By late afternoon, the small fire had burned down to a dull orange glow. The study settled into a heavy, oppressive quiet. Every tiny sound felt magnified. The dying coals shifted softly in the iron grate. A piece of expensive paper rasped loudly when Lucian pushed it aside.
Outside the tall windows, the crashing sea had flattened into a massive, featureless band of dark grey beneath the fading daylight. Bran had quietly wandered over at some point.
The black dog leaned his heavy weight directly against Lucian's leg. He possessed the grave, unshakeable patience of an animal fully convinced his human had spent far too long staring at a piece of dead wood.
His father's brutal final note lay open on the mahogany desk. It sat right next to the terrifying black notebook, the cryptic blue-wax records, and the violent incident report from Warehouse Three.
The room smelled faintly of spilled ink, old paper, and cold tea. The perfect, polished neatness of the desk only made the horrifying secrets sitting on top of it feel worse. Every single page offered a dangerous answer, and absolutely zero answers improved the family's situation.
Vale House was deeply corrupted.
That reality was completely undeniable.
His father had presented a perfectly respectable face to the orthodox church, the local merchants, and the polite servants working upstairs. Meanwhile, his private ledgers pointed directly into the abyss. Hidden, untraceable payments. Highly illegal suppliers. Sealed, undocumented shipping routes. Men had been quietly paid massive sums to completely vanish from ordinary harbor conversation.
People out there knew extremely dangerous pieces of the Vale estate that Lucian himself still needed to uncover. Several of those people had already decided to aggressively test the new master's defenses.
The violent incident at Warehouse Three proved their timeline.
They are definitely refusing to wait for me to learn the rules.
That terrifying thought settled like ice in his chest.
He simply lacked the luxury of moving slowly. He couldn't act like he had months to prepare. He couldn't wait for his perfectly normal grief to finish running its course. He couldn't wait for the corrupted ledgers to magically sort themselves out, or for every nervous servant to calm down. He absolutely couldn't wait for every ruthless harbor merchant to decide if Lucian Vale was a boy worth respecting.
The violent men pressing hard against the lower warehouse yard had already answered that specific question. They looked at the shattered shipwreck, the quiet funeral, the inexperienced heir, and the scattered account books. They saw a massive, bleeding opening.
If he remained exactly what he was right now, all the immense wealth inside Vale House would simply become a highly polished delay tactic. A massive estate could definitely slow down the danger.
It could buy temporary loyalty, absolute silence, heavy iron doors, armed guards, and a little extra time. It completely failed to make him strong enough to survive when someone finally bypassed those guards and stepped through the wrong door holding a sharpened knife.
He desperately needed real power. He needed it fast enough to actually matter.
Lucian rested his hand on Bran's broad head. He let his fingers sink deeply into the thick, warm fur. Bran leaned hard into the comforting touch, feeling completely solid and alive against his knee. For a few brief seconds, that simple connection was almost enough to steady his racing heart.
Then, his hand went completely still.
The answer he needed was already sitting directly on the desk. It rested quietly between his father's final instructions and the hidden black book.
I need to become a Beyonder.
He started mentally crossing out the pathways he absolutely refused to touch.
The Cowardly Trio vanished first.
He possessed way too much terrible meta-knowledge about that specific mess to ever approach it casually. Even if he completely ignored Klein's terrifying destiny, Amon's mere existence provided more than enough reason to look at the Fool, Error, and Door pathways and decide he actually preferred to stay alive.
No, thank you. I am definitely refusing to volunteer myself to get parasitized this early in the game.
The Omnipotent Five pathways disappeared next.
That specific road eventually curved far too close to Adam. It wandered too close to ancient, apocalyptic arrangements and the kind of inhuman, grand-scale planning that made ordinary human caution feel like a childish joke. A sane person could admire certain massive mountains from a very safe distance without ever deciding to actually climb them.
Eternal Darkness was a massive dead end. Evernight will control that summit. He had zero desire to spend decades painfully crawling up a dangerous path only to find the final door permanently locked from the inside by a literal Goddess.
Calamity of Destruction belonged entirely to someone else's nightmare. He knew enough of the impending future to leave that specific disaster alone.
Key of Light required exactly one thought before he completely abandoned it. He had never once looked back at his miserable old life and concluded, Yes, incredible luck has definitely always been my strongest asset.
Goddess of Origin made even less sense. He fully intended to stay male, and he completely refused to dignify the horrifying gender-bending mechanics of that pathway with any deeper theory.
That ruthless process of elimination still left a few roads genuinely worth real consideration.
The Anarchy pathways held an obvious, undeniable appeal at first glance. The Justiciar pathway offered immense value in a highly disorderly world. The Black Emperor pathway possessed the exact kind of ugly, rule-bending usefulness a compromised shipping heir could deeply appreciate. Then he mentally pushed the requirements further up the sequence chain and completely lost interest.
