The whole story begins with a desperation hung in the air like burnt coffee grounds the headache of deadlines and despair. Adrian Kael's spine curved into a question mark over his desk, both eyes fixed on dual monitors that scorched his retinas with their relentless glow. His once crisp tie dangled like a surrender flag, sweat-stained collar marking time like rings on a tree: yesterday's lunch, yesterday's midnight, yesterday's dawn. The spreadsheets before him were a labyrinth of financial sleight-of-hand. Shell companies birthing shell companies, money vanishing through digital trapdoors. Yet beneath the elegant choreography of numbers, something rotten throbbed a corruption his accountant's instinct could almost taste.
His vision blurred, the cells on his screen transforming into something more sinister than data points. Cell B394: a pension evaporating. Cell F27: a whistleblower's career flatlined at forty-two. Each decimal adjustment seemed to erase months from someone's timeline, each deleted row a life cut short. The spreadsheet wasn't tracking assets it was tallying casualties like a slaughterhouse disguised as accounting software.
He dragged his palms down his face. "Christ. They're not manipulating numbers," he whispered. "They're harvesting years with the numbers blurred before his eyes, transforming into something far more sinister than digits. Each cell seemed to contain a heartbeat, each row a human timeline. Here, a pension fund drained to nothing there, a whistleblower's career cut short at forty-two. When he adjusted one formula, he swore he could hear a distant flatline. This wasn't accounting anymore; it was necromancy with decimal points, an altar where sacrifices were made in Times New Roman, their blood spilled across Column J.
The cursor blinked on the screen, smug as hell.
He was inches from the jackpot the kind of fraud that could bring down nations, a secret no one else could even detect. But the deeper he investigated, the stranger it became. Strange magical signs woven into the ledgers, equations fit only for a Lovecraftian nightmare. His audit wasn't accounting anymore. It was a grimoire.
Then something groaned through the elevator.
Before Adrian could react, the doors slid open. A man in a black coat stood there, face swallowed by shadow. No greeting just a slow, deliberate reach into his pocket.
Adrian's chest snapped with agony, pain blooming like a bad joke.
The room tilted. Blood sprayed across his report, splattered on the keyboard, slick on his hands. On the monitor, the numbers began to shift and glow taunting him, dancing as if they'd devoured whatever he'd lost.
And then—blackout.
He came to choking, clutching his chest. No wound, no blood. Just cold marble under him, and overhead a ceiling alive with squirming numerals.
A voice boomed:
"The debtor has arrived."
Shadows slid forward hooded figures, faceless, each carrying a tome that pulsed with a sickly golden light. Their voices tangled as they spat out names and sums in tongues he'd never heard yet felt resonate in his bones.
Before him floated one ledger. Blank pages except for his name scrawled in blood-red ink:
ADRIAN KAEL
His heart thundered as he reached out. Immediately, the numbers on the walls snapped into rigid columns and rows, as if awaiting his inspection. Waiting for him to audit.
The chanting cut off. One figure closed its book with the clang of finality and declared,
"Balance the debts of eternity… or be erased."
He touched the page. Instantly, figures exploded a maelstrom of lifespans traded, taxed, siphoned. Empires soared on peasant misery; kings bled soldiers dry. The entire cosmos was a pyramid scheme with no exit hatch.
And for reasons beyond him, he was the fool drafted to fix it.
A jagged laugh tore from his throat.
"So the audit begins."
The ledger snapped shut. Chains rattled off. The floor split open beneath him and Adrian screamed as he plunged into a realm of fire and gold, eternity's debts already clawing at his heels.