The last thing Leo felt was not the Demon King's hellfire, but the cold, precise grip of the [Swordsman]'s gauntlet on his wrist. He saw Elara, the [Heroine], her face a mask of serene purpose as she chanted the words of the [Soul-Forge Ritual]. His own magical energy, the very life-force he'd spent a decade refining into potions for them, was being ripped out through his bones. It didn't hurt. It was a vast, emptying un-becoming.
Why? He tried to form the word, but his throat was already ash. Elara's eyes met his, and in their brilliant blue depths he saw no malice, only the chilling calculus of a gardener pruning a necessary weed.
We need the power, Leo. You understand. It's for the world.
Darkness.
He woke to the sound of rats scratching in the walls and the damp, fungal smell of hay. He gasped, lungs burning with cheap air. He was lying on a lumpy straw mattress. Sunlight, weak and London-grey, filtered through a single grimy window, illuminating dancing motes of dust.
This… this is my attic. My old attic. From before.
He scrambled up, his body light, thin, young. He stumbled to the cracked washstand and looked in the cloudy glass. A boy of seventeen stared back. Gaunt cheeked, with anxious brown eyes and a mop of untidy black hair. The hands that gripped the stand's edge were smooth, unmarked by a decade of acid burns and knife nicks from his alchemical work.
A hysterical laugh bubbled in his chest. A dream. A final, cruel trick of the dying mind.
Then, the familiar, stern blue screen materialized in the center of his vision, just as it had on his eighteenth birthday a lifetime ago.
[ SYSTEM INITIALIZATION. ]
[ ANALYZING SOUL APTITUDE... ]
This was the moment. The moment he'd been granted the [Alchemist] class. The memory was a wound. He braced for the same text.
The blue screen flickered violently. The text scrambled, dissolving into static.
[ ...ERROR... ]
[ ...SOUL SIGNATURE ANOMALY DETECTED... ]
[ ...THRESHOLD 'COSMIC BETRAYAL' MET... ]
[ ...OVERRIDING STANDARD PROTOCOL... ]
A new screen erupted, not in stern blue, but in liquid, shifting gold and violet.
[ WELCOME TO THE GOD-EYE SYSTEM. ]
Leo's heart hammered against his ribs. He couldn't breathe.
[ PRIMARY FUNCTION ACTIVATED: GOD-EYE (LEVEL 1). ]
[ YOU PERCEIVE THE HIDDEN STRINGS OF THE WORLD. ]
The world… changed.
The dusty attic was the same, but overlaid upon it were faint, luminous lines. A golden thread led from his own chest to a loose floorboard near his bed. A pulsing, sickly green aura clung to the patch of mold in the corner. And when he looked at his own faint reflection in the window, words materialized above it:
Leo
[ Mortal Fragment – Grade 0 ]
Sin: 12 (Stole bread to survive, age 10.)
[ No Significant Strings Detected ]
He stumbled back, falling onto the mattress. This wasn't happening. This was insanity.
A sharp knock rattated the attic door. "Leo! You worthless lump! The shop opens in an hour! If the floors aren't scrubbed, it's no supper for you again!"
Master Grimes. The apothecary he apprenticed under. A petty, cruel man with thick fists and a thicker ledger.
Instinctively, Leo called out, "Y-yes, Master!" His voice was a teenager's squeak.
The footsteps receded. Leo sat in the trembling silence, the golden words of the God-Eye system still hovering in his vision. This was real. He was back. And he had… this.
A cold, sharp feeling, utterly foreign to the boy he had been, began to crystallize in his gut. It wasn't fear. It was focus.
He got up. He walked to the door, his movements deliberate. He needed to see.
He descended the narrow stairs into the back room of Grimes's Apothecary. The familiar smells hit him—drying herbs, bitter roots, the sharp tang of preservative spirits. Master Grimes was a hulking silhouette by the counter, his back turned as he counted copper pennies.
Leo looked at him.
Silas Grimes
[ Apothecary – Grade 1 ]
Sin: 344 (Poisoned a rival's wellspring. Falsified ledgers to bankrupt his sister.)
Strings of Influence Detected:
— Fear of Exposure (Primary): Provide proof of his wellspring poisoning to the City Alchemists' Guild.
— Greed (Secondary): 15 Gold Crowns.
The words hung in the air, a brutal, transactional biography. Leo's breath caught. He could see it. The man's rot, laid bare. And more importantly, he could see the levers to move him.
Grimes turned, his jowly face set in its permanent scowl. "Daydreaming again? Floor. Now."
The old Leo would have flinched, mumbled an apology, and scrambled for the brush. This Leo met his gaze. The fear was there, a ghost in his nerves, but it was drowned by a torrent of new, cold data. He saw the faint tremor in Grimes's hand, a nervous tic. He saw the way the man's eyes flicked to a locked strongbox under the counter.
"The floors will be clean, Master Grimes," Leo said, his voice quieter, steadier than he expected. "But first, we need to talk about the Silverwood Tincture ledger from last spring. The one you keep in the strongbox. The one with the… discrepancies."
Grimes's face went from red to a mottled purple. His beady eyes bulged. "You little gutter-rat! What did you just say?"
"I said," Leo continued, taking a step forward, the God-Eye showing him the man's [Fear of Exposure] string vibrating like a plucked wire, "that I had a nightmare last night. A vision. Of the Alchemists' Guild Auditor finding that ledger. And the sample from the Northwell spring." He was bluffing. He had no proof. But the system told him the crimes, and the man's face told him the rest.
Grimes took a staggering step back, as if struck. The sheer, impossible specificity of it was a knife to his gut. His bravado crumbled into superstitious terror. "H-how… you can't…"
"I want a new apprenticeship contract," Leo said, the plan forming with icy clarity as he spoke. "One that pays a proper wage. And I want access to your stockroom after hours. For my… private studies."
"You're mad! I'll throw you out on the street!"
Leo smiled. It was a thin, foreign expression on his young face. "Then my next vision will be a visit to Guildmaster Thorn. I hear he's very thorough with poisoners."
The string of [Fear of Exposure] glowed blindingly bright for a moment, then seemed to snap taut, connecting directly to Leo. He felt a subtle shift, an unnatural pressure in the air.
Grimes deflated like a punctured bladder. The color drained from his face, leaving him pale and sweaty. He looked at Leo not as a useless apprentice, but as something terrifying and unknown. A demon, a seer, a monster.
"Fine," he whispered, the word a defeated sigh. "Fine. Just… keep your visions to yourself."
He fumbled for a key at his belt, unlocked the strongbox, and with trembling hands, drew out a new sheet of parchment to draft a contract.
Leo turned away, pretending to look for the scrubbing brush. His heart was racing, but his mind was a calm, deep lake. He looked down at his own hands—the soft, unmarked hands of a victim.
Not anymore.
He had seen the strings. Now, he would learn to pull them. The first thread of his new tapestry had been woven. And it felt like power.