The rain in Blackthorn Slum never fell clean.
It came down black, thick with soot from the corpse-furnaces that burned day and night on the northern ridge. Every drop carried the flavour of cremated strangers. When it struck the cracked cobblestones it hissed, as though the city itself resented being washed.
Vett walked barefoot because shoes had been stolen three weeks ago. The soles of his feet had long since split; each step left a small red signature on the street. Nineteen years old, narrow-shouldered, black-haired, eyes the colour of water left too long in a grave. Pretty, in the way a cracked porcelain cup is pretty—something that should have been thrown away but was kept for reasons no one could name.
He carried a burlap sack over one shoulder. Inside: half a rye loaf gone green, a single copper coin with the emperor's face filed off, and a rusted knife he had found stuck in a dog's ribs the night before. The knife was the only thing in the sack that still belonged to someone living. Him.
Night had already swallowed the alleys. The gas-lamps were broken again; the lamplighters had been dragged into the river two days past for failing to pay the Red Lanterns' "light tax." Torches were expensive. Darkness was free.
Vett turned into Corpse-Alley Seven, counting his steps the way other people counted prayers. Twenty-three paces to the bend, nine more to the boarded-up bakery, then left into the throat of the slum where even the rats walked on tiptoe.
He smelled her before he saw her.
Rosewater and blood. An impossible combination in Blackthorn, yet there it was, drifting above the stench of piss and decay like a silk ribbon across a slaughterhouse floor.
Lilith vi Rosso leaned against the wall at the alley's end, one boot heel propped on the brick, smoking a thin black cigarillo. Crimson coat, crimson lips, crimson smile. The coat was real wool—something that cost more than every soul in the slum earned in a lifetime. Gold embroidery curled across the lapels like living flames. A silver chain disappeared into her cleavage and ended at the pommel of a concept-blade said to have drunk three hundred lives without ever being wiped clean.
Eight of her boys lounged behind her, lounging the way wolves lounge—loose muscles, tight eyes. Brass knuckles, meat hooks, a length of chain that had once moored a river barge. They watched Vett the way a butcher watches a lamb decide which way to run.
He stopped five respectful paces away and lowered his gaze to the mud. The polite thing. The only thing that sometimes kept your teeth inside your skull.
"Evening, Lady Rosso," he said. Voice soft, steady, almost gentle. "The toll's gone up again?"
Lilith exhaled smoke through her nose. It curled around her face like tame serpents.
"Inflation, darling," she answered, voice husky from too many nights spent laughing at screams. "Everything costs more when the world is ending. Even the air you breathe in my alley."
She flicked ash onto his bare foot. It burned. He did not flinch.
"Empty the sack," one of the wolves growled.
Vett obeyed. The mouldy bread rolled into the mud. The faceless coin followed. The rusted knife clinked last, ringing like a funeral bell.
Lilith crouched, coat spreading around her like spilled blood. She picked up the knife, tested the edge against her thumb. A bead of red welled, perfect and bright.
"Still killing dogs, little prince?" she asked.
"Only the ones that bite first, my lady."
A low chuckle rippled through the pack.
She straightened, stepped forward until the toes of her boots touched his. Close enough that he could smell the warmth of her skin beneath the perfume. Close enough that when she spoke he felt the words more than heard them.
"I'm told you've been selling information again. Names. Routes. Which furnaces burn children on Tuesdays." Her fingers brushed his cheek, feather-light, then hooked under his chin and forced his head up. "My name came up."
Vett met her eyes. They were the red of fresh arterial spray, pupils blown wide with something that might have been hunger.
"I never sell lies," he said quietly. "Only truths people don't want gift-wrapped."
Her nail dug into the soft skin beneath his jaw. A thin line of fire.
"Then here's a truth for you," she whispered. "Tonight you pay in something rarer than coin."
She nodded.
The first blow came from behind—a brass-knuckled fist to the kidney that drove the air from his lungs in a soundless scream. He folded neatly, knees splashing into the mud. The second blow split his lip. The third cracked a rib with a noise like green wood snapping.
