tried to find a comeback that didn't involve admitting his salary was garbage.
His partner, the quiet one with a nose that looked like it had been broken in three different bars, shifted his weight and stared intently at the muddy road behind us, clearly trying to pretend he hadn't heard me nail their financial situation.
It was the same look the junior accountants used to give me when I pointed out they'd double-counted the depreciation on the office laptops to hide their coffee expenses from the audit.
"You think you're smart, don't you? You're going to the Death Lands, girl. Nobody comes back from there, not even the mages," the guard spat, but the venom in his voice was gone, replaced by that defensive, whiny tone that people get when they realize they've been read like an open book by someone they thought was powerless.
I just shrugged, the lace on the shoulder of this ridiculous dress catching on a splinter in the wood and tearing with a tiny, satisfying rip that felt like the final thread connecting me to the Astrea family name.
"The mages probably didn't have an offshore account or a proper understanding of asset liquidation, so their survival rate doesn't really factor into my business plan for the quarter," I muttered.
The carriage gave a sudden, violent jerk that sent my forehead straight into the iron bars with a hollow clunk, the smell of burning horse fat and wet mud filling the small space as the driver slammed on the brakes.
Outside, the screaming of the mob had died down, replaced by a heavy, suffocating silence that felt thick enough to chew, like the air in a server room after the air conditioning fails in the middle of summer.
I rubbed the spot on my head where a bruise was definitely going to form, thinking about how I'd never filled out the health insurance form for the new fiscal year before Roberto shot me.
Through the gaps in the wooden planks, I could see the sky had turned a sick, bruised shade of magenta, the horizon completely swallowed by a massive chasm that looked like a jagged scar across the world's crust.
It didn't look like a natural canyon; it looked like someone had used a giant, dull excavator to scoop out a chunk of the planet and then filled the hole with the purple smoke you get when you burn plastic.
This was the Edge, the boundary where the empire stopped collecting taxes because the cost of sending collectors was higher than the revenue they could squeeze out of the local corpses.
The smell of ozone from the floating system screen was suddenly overpowered by something else—a heavy, sweet rot that smelled exactly like a bag of potatoes forgotten at the bottom of a pantry during a long vacation.
It was a physical mass of air that seemed to want to occupy the same space as my lungs, heavy and oily, coating the inside of my mouth with a flavor that reminded me of copper and old church incense.
The guards weren't laughing anymore, their hands white-knuckled on the shafts of their spears as they looked at the purple void like it was a boss they hadn't prepared for.
"Out. Now. Move your ass before I kick it out," the broken-nose guard said, his voice shaking just enough that the bravado fell flat, his hand trembling as he unlocked the iron cage with a key that looked like it had been chewed on by a dog.
They didn't drag me out with the cinematic violence I expected; it was more of a clumsy, awkward shuffle as they gripped my elbows with too much force, their palms sweaty against the expensive fabric of my sleeves.
I could feel their heartbeats through their thumbs, a rapid, panicky rhythm that reminded me of a pigeon trapped in an air shaft at the office.
I didn't bother resisting because there was no point in wasting calories on a struggle against two guys who were basically just low-level assets being used as disposal tools by the management.
Instead, I used the time to look at their faces, memorizing the specific shape of the broken-nosed guy's nostrils and the way the other guard had a mole right on his left eyelid that twitched when he was nervous.
I was cataloging them in my mind under the 'Future Liabilities' folder, right next to the guys who had handled the logistics for the failed crypto merger in my previous life.
We stopped at the very edge of the precipice, where the white marble of the imperial road just stopped and gave way to jagged, black stone that looked like it had been melted and then frozen mid-drip.
The purple miasma below was swirling in slow, heavy circles, like a bucket of paint that hadn't been mixed properly, completely obscuring whatever was at the bottom of the gorge.
The air was so quiet here that I could hear the guards' leather armor creaking with every breath they took, a rhythmic, annoying sound that was making my headache much worse than it needed to be.
"May the Holy Light have mercy on your soul, because the Emperor certainly didn't," the guard with the mole said, his voice sounding small and pathetic against the backdrop of the massive, purple abyss that was waiting to swallow me whole.
He gave me a shove that wasn't even particularly strong—just a nervous, quick push intended to get the job over with so they could go back to their cheap beer and low-paying shifts.
I didn't scream or flail my arms like a character in a bad soap opera; I just let the gravity take over, my heavy, lace-covered skirt blooming around me like a ridiculous, overpriced parachute.
The wind didn't whistle dramatically in my ears like it does in the movies; it roared with a chaotic, deafening frequency that sounded exactly like the background noise on a cheap bus ride back from the coast during a storm.
The purple miasma rushed up to meet me, its oily texture sticking to my face and hair instantly, filling my eyes with a burning sensation that made me regret not keeping my eyelids shut.
It was like falling into a giant bowl of warm, chemical soup, the smell of burnt rubber and rotten vegetables making me want to throw up whatever was left of that expensive mint tea.
In the middle of that chaotic, tumbling darkness, where I couldn't tell which way was up and my brain was actively trying to calculate the terminal velocity of a human body in a ball gown, a sharp, digital chime cut through the roar of the wind.
The neon purple system screen manifested directly against my retinas again, completely ignoring the physics of the fall, glowing with that same ugly Comic Sans-style font that I was really starting to despise.
