KAI CHEN POV
"You're under arrest," the Phantom General says, but she doesn't pull out handcuffs.
Instead, she just stands there watching me like I'm a puzzle she can't solve. I should be terrified—this woman could kill me with one finger—but mostly I'm fascinated.
Ashen Vale is nothing like the legends say. Yeah, she's beautiful in a dangerous way, and yeah, her mercury eyes are cold enough to freeze fire. But there's something underneath all that ice. Something broken.
I recognize it because I've been broken too.
"So," I say carefully, "when you say 'arrest,' do you mean the kind where I get a lawyer, or the kind where I disappear forever?"
Her expression doesn't change. "The second kind. Unless you convince me otherwise in the next sixty seconds."
Fair enough.
"I'm not running an illegal operation," I tell her. "I don't even know what operation they think I'm running. I'm just an E-rank warrior who almost died and got really lucky you showed up."
"The energy readings say otherwise. You're producing fear at levels that should be impossible for someone who's never killed a spirit."
She's right. The fear energy is coming from me—from Marcus Webb's memories flooding through Kai Chen's brain. Thirty-four years of horror game design colliding with a world where fear is literal power. But I can't tell her that. She'd think I'm insane.
Or worse, she'd believe me and report it to whoever wants to dissect interesting anomalies.
"What if I could prove I'm not hurting anyone?" I ask. "Would you give me a chance before turning me in?"
Ashen's eyes narrow. "You have five seconds to explain how you'd do that."
"Give me eight years."
She blinks. "What?"
"Not really eight years," I say quickly. "But let me show you what I've been working on. If you still think I'm dangerous after that, I'll go quietly."
This is insane. I'm negotiating with someone who could snap my neck without effort. But something tells me Ashen Vale isn't the type to kill first and ask questions never. She saved me when she could have just left. She's disobeying orders to question me instead of executing me.
She's curious.
And curiosity is a crack in her armor I can work with.
"Fine," she says. "You have one hour. Show me what you're hiding, and I'll decide if you live or die."
I lead her through the Undercity to my real apartment—the one Mr. Zhou doesn't know about. It's a storage unit I've been renting under a fake name, filled with scavenged tech and jury-rigged equipment.
"This is your secret operation?" Ashen sounds almost disappointed. "Looks like a junk heap."
"It's a workshop," I correct her, powering up my main project. Three beaten-up VR pods hum to life, their screens flickering with code. "For the past eight years, I've been studying how fear energy works in this world."
"Eight years? You're eighteen."
"I started when I was ten," I lie smoothly, using Kai's memories. "After my parents died to spirits, I couldn't fight back physically. So I learned to fight smart."
That part's actually true for the original Kai. It's what kept him alive until the possession.
Ashen walks around the pods, examining them. "VR equipment. You're making games?"
"Not just games. Experiences." I pull up my prototype on the main screen. "I discovered something nobody else has figured out. Fear energy doesn't have to come from real danger. It comes from the FEELING of danger. The psychology of terror."
I show her my research—charts mapping fear responses, patterns in how emotions crystallize into energy, the science behind what makes humans scared. It's all Marcus Webb's game design knowledge translated into this world's supernatural system.
"You're saying you can generate fear artificially?" Ashen's voice is carefully neutral, but I catch the interest in her eyes.
"Not just generate it. Perfect it. Refine it. Make it pure." I meet her gaze. "In my studies, I found that fear energy harvested from actual trauma is messy. It's mixed with other emotions—pain, anger, guilt. But fear created in a controlled environment, where the person KNOWS they're safe but their brain thinks they're in danger?"
"That's impossible."
"It's psychology. And it works." I gesture to the VR pod. "This is Eternal Midnight. A horror experience I designed specifically to trigger maximum fear response using every principle I've learned. One hour inside will generate more pure fear energy than a week of hunting low-level spirits."
Ashen stares at me for a long moment. "You're either a genius or completely insane."
"Can't I be both?"
For the first time, I see her lips twitch. Almost a smile. Then it's gone.
"Prove it," she says. "Let me try this 'Eternal Midnight' of yours. If it works, I'll consider that maybe you're not a threat. If you're lying..." She doesn't finish, but her hand moves to her weapon.
