Solarr spat. A thick, grey glob of phlegm hit the white marble of the Jade District. The taste of Draxus's life was still rotting in his throat—metallic, like licking a rusted battery. It didn't feel like power. It felt like swallowing a bucket of warm grease.
The iron coin in his palm wasn't just cold anymore. It was shivering. A jagged, electric vibration that traveled up his arm and settled in his teeth, making them ache with a dull, thumping hunger. The Bank was done with the scraps. It wanted a feast.
He wasn't in the gutter anymore. This was the District of the "Pure." Here, the air didn't smell like piss and charred coal. It smelled like lilies and expensive perfume. A mask. A thin, floral veil over a mountain of rot. The streetlamps didn't flicker here; they glowed with a steady, arrogant light that felt like a punch in the gut to every starving kid in the slums.
"Check your pulse, Solarr," he croaked. His voice sounded like dry gravel being crushed under a boot.
The target: Madame Valeska.
A parasite in silk. She didn't steal life with a knife; she bought it. A handful of silver to a desperate mother for a year of a child's "Potential." Then she'd sell that glow to some dying old fossil who wanted to feel twenty again for a night.
He reached the villa. Marble. White. Too clean. It made him want to vomit. The guards weren't thugs; they were statues in iron suits. Professional killers. They didn't spit. They just stared with eyes as dead as the Ledger in Solarr's mind.
"Invitation?" one asked. A voice like a machine.
Solarr opened his hand. The blue glow of the coin leaked out, lighting up the black circles under his eyes. "I'm the Auditor. Valeska's account is in the red."
The guard didn't move. He stepped back. Even the brainless meat-puppets knew when the Reaper was knocking.
He walked into the ballroom. A sea of masks. Fake laughter. Men and women draped in jewels, drinking wine that cost more than a tenement building. Debtors. Every single one of them. Breathing air they hadn't earned.
Valeska was at the center. She looked twenty. Radiant. But the Ledger behind Solarr's eyes saw the truth.
Age: 142 years.
Debt: 90 years of stolen youth.
She saw him. She didn't scream. She smiled—a sharp, predatory look. "An Auditor? So soon? I thought I had another decade before the Bank sent a collector."
"Interest rates went up," Solarr said. He could feel the hunger in his palm becoming a physical burn. "And the Bank is calling in the principal. Now."
Valeska sipped her wine. Her skin glowed with the stolen memories of a dozen orphans. "And if I refuse to pay, little ghost?"
Solarr stepped closer. The music died. The rich backed away, sensing the sudden, freezing drop in temperature. "You don't get it, Valeska. This isn't a talk. It's a liquidation."
He didn't wait. He slammed his palm onto the polished floor.
The marble didn't just crack. It screamed. A jagged vein of blue frost ripped through the stone like a bolt of dry ice.
Valeska dropped her glass. The wine hit the floor—a watery puddle that looked like sickly blood. She scrambled back, her silk dress rustling like the wings of a dying moth.
"Guards! Kill him!" she shrieked. Her voice was no longer velvet. It was a jagged, ugly scrape.
A guard swung a mace at Solarr's skull. Solarr didn't blink. He just flicked his wrist. The air groaned. A wave of heavy time slammed into the man.
The guard didn't fly back. He stopped. His armor turned a crusty brown with rust in half a second. Leather straps snapped like dry twigs. Inside the suit, there was a muffled, wet squelch. The sound of bones turning to gray powder. Lungs collapsing into soot. The armor hit the floor with a hollow clunk. Empty. Just a pile of rusted iron and human ash.
The ballroom went dead silent. Solarr kept his eyes on Valeska.
"Ninety years," Solarr growled. "A lot of childhoods you swallowed just to keep your skin tight."
He grabbed her by the hair.
The reaction was violent. Golden mist—stolen youth—leaked out of her pores like thick, glowing sweat. Solarr's coin glowed a blinding, bruised blue. It didn't just drink; it inhaled her.
Valeska's scream was a thin whistle. Her skin sagged off her bones like wet, gray laundry. Hair came out in greasy clumps. Teeth rattled and fell out, clicking against the marble like dice.
She shrivelled. In ten seconds, the "Goddess" was a bag of brittle bones and translucent skin, shivering in a pile of oversized silk.
Solarr let go. The hunger in his gut went quiet. Cold satisfaction. He looked at the "nobles." They were shaking.
"The Bank is watching," Solarr said. He spat on the pile of silk. "Don't let your accounts get this messy."
He turned and walked out. The air outside was ice, but he needed the cold to wash off the smell of this place. One more debt settled. But the Ledger was already flipping. A new page. A bigger name.
The cobblestones outside were slick, greasy with a mist that tasted like wet soot. Solarr leaned against a stone wall and gagged, a string of blue bile dripping from his chin onto his boots. The weight of ninety stolen years sat in his gut like a bucket of cold nails, heavy and jagged. He didn't look back; he just pulled his collar up and vanished into the fog, a maggot fleeing a fresh carcass.
His boots crunched on something brittle. A frozen rat? A discarded memory? He didn't care to look. Every step felt like dragging a mountain through a swamp. Inside his head, Valeska's final, thin whistle of a scream was playing on a loop, scratching at his skull from the inside. It wasn't guilt. Guilt was for people with hearts. This was just biological rejection—his human meat struggling to house the stolen years of a parasite.
The fog in the Jade District didn't just sit; it crawled. It felt like cold, wet fingers sliding under his coat, trying to find a way into his skin. Solarr stopped by a rusted fountain, the water stagnant and smelling of drowned copper. He looked at his reflection. His eyes weren't his own anymore. They were two hollow pits of bruised indigo, flickering with the stolen light of a hundred dead orphans.
"Stop looking," he hissed, punching the surface of the water. The ripples shattered his face into a thousand jagged pieces.
The Ledger in his mind didn't care about his exhaustion. It pulsed once. Twice. A rhythmic, sickening throb that sent a fresh jolt of electricity through his teeth. The blue fire of the next name was already searing his retinas.
Name: Castellan Thorne.
Balance: The Eternal Debt.
Thorne. The man who didn't just trade in memories; he traded in the very foundations of the city. He lived in the High Citadel, a place where the sun supposedly never set because they'd bought the daylight too.