Dante had made a critical mistake.

Not by taking the contract. That had been reckless, sure, but recklessness had always been a currency he could trade in. Not by touching the blood. That had been instinct, an action taken before his brain could scream at him to stop. Not even by trying to outmaneuver the faceless thing in a suit, because stupidity masquerading as cleverness was practically his defining trait.

No, his mistake was something far worse. He had assumed he still had time.

The second the system screen flashed red, something unseen and awful latched onto him. Not a physical force, not something he could brace against or fight—just a shift, a silent and absolute adjustment of reality itself. It was like standing on solid ground only to realize the earth beneath his feet had never been solid at all. Like something vast and invisible had just remembered he existed.

The chains weren’t metaphorical. He could feel them now, wrapping deep around his ribs, their weight pressing down—not heavy, not yet, but undeniable. The enforcer did not advance. It did not need to. Dante was no longer some free-roaming idiot stumbling into trouble. He was claimed.

The debt was coming due.

His pulse hammered against his ribs, too loud, too fast. He took a slow step back, testing, searching for a crack in the moment. The enforcer watched. Another step. No reaction. Another. The door was close now, his exit just within reach—

The lights flickered. Not the casual, faulty wiring kind of flicker, not the dimming hum of a dying bulb, but something deeper, intentional. A brief, shuddering lapse in reality itself, like the world had blinked and, for a fraction of a second, forgotten to exist. The shadows stretched in ways they shouldn’t, angles twisting just slightly wrong, as if something unseen had brushed against the fabric of the room, testing the weave of it.

And then, something knocked.

Not the sharp rap of knuckles against wood. Not the impatient pounding of someone demanding to be let in. No, this was slow. Deliberate. A measured, calculated rhythm, a presence making itself known with eerie patience, as if it had always been waiting for the right moment to announce itself.

Not at the door.

Inside his head.

A pulse, a vibration against the inside of his skull, like fingers trailing along the edges of his thoughts. Tap. Tap. Tap. A sound without sound, a feeling rather than a noise, pressing against the fragile walls of his mind—not forceful, not aggressive, but testing. Pushing, probing, searching for an opening. A way in.

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A slow, deliberate tap. Tap. Tap. A rhythm that wasn’t his own, a presence that wasn’t just pressing against his mind but testing it, knocking at the walls of his skull like it was searching for a way in.

Dante’s breath stuttered. Not good. Not good.

The enforcer tilted its head slightly, a motion so smooth, so eerily precise, that it felt less like a natural gesture and more like the shifting of some well-oiled mechanism, an adjustment made to accommodate new data. It wasn’t just looking at him anymore—it was seeing something beyond him, something behind his eyes, past his flesh and bone and straight into the space where his thoughts should have been private. And worse than that, it was listening. Not to the sounds of the room, not to the shallow breaths Dante was trying to steady, but to something deeper, something only it could hear.

The silence stretched, thick and expectant, and then—finally, inevitably—it spoke.

“You hear it now.”

The words came with no inflection, no emotion, the precise and measured cadence of something that didn’t speak because it needed to, but because it was simply stating a fact.

Yeah. Yeah, he did. And he really, really wished he didn’t.

The air had thickened, congealing into something weighty and electric, like a storm about to break—but storms weren’t hungry. This wasn’t just a contract. Not just some arcane binding scrawled in ink and sealed in blood. No, it was something worse. Something bigger. A doorway, standing half-open.

And something on the other side?

It knew his name.

Run.

He bolted.

The door crashed open under his weight, and then he was moving, lungs burning, legs propelling him forward on sheer survival instinct alone. The neon-drenched streets of the city stretched before him, indifferent, unknowing—normal. A cruel joke, because Dante knew, with every fiber of his being, that nothing was normal anymore.

Cold air bit at his face. His breath came in ragged gasps. His right hand smoldered with every pounding step, veins burning beneath his skin like embers catching wind.

No plan. No backup. No clue what the hell had just happened.

The city stretched out before him in a blur of neon and shadow, towering structures casting jagged silhouettes against the midnight sky. Cars rushed past, their headlights streaking like comets in his periphery, their drivers oblivious to the thing clawing at the edges of his mind. Streetlights buzzed overhead, flickering in time with the erratic pounding of his heart. Every sound felt sharper, every motion too fast, too slow, like the world was shifting between frames of a film reel that refused to sync. He wasn’t just running from something. Something was keeping pace.

His right hand burned—not pain, not heat, something worse. The blackened veins writhing beneath his skin pulsed with a rhythm that wasn’t his own, the contract’s presence no longer content to lurk beneath the surface. The Ashen Hand had always felt like a weight, a quiet reminder of the debt he owed. But now? Now it was a brand, a beacon, a signal flaring in the dark. Something had noticed. Something had answered. He could feel it watching.

Dante ducked into an alley, bracing against the damp brick wall as he gasped for breath. The shadows here were deeper, thicker, pooling at his feet like spilled ink. He forced himself to listen, to push past the hammering in his chest—no footsteps. No sirens. No sounds of pursuit. And yet, the pressure in his skull only grew stronger. The knock had stopped, but the presence hadn’t left. It was here, just beyond the veil of perception, waiting for him to acknowledge it.

But one truth had shattered through the illusion of his old life, leaving nothing but the raw, awful certainty beneath it:

The world he thought he knew?

It was a goddamn lie.