The air in the crumbling cathedral didn't just scream—it tore itself apart at the seams as Libra’s true form—a pulsating horror of eyes and fractured bone—struggled to reconstitute itself.

  Ghost watched, unimpressed. With a flick of his wrist, the laws of physics themselves flinched. The reality around the monster shattered like a pane of stained glass, the pieces flying inward to force the abomination back to the ground, undoing its regeneration with absolute finality.

  “Enough.”

  Ghost’s voice was flat, devoid of anger or effort. It was the tone of a god commenting on a mildly interesting stain. “You are a symptom of this world’s disease. A particularly noisy one.”

  Libra struggled to kneel, his form shuddering. All his merchant's confidence was gone, replaced by raw, primordial terror. This was not a negotiation; this was a prey animal realizing the sky itself is its predator.

  “I… can serve…” Libra rasped, the words tasting like ash and blood.

  “I know.” Ghost began to pace, his boots crunching on the crystalline dust of shattered causality. "he lives in a world that still has a future. He was given everything I had to claw out of the dirt with my own broken nails.”

  He stopped, turning a gaze that had witnessed the death of stars onto the cowering creature.

  “I will give you a purpose. I will tear a hole in this rot and send you through. Your task is not to kill him. It is to make him know. Let him feel a hunter’s gaze upon his neck. Let him question every shadow. Let the dread sink into his bones.”

  “Do this, and I will not only spare your pathetic existence… I will grant you access to a world still ripe for the harvest. You can be a king there, not a scavenger in this graveyard.”

  “I… accept.” The creature’s voice was a desperate, broken thing.

  Only then did the pressure release. Libra was permitted to regenerate, his form knitting together under the silent, imposing judgment of his new master.

  Without another word, Ghost swatted his left hand through the air. The fabric of reality screamed and parted, peeling open a fissure that led not to another room, but to another world, glowing with sickening vitality. He didn't wait to see Libra depart. He simply turned and walked away, leaving the merchant to his mission.

  Once Libra had completely regenerated, he willed his form to contract and compress, shedding the overwhelming horror of his true form. The memory of a simpler existence, flickered and died in his mind. That creature was gone, lost to the rot.

  His monstrous bulk shuddered inward, pulling itself tighter until he stood, gaunt and towering. His very flesh flowed and knit itself into a coarse, dark robe that clung to him like a second skin, its folds and hood perfectly concealing the horror that was his true face and form. Somewhere beneath the nightmare, the stubborn, bargaining heart of a goat still beat.

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  Without a backward glance, he stepped into the fissure.

  The sensation was not of travel, but of being unmade and rewoven.

  He landed on soft, damp earth. And stilled.

  Above him hung a single moon. A calm, blue moon. Its light did not scrape at his mind. The air… he drew in a deep breath. It did not burn. It was clean, filled with the scent of living greenery and rain—scents that stirred a ghost of a memory he could no longer place.

  The lack of corruption alone made him feel clearer, stronger, more potent than he had in centuries. Here, the creatures would not be rabid things. Here, they could be clients. He could finally groom his power.

  But first, he needed to learn. Where was he? And, more importantly, who was here?

  He looked around, taking in the thick, lively forest. It was a cacophony of green, of shapes and smells that felt both foreign and deeply, instinctively familiar.

  Rustle.

  The sound of leaves shifting nearby snapped him from his reverie. Something was approaching. And the low, guttural murmurs drifting from its direction confirmed it—this creature possessed intelligence.

  It could speak.

  And that meant it could deal

  He followed the sound until he saw him: a lone elf, his face a mask of furious concentration as he tried to bend the arcane to his will. The energies shimmered around his fingers for a moment—a pale imitation of the effortless mastery his sister displayed—before sputtering into nothingness.

  "Damn this to hell!" The elf, his intelligence offering him no solace here, drove his foot into the dirt and collapsed onto the forest floor. He was smart enough to know the theory, to understand the how, but he lacked the raw, innate talent that came as naturally as breathing to her. He dragged a hand over his face, then fisted his silver hair in frustration, pulling at the roots before striking his own forehead with a muffled thud. "Damn it! Damn it all!"

  "I was born first!" he sobbed into the moss, his voice cracking with a bitter, scholarly jealousy. "The heir! I've memorized every treatise, decoded every theory! So why? Why can she command reality like a toy when I can't even make it listen?!"

  "MAKE. YOUR. CHOICE."

  The voice was like grinding stone. The elf jolted upright, panic flooding his system. Instinct born of intellectual curiosity overrode fear; a roaring ball of flame—a simple, intellectual Normal Magic spell—erupted in his right palm, casting frantic shadows.

  He peered into the darkness, his brilliant mind struggling to categorize the creature before him. It was a silhouette of wrongness. The night and the deep hood of its robe hid its features, but its proportions were a blasphemy against biology. Its head was too large, its limbs too long and spindly. In its pale, almost luminous left hand, it held a simple, ancient scale.

  His intellect told him this was an unknown, hostile entity. But his wounded pride and desperate envy screamed louder.

  "I-I..." he stammered, the fire in his hand flickering. He was a scholar, and this was a deal with a devil. But he was so tired of being second best. "I wish to be in touch with the arcane!" *I wish for the talent that was denied me! I wish to rival her!*

  The creature’s scale rotated with a soft, metallic click, until one plate faced the elf and the other faced its own chest.

  The elf’s side of the scale dropped decisively, tipping in his favor. It was a physical affirmation of his desire.

  The creature’s grinding voice broke the silence. “IN RETURN. I. SHALL TAKE. A LITTLE. OF. ALLELSE.”

  As the words landed, the scale shuddered and returned to perfect, ominous balance.

  The elf could feel it—a silent, metaphysical pressure awaiting his confirmation. He didn't know how much “a little” was. He didn't know what “all else” entailed. But in that moment, fueled by bitter envy and desperate hope, he found he didn’t care. The price was an abstraction; the gift was everything.

  “I accept.”

  “IT. IS. DONE.”

  The sentence hung in the air, final and absolute. And then, the creature was simply gone. Not a flicker, not a sound. It vanished as if it had never been there at all, leaving the elf alone in the silent, moonlit forest with the terms of his bargain sealed deep within his soul.

  The elf stood alone, the silence of the forest suddenly profound. A strange sensation began to bloom within him—a fizzing, electric clarity at the edges of his mind, as if a door to a vast and luminous library had been thrown open. The arcane. He could feel it now, not as a distant theory to be studied, but as a tangible force waiting for his command. A triumphant laugh burst from his lips, sharp and clear in the night. He raised a hand, and the air itself shimmered in anticipation. He had done it. He had won.

  It was only as he lowered his hand that he noticed the slight, almost imperceptible tremor in his fingers. A sudden, bizarre gap in his memory—what was the name of that foundational mana theory text he’d recited perfectly just this morning? The thoughts felt… slippery. He shook his head, dismissing it as adrenaline. The price was paid. The power was his. Nothing else mattered.