The higher-level rituals demanded entire countries, massive legal systems, societal collapse, hidden order, and public order. They required a terrifying scale of influence that turned a man's life into the endless, exhausting management of millions of people. He completely refused to pick a path that demanded he build a national government before it allowed him to survive.
The Demon of Knowledge pathways stayed in the running significantly longer. Hermit and Paragon both actively tempted him for painfully obvious reasons. Hermit eventually failed because he completely rejected a road demanding he transform himself into an isolated, sealed archive of forbidden secrets. He already knew he would make a terrible, miserable shadow. He completely rejected that kind of existence.
If he managed to live long enough to actually meet Klein and the rest of the Tarot Club, he wanted the ability to leave clear warnings behind. He wanted to leave useful explanations behind. He wanted to retain enough of his own humanity that other people could actually understand him. He entirely refused to hide so deeply in the dark that he became a complete stranger to everyone he cared about.
Paragon failed for a much simpler, more brutal reason. He severely lacked the required time to build the necessary technological foundations.
That ruthless elimination narrowed the field enough that he could finally stop pretending the correct answer was hiding somewhere else. He looked down at the black book again. He stared at the scuffed edge of the leather cover glowing faintly beneath the dimming afternoon light. He let the terrible name settle cleanly into his mind.
Abyss.
His hand tightened convulsively on Bran's thick neck before slowly easing his grip.
Refusing the Abyss pathway would have been significantly easier if it had felt less honest.
He was highly unlikely to die in some grand, apocalyptic confrontation with ancient cosmic mysteries this month. If death found him in the near future, it would arrive in a completely ordinary, brutal shape.
A cheap pistol fired in a dark warehouse. A rusted blade shoved into his ribs in a narrow dockside alley. A few drops of poison slipped into the wrong glass of wine. A quiet, hired killer. A completely private conversation turning unexpectedly violent exactly one minute before help managed to arrive.
He could picture the entire scene far too easily. He could see the yellow lantern light jumping off the wet wooden planks, smell the sharp scent of tar and salt, and watch a desperate man closing the distance with murder already burning in his eyes.
The Abyss pathway fit that brutal reality far too well.
The Sequence 9 Criminal potion offered immediate, highly practical gains. A significantly stronger body. Razor-sharp physical instincts. A disturbing ease with extreme violence, crushing pressure, and incredibly ugly decisions. That immediate power boost was exceptionally difficult to ignore.
The significantly larger temptation sat slightly further up the pathway, and that specific sequence was exactly where his thoughts kept returning no matter how hard he tried to look away.
Devil.
The name itself sounded almost stupidly theatrical. The actual abilities that came with it were terrifyingly practical. A body incredibly difficult to permanently kill. Senses actively sharpened toward physical harm. A genuine, supernatural danger perception. The unique ability to physically feel fatal trouble brewing before the trap fully closed around him.
Further above that, the road kept climbing aggressively through increasingly ugly names until it touched the Abyss itself. Beyond both of those nightmares sat the Above the Sequence: Father of Devils.
He entirely refused the arrogance of calling that a complete plan on his very first real day in this terrifying world. He was also entirely unwilling to lie to himself about the consequences.
Once he swallowed the Criminal potion and stepped onto the Abyss pathway, that horrifying sequence chain became his permanent destiny, regardless of whether he ever actually reached the top.
He sat perfectly still and let that heavy reality settle into his bones.
Walking away from the dark temptation proved significantly harder than he anticipated.
Most people heard the word Criminal and instantly imagined a mindless brute. They heard Devil and immediately imagined a man who had already completely lost his soul.
Lucian knew the hidden lore far too well to trust thinking that lazy and superficial. Low-sequence potions actively pushed people in certain directions. They heavily rewarded specific, violent instincts. They made some cruel choices significantly easier to make, and they made some moral refusals incredibly difficult to maintain.
However, they don't erase a man's entire personality overnight unless the man was already actively searching for a supernatural excuse to become a monster.
He knew exactly what the Abyss road eventually became if a man kept following it without putting up fierce psychological resistance. He knew the higher-level rituals became so completely monstrous that absolute necessity stopped sounding like a valid excuse and started sounding exactly like a horrifying confession.
He also knew that every single serious pathway in this entire universe became an absolute nightmare if you looked far enough ahead into the sequence chain. Nobody climbed very high in this world and managed to keep their hands entirely clean.
The Abyss pathway still held one massive, undeniable advantage the other options completely lacked. It offered a direct, practical solution to the exact way he was most likely to get murdered this week.
That brutal fact mattered significantly more than anything else.
The much uglier truth was that he genuinely believed he could handle the corruption. He knew it even while he thought it, and he refused to bother dressing his arrogance up as discipline or courage.
