The seasoned Pactmaker found him first.

Dante hadn’t even noticed the man’s approach—hadn’t caught the shift in air, the telltale scuff of boots against the Broker’s polished floor. One moment, he was hunched over the desk, pulse jackhammering in his throat as he stared down the glowing contract that sealed his mystery debt like a guillotine. The next, a voice—rough as old leather and twice as worn—murmured just behind him:

“You look like a man about to drown.”

Dante turned sharply.

The stranger leaning against a nearby pillar wasn’t the type to command attention. Weathered leather jacket, scuffed boots, a cigarette smoldering between fingers marked by time and bad decisions. He had the kind of face built to be overlooked—neither handsome nor ugly, neither young nor old. Just… there. Forgettable in every respect except for one.

His eyes.

Those were ancient.

Not in the way of birthdays and candles on a cake. No, this was something deeper. A weight, heavy and unrelenting, pressing into the lines of his face, burrowing into the set of his shoulders. The kind of exhaustion that didn’t just sleep off.

It was the look of someone who had seen too much, done too much, and carried every terrible decision like a stone in his pocket—too heavy to throw away, too familiar to let go. Not just a man who had played the game, but one who had stayed at the table long after he should’ve folded. There was no arrogance in his stare, no false wisdom. Just the quiet understanding of someone who had once been exactly where Dante was sitting now.

And that was the part that unsettled him the most. It wasn’t pity. It wasn’t scorn. It was recognition. The man knew the shape of Dante’s panic, could already predict the questions clawing at the back of his throat, the desperate mental gymnastics of someone who still believed he could win. He had seen it before, in younger men, greener men. He had probably been that younger man once. And judging by the dull resignation in his face, he had lived long enough to regret it.

The scent of burning tobacco curled in the air between them, acrid and familiar, as the man took another slow drag from his cigarette. For a second, Dante swore he saw something else in his expression—a flicker of warning. A silent don’t do what I did. But the moment passed as quickly as it came, vanishing beneath the kind of practiced indifference that only came with time.

The Broker spared the man a glance but said nothing. Pactmakers handled their own.

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Dante swallowed hard. “Yeah, well. Hard to stay afloat when someone shoves an anchor in your hands.”

The man exhaled a slow stream of smoke, watching him with something that might have been amusement—or pity. “You’re new. Fresh meat.”

Dante scowled. “Thanks for the pep talk.”

The man ignored the sarcasm, nodding toward the contract still burning on the desk. “Tell me, kid. You still think you can find a way out of this?”

Dante hesitated. The instinctive answer—the one he clung to like a life raft—rose to his lips anyway.

“...There’s always a way out.”

The man chuckled. It was a quiet thing, low and tired, like the sound of rust peeling away from an old gate. He took a long drag from his cigarette before flicking it into the dust.

“That’s what I thought, too.”

Dante frowned. “And?”

Wordless, the man rolled up his sleeve.

Dante’s breath hitched.

His right arm was no longer fully his. Not in any way that mattered. His veins had blackened, twisting up from his wrist like ink bleeding through paper. The corruption wasn’t just there—it had settled, carved into his flesh like living chains.

It wasn’t just a mark—it was a claim. A living contract, etched into flesh, a reminder that no matter how far you ran or how well you hid, the Pact always collected. The blackened veins pulsed subtly, like something slithering just beneath the skin, feeding off him. Not killing him. Not yet. That would be too merciful. No, this was ownership. A slow, deliberate erosion of self, the kind that stripped you down piece by piece until the only thing left was the Pact itself.

The corruption had spread far past his wrist, winding up his forearm in jagged, ink-like trails, curling around his elbow like a cuff. But the worst part wasn’t the sight of it. It was the way it moved. Not constantly—just in brief, unnatural shifts, like something testing its cage. The skin around it remained whole, unbroken, but the deeper Dante looked, the more it felt like staring at something that shouldn’t exist. Like the veins were just a doorway, and something on the other side was waiting for the chance to step through.

Dante flexed his own fingers instinctively, his hand still mostly his—for now. But he knew what came next. He saw it in front of him, mapped out in black veins and wasted time. A glimpse of his own future. He had told himself, more times than he could count, that he could control it, that he could stop before it got worse. But that was what every Pactmaker thought, wasn’t it? Right up until they couldn’t.

Dante recognized it instantly. Ashen corruption. Just like the creeping sickness already beginning to stain his own hand.

But this? This was worse.

It had spread. It had taken root.

Dante stared. His mouth felt dry. “How long?”

The man smirked, but it was a hollow thing—just the memory of what a smirk should be.

“Too long.”

He flexed his fingers, and the black veins pulsed, shifting wrong beneath his skin.

“Listen, kid. The deeper you go, the harder it is to leave. You think you’re walking free? That you’re gonna outplay the system?”

He shook his head.

“You’re not special. You’re just next.”

The weight of those words settled like a stone in Dante’s chest.

The man clapped him on the shoulder, his voice dropping lower. “Get what you need. Then get out.”

And just like that, he turned and vanished into the crowd.

Dante sat there, hands clenched into fists, staring at the space the man had just occupied.

Get out.

As if it were that easy.