The rain fell like broken glass, slicing the decaying streets with an endless, bitter hiss. It was not the soft weeping of a merciful sky, but a violent deluge, relentless and cold, as if the heavens themselves had grown weary of humanity's sins and spat down their contempt.
Beneath the skeletal ruins of what was once Hallowind City's illustrious Highridge District, a boy stumbled, soaked to the marrow, his name stripped from lips that once sang it in reverence.
Royce Veldon.
Once, the syllables of his name dripped with envy, respect, and desire. Now they were a curse, a scorn, a bloody joke whispered in the damp alleys by hyenas in human skin.
He dragged himself forward, barefoot, the soles of his feet torn by shards of abandoned opulence — shattered champagne flutes, broken tiaras, diamond cufflinks trampled into the mud. His designer shirt clung to his starved frame, no more than a translucent rag now, the once-pristine white stained with soot, blood, and rain.
The echoes of his downfall still rang in his ears — a symphony of betrayal conducted by the very hands he once trusted. Laughter sharper than any blade. Fingers pointing. Eyes gleaming with the feral satisfaction of watching a golden prince tumble into the gutter.
"He deserves it."
"Rotten spawn of decadence."
"Strip him, break him, bury him."
The world that had once adored him had turned carnivorous.
A guttural sound tore from his chest, somewhere between a sob and a scream, but the city swallowed it whole, indifferent.
Royce clutched the rusted fence of a crumbling courtyard, coughing up blood and rainwater, each hack wringing him out further, as if his body could not bear to house his shattered spirit any longer.
He should have died that night —
— the night of the "Harvest Ball," when the chandeliers fell and the black masks revealed the grinning, fanged faces of his enemies.
The night when Celeste — the girl with starlight in her hair and knives in her smile — spat her love into the dirt before the watching crowd, before the families who had once bowed to the Veldons.
"You're nothing but a mistake, Royce." she had whispered into his ear, voice like crushed velvet, as she pressed the activation on the screen that ruined his life in a flicker of digital rot.
Now, he was nothing.
Not even a mistake.
Not even a rumor.
Just a breathing corpse, wandering the corpse of a city that had long since begun devouring itself.
Lightning split the sky in jagged, obscene laughter, illuminating a figure standing across the courtyard — cloaked, motionless, as if carved from the storm itself.
Royce froze.
The figure raised a skeletal hand, pointing directly at him.
A voice, low and rotted, slithered into Royce's mind — not spoken, but felt, like fingers threading through a broken ribcage.
> "You have been marked."
"You have been weighed."
"You have been found wanting."
The ground trembled. Beneath Royce's feet, the cobblestones cracked open, oozing black ichor that smelled of iron, rot, and ancient regrets.
He stumbled back, but the rain thickened, turning to a syrupy drizzle that clung to his skin, blinding him, trapping him. He gagged on the taste — something between burnt meat and forgotten prayers.
The cloaked figure did not move.
It simply waited.
And in his marrow-deep exhaustion, Royce understood: this was not death.
Death would have been a kindness.
This was an invitation.
To something older.
Hungrier.
Something that did not offer redemption. Only survival — at a price.
Trembling, Royce sank to his knees, the black sludge soaking through his ruined jeans, binding him to the earth.
He could feel the decision coiling around his throat like a noose.
Accept... and live.
Decline... and die forgotten, spat out by a world that no longer cared.
A broken laugh escaped his lips, tasting of blood and madness.
"What's one more scar?" he whispered to the darkness.
And as the clock tower in the distance struck midnight — its sound twisted, gnarled, like a scream too old to die — Royce Veldon stretched out his hand toward the figure.
The pact was sealed.
The first true scar was carved, unseen, into the ruins of his soul.
And the city, hungry and cruel, smiled.
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