Cities rot from the inside.
Not all ruin is rust and fire.
Sometimes it's paperwork.
Sometimes it's blood beneath the marble.
Sometimes it's the smile of a man who knows no one will say no.
But Ayla Serin did.
And she didn't smile back.
The old Baelridge Complex had been abandoned for 27 years.
Glass cracked. Elevators are dead. A top floor that had collapsed during a thunderstorm and had never been repaired.
Everyone knew something was wrong with it.
The last three developers who touched it either vanished or went bankrupt. The city had tried to demolish it. Twice.
Nothing ever worked.
They said the building chose who entered.
They said some never came back out.
Which is why, when Ayla walked through its front doors—alone, no crew, no cameras—the security guard simply looked away.
And when she came out two hours later, face streaked with ash, clothes torn, carrying a small child who had disappeared in 2006…
The city went silent.
She said nothing to the press.
Damian covered the legal trail.
The police didn't ask questions.
And three days later, Ayla Serin's name was on the title deed.
She paid one dollar.
The building was worth 180 million.
News spread fast.
A "nobody" teenager, barely out of school, suddenly held property in the city's core.
Her company, Noctra Holdings, appeared overnight with shadowy funding, no board members, and no digital trail.
People whispered.
Some said it was a front.
Others said blackmail.
The smarter ones said power.
But no one could prove it.
And within the month, the Baelridge Complex reopened. Fully restored. Modernized.
Clean.
Tenants returned.
No more screams in the stairwells.
No more windows that looked into the past.
For the first time in three decades — it was silent.
But not empty.
In the boardrooms of glass towers and steel desks, men noticed.
One man in particular.
Riven Sol.
The youngest real estate magnate in the Eastern Empire. CEO of SolGrave International. Called the "God of Glass" by rivals. Known for turning cursed land into luxury — and crushing anyone who challenged his bid.
He sat at his obsidian desk, sipping black tea laced with cinnamon, watching a silent video feed of Ayla walking through the Baelridge ruins.
He rewound it. Again and again.
Watching how the air warped around her.
How shadows didn't cling to her — they stepped back.
"She doesn't clean haunted buildings," he murmured. "She makes them loyal."
He smiled once.
The first true smile in years.
And said:
"I want her."
Meanwhile, Ayla was already building her next move.
She acquired three more buildings.
One belonged to a man who ran illegal human trafficking through his basement.
He vanished.
Another was home to a cursed piano that killed any child who touched its keys.
She played it. And wept.
The third was owned by a shell company linked to a well-known city councilman.
He had dreams for weeks about his dead sister until he signed the building over.
No one could stop her.
Because the spirits had begun to follow her.
Whisper in her sleep.
Warn her when someone lied.
Protect her from silent assassins that moved like smoke.
She wasn't just surviving now.
She was becoming a name the dead respected.
And the living feared.
But power attracts power.
And three nights after acquiring her fifth tower, Ayla was summoned.
Not by magic.
Not by spirit.
But by invitation.
A black envelope, slid under her door.
No return address.
Only three words, written in ink that shimmered like oil:
"Come see me."
And beneath it:
Riven Sol.
End of Chapter 5