He had carried incredibly dangerous, mind-shattering knowledge for years. He had already survived spiritual contact with the High-Dimensional Overseer.
He understood the terrifying, slippery slope this specific road offered far better than most people who instinctively recoiled from it. More importantly, he possessed a powerful reason to keep a tight hold on his own sanity that had absolutely nothing to do with base appetite or cruelty.
If basic survival had been his only real goal, then he could easily justify taking any foul, corrupted road for a little while. Raw fear manufactures brilliant excuses incredibly quickly.
Basic survival completely failed to satisfy him.
He desperately wanted to live long enough to actually matter. Protecting the estate mattered. Controlling the harbor mattered. His own continued survival absolutely mattered. Yet those goals completely failed to represent the end of the line in his head.
Klein still stood somewhere far ahead of this current timeline. The absolute worst parts of this apocalyptic age were still rapidly approaching. The real, universe-ending struggle at the top of the sequences had not even truly begun.
One day, Klein would be forced to stand alone against the Celestial Worthy's overwhelming will. Lucian knew exactly what sort of horrifying future waited for everyone if that specific battle was lost.
I desperately want a world where he actually wins.
That specific desire completely lacked the delusion of imagining himself striding into that apocalyptic future as some hidden, overpowered savior. He entirely refused the stupidity of mistaking his meta-knowledge for genuine importance.
Knowing exactly what kind of cosmic storm was coming completely failed to place him at the center of the narrative. It certainly failed to guarantee he would ever become indispensable to people whose names already belonged to history long before his own name meant anything at all.
His actual goal remained much smaller, which made it feel significantly more achievable.
He simply wanted to survive the harbor. He wanted to become strong enough, early enough in the timeline, that his mere existence would still carry genuine weight when the world finally reached that breaking point.
He wanted to keep enough of his own sanity and humanity completely intact. When the time finally came, he wanted the ability to stand firmly on the right side of history instead of devolving into one more corrupted burden for Klein to carry while the Fool was already carrying way too much.
It also meant he fully intended to do something highly useful with the dangerous lore he had dragged into this universe. Some of it would forever remain entirely useless. Some of it remained far too dangerous to ever speak aloud. Some of it depended entirely too much on perfect timing, blind chance, and powerful people making the exact same choices they had made in the original story. Yet not all of the knowledge was useless.
He knew the broad outlines of massive disasters that hadn't even happened yet. He knew the specific kinds of enemies that would eventually rise to power. He knew the kinds of lethal traps currently buried in the future timeline. He knew exactly how badly things could completely fall apart when the wrong person reached the wrong place first.
He completely lacked the power to save Klein from everything. He completely lacked the ability to plan the man's entire life for him. He entirely refused the idea of violently shoving his way into another man's story and expecting his presence to magically improve the situation.
Maybe he could accomplish something significantly smaller and far more effective. Maybe he could become strong enough and useful enough that when certain major pieces finally began to move across the board, he could quietly tilt one or two of them in the right direction.
Maybe he could successfully prevent one major danger from arriving too soon. He could pass one crucial warning at the exact right time. He could preserve one massive advantage that might otherwise be completely lost.
Or he could simply stand exactly where he was desperately needed and make one tiny part of the apocalyptic burden slightly lighter instead of heavier.
That modest goal felt entirely sufficient.
He had just reached the point where abstract theory was about to give way to a highly practical plan. Then, the quiet study aggressively tugged at his spiritual awareness again.
He snapped his head toward the locked red cabinet.
It had felt faintly wrong earlier in the afternoon. Now the intense wrongness had fully gathered itself back together. It felt smaller, tighter, and significantly harder to ignore. It felt exactly like something hiding in that dark corner was actively pressing back against the reality of the room.
The sensation wasn't coming from the empty wooden shelves. It radiated from lower down, hiding directly behind two bundled packets of old correspondence he had barely glanced at earlier.
Lucian stood up, crossed the thick carpet, and crouched directly in front of the open compartment. The old wood smelled intensely dry and dusty up close. He shoved the letters aside and discovered a small wooden box tucked carefully behind them. It looked incredibly plain and old enough to have been handled frequently over the years.
Absolutely nothing about the exterior would have ever drawn a normal servant's eye. Absolutely everything about the spiritual space surrounding the box drew his full attention.
He carried it back to the mahogany desk and flipped it open.
Inside the box, carefully wrapped in a piece of rough cloth, lay a jagged red crystal deeply mottled with pitch-black spots.
He stared down at the object for several long seconds without moving a single muscle. He finally let out a very slow, shaky breath.
A Sequence 9 Criminal characteristic.
He completely refused to waste time pretending he felt any uncertainty. He knew exactly what he was looking at. Even if his memory of the lore had completely failed him, the object carried its own horrifying answer.
