Dante’s gut screamed run. His brain screamed you can’t. His mouth, however, ignored both perfectly rational responses and instead did what it always did in moments of existential peril—committed, with reckless abandon, to sheer verbal nonsense.

“Wait, wait, wait—there’s gotta be a clause for this!”

The enforcer stopped.

Not out of mercy. Not out of surprise. Not even out of the sheer audacity of Dante’s suggestion. No, it halted because he had said the right thing.

The air rumbled with a low, grinding hum, like the world itself was clearing its throat in grim amusement. The hollow-eyed thing tilted its head ever so slightly, a gesture that might have meant curiosity, might have meant judgment, or might have simply been the inevitable shifting of something whose very existence defied natural law. Either way—it was listening.

Dante’s mind reeled. Contracts were ancient things, older than steel, older than fire, perhaps even older than lies. If there was one immutable rule about them, it was this:

There is always fine print.

There is always fine print.

No contract existed without it, no deal was ever truly straightforward, and no entity powerful enough to enforce such agreements would waste an opportunity to lace its terms with hidden barbs. The trick wasn’t whether a loophole existed—it was finding it before it found you.

Dante’s mind clawed at the memory, dragging it up from the depths like a half-buried corpse, its details shifting and flickering, slippery as ink spilled across old parchment. The words had seared themselves into his thoughts from the moment he had—whether in desperation, recklessness, or some mixture of both—sealed the deal.

Take the burden. Bear the cost. No escape.

So simple. So cruelly efficient. No embellishments. No room for misinterpretation. A statement boiled down to its most brutal essence, stripped of any illusions of fairness or mercy.

His memory clawed at the words, the ones that had branded themselves into his thoughts the moment he had, in a fit of either madness or desperation, signed his soul away. Take the burden. Bear the cost. No escape. Simple. Ominous. Ruthlessly efficient.

But the system screen—the cold, unfeeling arbitration of his fate—had phrased things a little differently.

PACTMAKER CONFIRMED.

Contract Sealed.

Primary Ability Unlocked: [ASHEN HAND]

Status: ACTIVE

Cancellation: NOT PERMITTED.

Not permitted.

Not impossible.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

And if something wasn’t impossible, then it was just a matter of finding the right loophole, the right pressure point, the right word.

Dante exhaled slowly, forcing down the spike of fear clawing up his throat. Fear was useless now. Logic, deception, and blind, desperate bluffing were his only weapons.

“What’s the interest rate on this thing?” he asked, buying time.

The enforcer remained still, a statue carved from shadow and authority, its presence a weight against the very fabric of the space around them. The air itself thickened, pressing in like the atmosphere before a storm, waiting for the first crack of thunder. Dante could feel it—attention. Not the passive sort, not the casual gaze of something merely observing, but the full and unrelenting scrutiny of a thing that counted seconds, measured breaths, and calculated worth with every heartbeat. This was not a being that entertained conversation. This was an entity that dealt in absolute terms—values, exchanges, debts paid in things deeper than coin or flesh. And yet, it did not strike him down for speaking. That meant something.

Dante resisted the urge to swallow, to let any flicker of hesitation show. There was a game being played here, one he hadn’t realized he had already stepped into, and the only way to survive was to act like he understood the rules. Contracts, after all, thrived on perception. If you believed you had power, if you acted as though you had leverage, sometimes—just sometimes—the system agreed with you. He could feel the pulse in his wrist, the slow, smoldering throb of the Ashen Hand, the burden he had taken on. It wasn’t just power. It was proof. Proof that the contract had changed him, made him something worth investing in. And if he was an investment, then maybe—just maybe—he had bargaining power.

The silence stretched, taut as a wire, and Dante forced himself to break it first. “Because if we’re talking about compounding interest, I’d like to know if I should start panicking now or later,” he added, letting just enough dry humor creep into his voice to mask the sheer existential terror gnawing at his spine. Words mattered. Tone mattered. A man who knew he was doomed would beg, plead, grovel. But a man who thought he could still negotiate? He bought himself time. And Dante needed every second he could get.

The enforcer did not blink—because it couldn’t.

“Debt is non-negotiable.”

“But it can be transferred.”

He didn’t know if that was true. He had no evidence, no precedent, nothing but the gambler’s instinct that had kept him alive this long. But the enforcer had stopped. It had not refuted him.

Which meant he had struck something—not agreement, but acknowledgment.

The air changed. Heavy. Electric. Like a thunderstorm waiting to decide where to strike. The enforcer slowly clasped its hands. Waiting.

Dante’s fingers twitched. The contract had woven itself into his very being. The Ashen Hand was his to bear, his to suffer beneath. But what if, even for a moment, he could shift that burden?

He had no proof. No certainty. But instinct screamed now.

His right hand burned.

It wasn’t the dull ache he had felt since the contract took root—it was worse. A flashfire. Like he had just flicked a cigarette into an oil spill that had been waiting, begging, to ignite.

The blackened veins twisted. Spread. Lunged.

A pulse of something—power, consequence, rebellion—shot from his palm, tendrils of ash-laced energy snapping toward the enforcer’s outstretched hand.

For one glorious second, something impossible happened.

The enforcer recoiled.

Not in pain. Not in fear. But in something deeper—something fundamental. Its body flickered, its shape warping, fracturing like a bad signal, as if the system itself was rejecting the very notion of what Dante had just attempted.

And then—

DEBT TRANSFER FAILED.

ATTEMPTED EXPLOIT DETECTED.

PENALTY APPLIED: DEBT INCREASED.

Dante stared at the glowing words as his stomach plummeted into the abyss of his own making.

The enforcer straightened. Smooth. Unhurried. It adjusted its tie with slow, deliberate precision, the universal gesture of someone about to deliver very bad news.

Then it did something far, far worse than attacking.

It smiled.

"Clever. But unwise."

Dante had bought himself time.

But he had just doubled the cost.