They were professionals. They knew how to hurt without killing quickly.
Vett curled around the pain the way a child curls around a lullaby. Each impact bloomed inside him—bright, precise, perfect. He tasted blood and soot and something older, something that had waited nineteen years for this exact flavour.
A boot pinned his wrist. Another pressed between his shoulder blades, grinding his cheek into the alley filth. Someone laughed. Someone always laughs.
Lilith knelt again. This time she held the rusted knife.
"Hold him," she said.
They held him.
She carved slowly.
First came the word WHORE across his chest in shallow, careful strokes. The knife was dull; it tore more than cut. Blood welled warm and slow, tracing the curves of the letters like calligraphy. Pain sang through every nerve, bright and singing, until the world narrowed to the point of the blade and the pressure of her knee on his sternum.
When she reached the final letter she paused, admiring her work.
"Pretty," she murmured. "Almost a shame to waste it."
She leaned close, lips brushing the shell of his ear.
"Beg, little prince. Beg me to stop and maybe I'll let you keep your eyes."
Vett's breath came in wet, trembling gasps. His body shook—not from fear, but from something vast and tidal moving beneath the pain. Something that had always lived inside him, coiled and patient, waiting for the right key.
He smiled. Blood painted his teeth crimson.
"My lady," he whispered, voice raw yet unbearably tender, "please don't stop."
For one heartbeat the alley was silent except for the rain.
Then Lilith vi Rosso laughed, delighted, cruel, aroused. She pressed the knife deeper.
And in the secret hollow beneath Vett's ribs, something ancient opened its eyes.
A characterless voice—not sound, but certainty—spoke inside his soul for the first time.
[Concept Recognised: Masochism]
[Primordial Bearer: Vett (Unawakened)]
[Current Authority: 0.1%]
[Condition for Growth: Absolute Submission through Pain Inflicted by the Desired Sex]
The pain crested, white and blinding.
And Vett began to laugh with her.
Softly at first, then louder, until the sound echoed off the wet brick like a hymn. Blood bubbled between his teeth. His vision darkened at the edges, but inside that darkness blossomed a pleasure so intense it felt like dying and being reborn in the same breath.
[Authority +0.9%]
[Total: 1.0%]
Lilith froze. The knife slipped from her fingers and clattered to the stones.
Because for one impossible second the boy beneath her had looked at her not with fear, not even with desire, but with recognition. As though he had waited his entire life for this exact moment, for her exact hand, and now that it had come he was grateful beyond words.
She stood abruptly, wiping her hands on her coat as if they had touched something unclean.
"Throw him in the river," she said, voice suddenly flat. "He's no fun if he likes it."
They hauled him up by the arms. His legs wouldn't hold. Blood poured from the carved word on his chest, mixing with rainwater, running down his stomach in warm rivulets.
As they dragged him past her, Vett managed to turn his head. His eyes found hers through the curtain of wet hair.
"Thank you," he breathed.
Lilith vi Rosso, who had flayed men alive for looking at her too long, felt something cold crawl down her spine.
They flung him over the railing into the black water of the Ashenflow. The river took him gently, almost lovingly, the way a mother takes a sleeping child.
He sank.
And beneath the surface, in the cold and the dark and the perfect absence of everything, the voice spoke again.
[First Seed Planted]
[Path Opened]
[Welcome, Masochist. The world is wide, and everything in it can learn to hurt you exactly the way you need.]
Vett opened his eyes underwater. He smiled, bubbles rising like silver prayers.
Far above, on the bridge, Lilith lit another cigarillo with shaking fingers.
She did not know it yet, but she had just carved her name into the chest of the future king of everything.
And the future king, drifting broken and ecstatic toward the corpse-furnaces downstream, was already dreaming of the day he would kneel at her feet again—this time with the weight of ten thousand concepts behind his smile.
The rain kept falling.
Black, thick, and tasting of ash.