It aggressively pressed at the very edge of his spiritual perception much like the dispatch case had, only significantly stronger, denser, and far uglier. It felt exactly like a lingering nightmare left behind by a dead Beyonder.
His mind immediately snapped back to Tomas Rill.
A man directly tied to Agalito's ruthless crew dies in Vale hands. His father keeps the shipping books completely crooked. He violently hushes the matter up.
He then completely hides a Criminal characteristic in the exact same locked cabinet as the illegal blue-wax records and the terrifying black book. Lucian completely lacked the need for a signed confession to connect those brutal facts.
The air in the study seemed to drop several degrees.
The discovery also solved his immediate lack of power so perfectly that he almost burst into manic laughter.
He still completely needed to acquire the supplementary ingredients. He still required absolute privacy, extreme discretion, and the specific sort of underground supplier his father had already been utilizing for the estate's uglier business.
Yet the absolute hardest part of the entire process, the core characteristic that could have easily taken weeks or months of dangerous searching through dirty harbor channels, was already sitting right here in the palm of his hand.
Bran had climbed to his feet and wandered closer. The dog's ears angled sharply toward the open box.
Lucian looked down at the massive animal. "No."
Bran blinked slowly.
"You are absolutely not becoming a Beyonder criminal dog."
The dog blinked again, looking entirely unrepentant.
For a brief moment, despite the crushing weight of the entire situation, Lucian felt the corner of his mouth threaten to pull upward into a genuine smile.
God help me, the dog would probably digest the potion significantly faster than most people. I wonder if he would be friends with that Backlund Devil Dog...
He carefully rewrapped the dangerous characteristic and set it directly beside the black book just as a sharp knock sounded at the heavy door.
A knock broke the heavy quiet of the study.
"Come in," Lucian said.
Harwin entered carrying a silver tray with a fresh pot of tea. The old butler's gaze swept the room, taking in the open red cabinet, the scattered ledgers, and finally the small wooden box resting near Lucian's hand.
"You've been in here all afternoon, sir," Harwin said quietly, setting the tray on the side table.
"I found what he was hiding."
Harwin paused. He looked at the cloth-wrapped shape on the desk, his expression tightening just a fraction. He didn't ask what it was. "Will it cause an immediate problem?"
"Only if we ignore it," Lucian said. "I need to make a purchase tomorrow morning. No questions asked, paid in cash."
"Madame Vey can handle that," Harwin said. "She's old, but she managed your father's quieter business for years. She doesn't spook easily."
"Good. Have the plain carriage ready. Find a driver who doesn't talk, and make sure there are no family crests on the doors."
"Understood."
Lucian met the older man's eyes. "And you're coming with me."
Harwin didn't look surprised. "I assumed I would be."
He stepped back toward the door, his hand resting on the brass knob. He hesitated there, dropping the rigid professional distance for a second. He looked at the desk, then back to Lucian. "Is this the only option left to the house, sir?"
Lucian thought of the men circling the lower yard, waiting for a moment of weakness. "It's the only one that keeps us breathing past Friday."
Harwin gave a slow, short nod. "Then I will have the carriage brought round early."
The door clicked shut.
Lucian reached out and rested his fingers against the rough cloth covering the crystal. He knew exactly what this road demanded. Taking the Sequence 9 Criminal potion was just the entry fee. The real nightmare was the step immediately after it.
Sequence 8. Coldblooded.
He remembered the lore surrounding that specific sequence perfectly. The potion actively stripped away his conscience. It eroded the internal boundary between right and wrong until nothing remained but a hollow shell driven by dark, cruel indulgence. Advancing meant deliberately inviting a force into his head that was designed to kill his humanity.
But he wasn't walking into it blindly.
He had the High-Dimensional Overseer's boon. The Outer Deity's mark had already altered his baseline perception, creating a cold, alien friction against his spirit that would likely slow the potion's natural corruption down.
More importantly, he didn't have to rely entirely on his own compromised instincts. He could build external restraints. He had Harwin to watch him and call out his missteps. He could use the strict new rules of the yard and the heavy, mundane structure of the estate to anchor his actions to reality. If his own judgment started to slip, he could be reined back by the people around him and by his own sheer, stubborn will.
He had a reason to stay sane. He wanted to live long enough to see the Fool awaken. He wanted to preserve enough of himself to actually matter when the apocalypse broke over the world. That goal was concrete enough to hold him together.
He pulled his hand back from the stone.
He needed power now. He would take Criminal first, and figure out how to survive Coldblooded later.
Outside the window, the wind rattled the heavy glass in its wooden frame. Somewhere down the hill, his warehouses were being watched. Tomorrow, he would travel to the Brine Market, meet the old woman, and buy exactly what he needed to stay alive.
After that, the young, vulnerable master of Vale House was going to die, and something much harder to kill would take his place.