The skyline of Skylance City shimmered with its usual opulence—towers of glass and chrome reflecting the endless night sky, holographic advertisements flickering with the faces of social media icons and celebrities. In the highest penthouse of the tallest tower, Alastor Creed sat in his luxury suite, surrounded by the finest technology, sipping a glass of imported whisky that cost more than some made in a year.
The room was bathed in soft, ambient lighting, illuminated by a dozen holographic screens displaying the world at his fingertips. Stock markets, entertainment streams, personal feeds from millions of followers—his life was a curated show, every moment meticulously engineered to maintain his image as a god among mortals.
Alastor had mastered the game. He was a billionaire not because of luck or inheritance, but because of his ruthless intelligence and his understanding of one thing that everyone craved: attention. With an IQ that defied measurement and a heart colder than the steel of the city around him, he manipulated the world with the ease of a puppeteer. He owned industries, manipulated markets, and crafted a digital empire that left his competitors choking on his dust.
And tonight, like every other night, he was winning.
"Tell me the latest," he said, his voice a low murmur, his eyes scanning the screens. His AI assistant, Echo, responded with perfect efficiency.
"Stock holdings are up 12% after your announcement. The media push from last week’s assassination contract is still trending. Your latest live feed has gained over two million new subscribers in the past hour. The world is watching."
Stolen novel; please report.
Alastor leaned back in his chair, satisfied. "As they should be."
It was in that moment, as he reveled in his self-made glory, that he felt the faintest shift in the air. His senses, trained by years of paranoia and survival in a world full of rivals, tingled.
Something was wrong.
Before he could react, a figure materialized out of the shadows behind him, moving with deadly precision. Alastor’s eyes widened as he caught a glimpse of movement in the reflective surface of his window—an intruder in black, cloaked in near invisibility.
His body tensed, but it was already too late.
A thin blade pierced the skin just above his collarbone, sliding between bone and muscle with a surgeon’s precision. Alastor gasped, his hand instinctively reaching for the wound. Blood pooled between his fingers, hot and slick. He struggled to breathe, his mind racing as shock and adrenaline flooded his system.
The assassin leaned in close, their breath cold against his ear. "Even gods fall, Creed."
His mind screamed, every calculation firing at once, but none could change the fact that his life was slipping away. His vision blurred, his blood staining the pristine floor, and his AI assistant’s voice dimmed into nothingness.
The screens flickered, but instead of going black, they shifted, reflecting his own death back to him in real time. Millions were watching, their comments flooding in—a mixture of horror, fascination, and some even eager for the spectacle of his demise.
"Echo...," Alastor choked out, but his words faded into silence as his body crumpled, the world going dark.
His thoughts, once sharp and calculating, began to drift into an endless void. He felt the cold floor beneath him, the sound of his own heartbeat slowing, each beat farther apart than the last.
This was the end. He was dying.
And yet… it wasn’t.
As the last breath left his body, the darkness around him did not hold. Instead, a blinding light burst into existence, filling his vision. His eyes, once heavy with death, now fluttered open to the same soft ambient glow of his penthouse.
Again.