The rain in District 9 didn't wash things clean.
It just turned the soot and the sins into a thick, black sludge that clung to your boots.
I stood in the mouth of a narrow alley, the neon sign of a nearby brothel flickering in a rhythmic, dying pulse. Red. Fade. Red. Fade. It cast a bloody glow over the man crawling at my feet.
His name was Miller. A mid-tier broker who thought he could sell information that didn't belong to him.
Specifically, my information.
"Ren… please," Miller wheezed.
His lungs were punctured. Every breath sounded like someone dragging a serrated knife through wet gravel. I didn't answer. I just watched the way the water pooled around his trembling hands.
I wasn't waiting for him to beg. I was waiting for the air to turn cold.
In this world, death isn't a silent transition. It's a transaction.
The temperature plummeted.
The rain didn't stop, but it seemed to slow down, the droplets hanging in the air like jagged glass shards. The sound of the city—the distant sirens, the hum of the mag-lev trains—faded into a suffocating static.
Then, the smell hit me.
Old graves and ozone.
He was here.
A shadow detached itself from the brick wall. It didn't have a shape, not really. It was a tear in reality, a smudge of absolute darkness that made the night around it look bright.
A Shinigami.
Most people go their whole lives without seeing one. They die in their beds, their souls slipping away quietly. But for those who live in the filth, those who push their luck too far, the collectors come in person.
Miller saw it. His eyes widened, the pupils shrinking to pinpricks.
"No… not yet," Miller choked out, his voice a frantic whisper. "I have… I have things to give!"
The shadow leaned over him. It didn't have a face, but I could feel its hunger. It was a cold, hollow vacuum that wanted to be filled.
A raspy, non-vocal sound echoed directly inside our skulls.
*"The Contract,"* the thing hissed.
Miller's hand clawed at the air, grasping for the entity's hem. "My sight! Take my eyes! Just give me ten more years! Five! I'll pay the toll!"
This was the Law.
A life for a sense. A memory for a decade. A name for a miracle.
The Shinigami extended a spindly, translucent limb toward Miller's face. The air groaned under the weight of the impending deal. The world was ready to rewrite itself to accommodate Miller's desperation.
I stepped forward.
My boot crunched on a piece of broken glass. The sound was unnaturally loud in the frozen silence.
The shadow paused. It turned—or rather, its presence shifted toward me.
"He's not paying you anything," I said.
My voice felt heavy, like it was lined with lead.
The Shinigami's aura flared. A wave of pure, existential dread washed over me, the kind that makes a man's heart stop just to escape the terror. It was the weight of a thousand ends, all pressing down on my shoulders.
*"Brat,"* the voice grated in my mind. *"You see me. That is your curse. You interfere. That is your death. Offer your soul, or vanish."*
I didn't vanish.
I felt the familiar itch at the base of my skull. It started as a low hum and quickly escalated into a screaming vibration. It was the sound of a song no one wanted to hear.
The Last Requiem.
"I don't make contracts," I muttered, reaching into the inner pocket of my coat.
I didn't pull out a gun. I didn't pull out a relic.
I simply opened my hand.
The air didn't just get cold then; it died.
A black mark, shaped like a withered lotus, began to glow on the back of my palm. It wasn't the warm glow of a lantern; it was the light of an eclipse—a hole where light went to be forgotten.
"I give orders," I said.
The Shinigami shrieked.
It wasn't a sound of pain, but of fundamental wrongness. I was a glitch in its system. A predator in a world of prey.
I felt the Authority surging through my veins, cold and unforgiving. It felt like swallowing liquid nitrogen. My vision blurred, the edges of the world fraying into grey ribbons.
The shadow tried to retreat, to slip back into the folds of the void.
"Stay," I commanded.
The word hit the entity like a physical blow. The shadow collapsed inward, its form becoming dense, forced into a humanoid shape it clearly didn't want to hold. It knelt.
The great collector, the arbiter of the end, was trembling in the mud.
"Ren… what… what are you?" Miller gasped, his eyes rolling back.
I ignored him. My focus was entirely on the thing in front of me. Maintaining the Authority was like holding a wild wolf by the throat with your bare hands. One slip, and it would tear you apart.
"The soul belongs to the void," I told the Shinigami. "But his life is mine. Leave. Without a price."
The entity looked up. For a second, I saw eyes—billions of them, tiny and ancient, swirling within the darkness.
*"You… are the one,"* it whispered, its voice no longer a hiss, but a terrified realization. *"The Sovereign who refuses to pay."*
"Leave," I repeated, my teeth clenched.
The pressure in my head was reaching a breaking point. Blood began to leak from my nose, a hot, metallic contrast to the freezing rain.
The Shinigami didn't argue further. It dissolved.
Not into the shadows, but into nothingness. It simply ceased to be present in this layer of reality.
The weight vanished.
The sounds of the city rushed back in—the sirens, the rain, the distant shouting. The glass droplets fell to the ground, shattering harmlessly.
I slumped against the damp wall, my lungs burning. My heart was thumping a frantic, irregular rhythm against my ribs.
Every time I used it, a piece of me stayed in that cold place.
I looked down at Miller.
He was still alive, but barely. The Shinigami hadn't taken his eyes, but the sheer proximity to my power had bleached the color from his hair. He looked twenty years older.
"You're… a monster," Miller whispered.
"Maybe," I said, wiping the blood from my lip. "But I'm a monster that doesn't owe anyone a debt."
I stood up, my legs feeling like they were made of water. I didn't kill him. There was no point. In this city, a man with no secrets and a broken spirit was already a ghost.
I turned to walk away, my coat heavy with the rain.
But as I reached the end of the alley, I stopped.
Across the street, standing under a broken streetlamp, was a figure.
Tall. Thin. Wearing a coat that seemed to be made of pale, unmoving mist.
The Pale Watcher.
He didn't have a face—just a smooth, porcelain-white surface where features should be. He didn't move. He didn't breathe.
He was just watching.
He had been there since I was ten. Every time I used the Requiem, he moved a street closer.
He was now only twenty yards away.
I stared at him for a long moment, the rain blurring my vision. My hand was still shaking from the strain of the Authority.
"One day," I muttered to the empty air, "I'm going to make you talk."
The figure didn't respond. A bus splashed through a puddle between us, a wall of dirty water momentarily obscuring the view.
When the water cleared, the streetlamp was flickering over an empty sidewalk.
I pulled my collar up and vanished into the crowd of District 9.
I needed a drink. I needed to forget the sound of that Shinigami's voice.
But mostly, I needed to find out why my mark was starting to hurt.
The Requiem wasn't just a power. It was a countdown.
And as I walked through the neon-lit filth, I realized for the first time that the black lotus on my hand…
It had grown a new petal.
The price I refused to pay was being collected somewhere else.
I just didn't know where yet.
Or who was paying it for me.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. A private encrypted line. Only one person had the code.
I flipped it open. A single line of text glowed on the screen, sent from an untraceable source.
[The First Relic has surfaced. The Archive is open. Run, Ren.]
I closed the phone and threw it into a trash can.
The hunt hadn't even begun, and I was already the prey.