My heart races. This is it—my one shot to prove my idea works. If Eternal Midnight fails, I'm dead. If it succeeds, I might just survive long enough to build something that changes this entire world.
"Deal," I say, opening the pod. "But I should warn you—it's designed to find your deepest fears and use them against you. It won't be fun."
"I stopped having fun seven years ago." Ashen climbs into the pod without hesitation. "Let's see what you've got, game designer."
I seal the pod and start the program. Through the monitor, I watch her consciousness sink into Eternal Midnight's nightmare. The abandoned hospital. The thing that hunts in the dark. The slow, inevitable dread.
My scanner shows her fear energy spiking—climbing from baseline to A-rank levels in minutes.
It's working. Holy hell, it's actually working.
Then Ashen's face on the monitor changes. Her eyes go wide with genuine terror. Not game terror—REAL terror. She's seeing something in the nightmare that's touching actual trauma.
The pod's readings spike into dangerous territory. SS-rank fear energy. SSS-rank. Higher than anything I designed for.
"No, no, no," I mutter, checking the code. Something's wrong. The AI is adapting too well—it's found something in Ashen's memories and it's exploiting it beyond safe parameters.
Through the monitor, I see tears streaming down her face. She's trapped in whatever nightmare the program built from her past.
Her heart rate is critical. If I don't shut it down, the psychological shock could kill her.
But if I pull her out now, she'll think I tried to hurt her. She'll execute me on the spot.
The choice: save her life and probably die, or let the program finish and risk her dying anyway.
I reach for the emergency shutdown.
Then Ashen's eyes snap open inside the pod—mercury bright and burning with power I've never seen.
She RIPS out of the VR pod like it's made of paper.
The fear energy pouring off her body makes the air shimmer. She's consumed so much in thirty minutes that she's literally glowing.
She grabs me by the throat, lifts me off the ground with one hand, and slams me against the wall hard enough to crack it.
"WHAT DID YOU SHOW ME?" Her voice breaks on every word. "What did you make me see?"
I can't breathe. Her grip is crushing my windpipe.
But through my oxygen-starved brain, I realize something incredible: she's not actually hurting me. She's strong enough to snap my neck instantly, but she's holding back.
Even terrified and traumatized, Ashen Vale is choosing not to kill me.
"Your... family..." I choke out. "The program... found your worst memory..."
Her face goes white. Her hand loosens slightly.
"How do you know about my family?"
"I don't," I gasp. "The AI... finds fears... automatically..."
Ashen drops me. I collapse, gasping for air.
She backs away, shaking, her whole body radiating that impossible fear energy. When she speaks, her voice is raw.
"I saw them die. Again. Every detail. The way my mother screamed. How my little brother reached for me. I couldn't save them then, and in your nightmare, I couldn't save them again."
My chest hurts, and not just from being choked. I just accidentally tortured the most dangerous person in the city by showing her the worst day of her life.
"I'm sorry," I whisper. "I didn't mean—"
"No." She cuts me off, and her eyes lock onto mine with terrifying intensity. "Don't apologize."
She holds up her hand. Fear energy crystallizes around her fingers—pure, concentrated, more powerful than anything I've seen.
"Your program works. It works better than anything I've ever consumed." Her voice is shaking but determined. "In thirty minutes, you gave me more usable energy than I've harvested in a month."
She steps closer, and I see something in her expression that makes my blood run cold.
It's not anger.
It's hunger.
"Kai Chen, you just became the most valuable and most dangerous person in Neo-Requiem." Ashen's smile is sharp as broken glass. "And I'm the only thing standing between you and every organization that would kill to own you."
My phone suddenly explodes with alerts. Emergency broadcasts lighting up the screen.
Breaking news: MASSIVE SPIRIT OUTBREAK IN UNDERCITY. SS-CLASS ENTITIES DETECTED. ALL WARRIORS REPORT IMMEDIATELY.
Ashen's face goes pale. "That's impossible. SS-class spirits don't appear randomly—"
The wall behind us EXPLODES inward.
A creature made of shadows and teeth pours through, and it's wearing a human face I recognize from Kai's memories.
Mr. Zhou. My landlord.
Except Mr. Zhou is dead, and the thing puppeting his corpse is very much not.