[Jevan perspective]

I slammed the door shut behind me and leaned my back against it for a moment. Then I dragged a chair from the corner of the room, sat on it and let my shoulders drop. Using the Authority of Law for that long felt like running in circles while carrying a boulder over my head. Exhausting to the point of nausea. I sat without doing anything. Just letting my mind rest a little.

Things would move faster now. I was supposed to kill a few of the Claw men to draw attention to myself, to shift danger away from the poor tavern owner. But I ended the night killing an Assimilator.

An Assimilator! In the lower district! These people are valuable cards. Normally they're mini kings inside their gangs. I can already imagine the faces of the Claw leaders… they won't rest until they tear me apart. Good. Exactly what I wanted. Let them hunt the Masked Man instead of miserable Jevan.

But there's a deeper problem. Even with the mask, I've begun to feel other people's desires sticking to my mind. I was this close to letting that Assimilator live. Stupid thought. At least now, after all this, I feel I've assimilated the Authority of Miracles more deeply.

I pulled a dagger from my belt and twirled it between my fingers. I clenched my grip and saw the blade soften at my touch, its edge turning sharper then duller as if it were made of wax. Not the greatest ability, but one more card on the table.

I removed the mask from my face. The pain from my wounds that I hadn't felt before came flooding back, but quickly vanished as my flesh renewed itself. The ghosts returned, swarming around me like flies. And Raghu, as always, appeared first.

"Can you talk to the rest of the spirits?"

"Shouldn't you ask how I'm doing first? Haven't seen me in a while."

"Oh, pardon me, my friend. How are you, being dead? Great? Wonderful. Now answer."

Raghu sighed.

"Kind of."

"Kind of? You speak in sign language?"

"No, it's more like telepathy."

"Listen, tell them I'm ready to make a deal. I'll grant them one last wish if they stop shredding my eardrum with their screaming."

"A deal?"

"Yes. Give them something so they can die in peace and give me some silence in return. Simple trade."

"And you think they'll accept?"

"I don't think. I know."

Raghu turned and vanished into the spectral crowd, returning a few minutes later.

"They agree."

The voices began to fade gradually until they were just faint whispers. The spirits were still there, but my head finally felt less crowded.

"Finally, some peace."

"They're asking you about their wishes now."

"Let's hear it."

"The majority want you to kill Valentine."

"Of course they do. Everyone wants that, even the living."

"So you'll refuse?"

"Obviously. No time for suicide right now."

"The second wish: wipe out as many gangs in the lower district as possible, especially the Claw."

"That's doable."

"Are you serious? That's much harder."

"Oh, thanks for the precious advice. Yes, I'm serious."

"You know, I still don't get you. You're a strange man."

I didn't answer. I closed my eyes and sprawled lazily on the chair. I felt relaxed. For the first time in a long while, I could sit without the mask.

***

Downstairs, Vensen and Corvin were still absorbed in their card game. Even though the shock of what had just happened hung over them, both had chosen silence.

Corvin was close to winning, but then a small flame flickered in the air before them, dying out and leaving behind a message with scorched edges. Corvin quickly snatched it before it fell while Vensen was still lost in thought.

Corvin folded the message quietly, slipped it into his pocket and then said as he laid his cards on the table:

"Excuse me, I need the bathroom."

He left the shop at once and circled around to the back of the building. There he pulled the letter from his pocket and opened it in haste. With each line he read, his features darkened until he finally finished.

"What has that Masked Man done this time?"

Corvin was not just a simple shop owner; he was one of the Night Wolves' informants. Unlike the Claw, who used taverns as information hubs, the Night Wolves relied on a broad network of embedded agents posing as small shop owners across the lower district. They sent daily reports and sometimes received special orders or surveillance tasks.

But what unsettled him was that this message was not ordinary. It was from the leader herself, Verona.

For most informants, just hearing her name was enough to send terror through their hearts. Corvin had gotten used to meeting her from time to time, but even so he felt tense whenever he saw her or received a message from her.

This time she had asked him to gather information on a single person. A simple mission on the surface except that person happened to be the Masked Man currently upstairs in his shop.

Corvin crushed the paper nervously. Sweat trickled down his forehead despite the cold. His mind was spinning in circles: If he revealed himself to the leader, he might provoke the Masked Man and lose his head. But if he tried to hide the truth and Quil, her ruthless deputy, found out, Quil wouldn't hesitate to take his life either. He felt as if he stood between a hammer and an anvil.

He raised his head to the dark sky.

"Either way, it's worse than the other."

After thinking hard, he made up his mind. He would tell them he had contact with the Masked Man but hide as much detail as possible. That way he wouldn't lose the gang's trust and wouldn't at the same time anger the terrifying man upstairs.

At least that's what he hoped.

***

[Jevan perspective]

I opened the notebook and began reading it while lying on the bed. The pages were crammed with strange information that made me wonder again about the kind of life Jevan had lived in the past. So many details about bizarre creatures I'd never even heard of.

One page described a being whose lower half was a human body, while the upper half was a fleshy mass riddled with limbs and tendrils, with batlike wings sprouting from its back. This monster could detach its lower body from its upper and fly through the sky in search of prey, which was usually human.

Once it identified its target it would pin it down, then extend its long, hair-covered tongue into the victim's body and devour it from the inside.

How could something like that even exist? Even in children's horror tales there's nothing that grotesque.

I began to suspect Jevan had invented all this nonsense. But what's the point of writing down such stories if they don't mean anything?

I flipped more pages and found detailed explanations of how the different system pieces worked, their weaknesses and strengths, their drawbacks and capabilities. Yet amid this mountain of information, there was nothing about the Authority of Miracles.

"You write about every authority and system but you don't even dare mention the one living inside you? Not even how you got it?"

I remembered what he'd written earlier about acquiring a power authority. There were two ways: you're either born with it, or you break the seal on a system piece and gradually assimilate the power inside. But the second method carries high risk; the success rate is very low and drops even further with some authorities.

Did Jevan gamble with his life and absorb a system piece? Or does he actually descend from a special bloodline? I dismissed the second option immediately. If that were true he wouldn't have ended up as a street vagrant.

I laughed bitterly.

"Maybe he's the lost prince of some fallen kingdom!"

I kept reading until exhaustion dragged me into sleep.

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