Silas Thorne stood rigid behind his desk, the antique silver letter opener cold and heavy in his hand. The crumpled Disbursement Amendment lay between him and the door, representing the total collapse of his personal world.
He was fifty-eight, but the fury that consumed him was primal, reducing him to the simple, desperate animal fighting to protect his young. The immense force of his rage did not feel clinical or strategic; it felt like a massive, explosive pressure building behind his sternum, utterly uncontainable.
The door opened. David Thorne, forty-one, entered the room, his face draining of color as he took in the scene. David had never seen his uncle truly lose control. This was not a legal strategy; this was a man about to commit a desperate, final act.
"Uncle Si," David stammered, his voice tight. "Eliza said you wanted to discuss the—"
"The terms of my death," Silas finished, the words low, rough, and poisoned. "You signed this. You used my own Survivorship Clause to legally execute my daughter's future. You waited until the busiest day, knowing I wouldn't read boilerplate when the stakes were so high."
David tried to salvage the situation. "It was restructuring, Uncle Si! Necessary for the firm's stability! I secured the principal against any administrative lapse. It's what you taught me: competence is the only virtue."
"You mistake competence for treachery," Silas countered, his voice rising, cracking with a lifetime of contained emotion. He took one single, deliberate step, raising the silver letter opener. "You will reverse the transfer. Now. You will call the offshore banks, and you will sign the counter-document, or I will dismantle every contract, every client, every piece of stability this firm represents. I will destroy your future, David. You will walk away with less than nothing."
David's composure evaporated entirely. He stepped back, fear turning to desperate self-preservation. "You can't undo the legal transfer! It's airtight! You can't just break the law because you don't like the outcome!"
"Then I will break the law," Silas whispered, his voice dangerously soft, yet carrying more destructive force than a scream. "I will break every ethical and moral contract I have ever maintained, and I will destroy you slowly and completely. I am the only one who knows where all the bodies are buried, David. And I will start digging."
The utterance of that ultimate threat was his final, devastating effort. The rage, the effort to articulate total destruction, and the raw shame of his failure to protect Claire became too much for his heart.
The pain returned not as a spike, but as a silent, overwhelming blackness that began at his feet and rushed inward. It was efficient, final, and absolute.
Silas's vision shattered. The thought of Claire, smiling, was the last, sharp ember of human regret that burned through the void. I failed to protect her.
He collapsed. The silver letter opener clattered to the thick carpet, followed by the dull, heavy thud of his body. The sudden, agonizing silence in the office was the sound of a legacy ending.
The cold was not the dry, antiseptic chill of a morgue; it was an abrasive, metallic cold that scoured his lungs with every breath.
Silas Thorne awoke not with a start, but with a full-body seizure. His muscles convulsed against rough, cracked dirt. He gagged, the taste in his mouth metallic and foul.
He pushed himself up. He was on Aetheria IV. The toxic, low-slung sky and the skeletal trees confirmed it.
He tried to process the situation—the new body, the alien sky—and the familiar neurological pain slammed into his skull. It was the biological protest of a brain too small for his mind.
When the pain subsided, the system appeared. It was the universal operating system of this realm, visible only to those with player-like consciousness.
SYSTEM PROMPT: WELCOME BACK, ROTE-BOSS. USER: JERICHO VANE.
SYSTEM PROMPT: DESIGNATION: SCENARIO WORLD BOSS (PRE-ACTIVATION PHASE).
He opened the STATS WINDOW. The stats were higher than the standard grunt, but the weakness was still devastating.
SYSTEM PROMPT: INITIALIZING BOSS BASE STATS...
STATISTICS:
STRENGTH: 16 (Above Average. Boss Rank Requirement.)
AGILITY: 12 (Average.)
ENDURANCE: 18 (High. Boss Rank Requirement.)
INTELLECT: 9 (Abysmally Low. Debilitating Weakness.)
WILL: 8 (Weak-willed and pliable. Debilitating Weakness.)
LUCK: 5
The 16 STRENGTH and 18 ENDURANCE were the Boss status, the raw physical capacity to survive the opening encounter. The 9 INTELLECT and 8 WILL were the crippling price, the reason the original Jericho Vane was destined to fail. The new body was strong, but the mind was a bottleneck.
He scrolled to the bottom, past the generic skills, to the system anomaly that reflected his true self, the unique link he had brought from Earth.
SYSTEM PROMPT: UNIQUE CONSCIOUSNESS DETECTED. INTEGRATING JURISPRUDENCE PROTOCOL.
UNIQUE MECHANIC: THE CIRCUIT BREAKER
CORE AUTHORITY: CONCEPTUAL AMENDMENT. The ability to perceive the foundational, contractual rules of the world (the LATENT CIRCUIT) and to impose minor, temporary amendments on targets with low WILL.
LATENT CIRCUIT: The underlying, visible web of digital logic that governs all life and mechanics in this world. Only perceived by those with high INTELLECT/WILL.
COST: PSYCHIC OVERLOAD. Attempting to perceive or manipulate the LATENT CIRCUIT causes catastrophic neurological feedback, leading to physical incapacitation. This is the Circuit Breaker—the failsafe in his host brain.
PREREQUISITE: EYES ON THE CIRCUIT (15 INTELLECT / 15 WILL).
The Circuit Breaker was not a power; it was the name of his own brain's devastating limitation. He couldn't even see the web of rules he was destined to control without risking mental collapse.
He forced himself up. He was wearing the tattered leather armor of a Cobalt Scar thug.
SYSTEM PROMPT: GLOBAL EVENT TIMER ACTIVE.
EVENT TIMER: PLAYER INFLUX (GLOBAL LAUNCH) - 4 YEARS, 2 MONTHS, 11 DAYS.
Four years. He had to upgrade his mind by thinking slow, simple, agonizingly meticulous thoughts.
He began walking toward the ridge where his crew waited. His first confrontation would not be a fight, but a delicate, strategic dance of authority, a purely psychological maneuver to avoid triggering the catastrophic pain of thought.
********************************************
PLAYER: JERICHO VANE - ROTE-BOSS
STATISTICS:
STRENGTH: 16
AGILITY: 12
ENDURANCE: 18
INTELLECT: 9
WILL: 8
LUCK: 5
UNIQUE MECHANIC:
THE CIRCUIT BREAKER (CONCEPTUAL AMENDMENT)
LATENT CIRCUIT: UNSEEN (PREREQUISITE: 15 INTELLECT / 15 WILL)
PROGRESS: 0 PERCENT
MISSION LOG:
PRIMARY MISSION: SECURE THE BLACKSTONE OUTPOST (ACTIVE)
EVENT TIMER: PLAYER INFLUX (GLOBAL LAUNCH) - 4 YEARS, 2 MONTHS, 11 DAYS.