[Starting Primordial Package. The Host wishes to unwrap the 10 Sinful Gifts before impact? Yes/No.]
I didn't even have to think about it; I mentally slammed the 'Yes' button with the same aggressive desperation I used to close pop-up ads on sketchy streaming sites.
The world didn't stop falling, but the air around me suddenly felt electric, a series of glowing boxes popping up in a cascade that filled my entire field of vision with bright, flashing prompts that looked like spam from a broken MMORPG server.
I tried to read them, but the letters were moving too fast, a blur of golden kaleidoscope symbols and cosmic descriptions that promised power, greed, and absolute dominion over the void below.
One of the boxes mentioned something about a fox, and another had a line about biological reconstitution, which sounded like something a pharmaceutical company would sell you for three times its actual value.
I closed my eyes as the first impact hit, not with the ground, but with a thick branch of some mutated, black tree that snagged the heavy lace of my dress with a violent, tearing crunch that sent a sharp pain straight up my ribs.
I bounced off the wood and kept falling through a tangled mess of branches, the world becoming a kaleidoscope of purple smoke and physical pain that didn't feel at all like a fantasy adventure.
My last coherent thought before my skull connected with something very hard and very cold was that I really should have asked for a parachute in the welcome package.
The darkness that followed wasn't the peaceful kind you get after a long day of working overtime; it was heavy and full of static, like an old television set that had been left on a dead channel after the broadcast ended for the night.
I could feel something small and warm curling around my neck like a heavy scarf, its fur smelling faintly of ozone and expensive perfume, but the interface was still there, flickering in the darkness of my eyelids like a neon sign in a rainy alleyway.
[Gift #1: Greed Bloodline activated.]
[Gift #3: Primordial Nine-Tailed Fox bound to Host.]
The system was still running its calculations, and for the first time since the shooting in the penthouse, I had the distinct feeling that the company was under new management.
The ground was cold and smelled like wet charcoal, a perfect, unmoving slab of nothing that felt a lot like the floor of my old apartment before I bought the rug Roberto ruined with his blood.
I didn't try to move my fingers or check if my legs were broken, because the data on the screen was much more interesting than the biological reality of my current assets.
There was a list of numbers scrolling up the side of my vision, a tally of resources and potential that looked suspiciously like a revenue projection for the next three fiscal quarters.
If the empire thought they were throwing me away like a bad investment, they clearly hadn't looked at the balance sheets for the Death Lands, because with the right amount of leverage and a system that didn't believe in corporate ethics, you can make a profit out of literally anything.
I let out a breath that tasted like ozone and purple smoke, my consciousness slowly drifting back to the surface as the little furry thing on my neck gave a tiny, vibrating purr that resonated straight through my collarbone.
The screen gave one final, satisfying ping that sounded exactly like the notification you get when a direct deposit hits your bank account at midnight on payday.
[Sin points accumulated from exile: 150. Welcome to the Death Lands, CEO Evelyn.]
I didn't open my eyes just yet, preferring to enjoy the dark silence for a few more seconds before the real work of liquidating this entire fantasy empire began.
The world outside might have been a mess of monsters and purple fog, but as long as the numbers on the screen kept going up, I was pretty sure I could manage the overhead.
The fox shifted its weight, a soft, crystalline tail brushing against my cheek with a texture that felt like raw silk and electric static, making me sneeze involuntarily and ruining the dramatic silence of the moment.
I opened my eyes to a ceiling of jagged, glowing crystals that looked like they'd been designed by a teenager with a massive budget for neon lighting, and groaned.
The first thing I needed to do was find a way to get some coffee in this place, because running a hostile takeover without caffeine is a violation of my personal labor laws.
I checked the system one more time to see if there was an option to change the font from Comic Sans, but the interface just gave me another smelling-of-burnt-rubber static pop that felt like a definitive "no" from the management.
I sighed, pulled a piece of torn lace out of my hair, and started looking for something I could use to write down a three-month plan on the cave wall.
If I was going to conquer this world, I was going to do it with proper color-coded macros and a solid understanding of supply chain logistics, even if the supply chain consisted entirely of monsters and purple smoke.
The silence of the cave was heavy, but it wasn't the lonely kind; it was the quiet of an office after everyone else has gone home and you're the only one left with the keys and the authority to change the locks.
I smiled, a small, ugly thing that felt tight on my new, unblemished face, and started looking for a sharp rock to begin the first draft of the empire's liquidation notice.
It was going to be a long quarter, but the severance package was looking better by the minute.
The glowing coin in the corner of my vision spun once, reflecting the light of the crystals with a metallic sheen that felt much more real than the world I'd left behind.
I closed my eyes again, just for a second, to let the system finish the background installation of the rest of the gifts before the next wave of monsters arrived to test the new company policy.
It was 9:28 PM according to my internal corporate clock, and the operations were officially underway.
The fox gave another soft, vibrating purr, its warmth the only thing keeping the chill of the death lands from sinking into my bones as the first screen of the empire's doom finished loading.
I was ready.
The market was about to experience a very hostile takeover, and fortunately for me, I had an infinite line of credit.
I took a deep breath of the rotten, plastic-smelling air and got to work.