Chapter 3 – Lonely Snow
The rain hadn't stopped. By the time Damien reached Redhaven's City Hall, the streets looked like veins of light and shadow, neon bleeding into puddles, gas lamps flickering in the mist.
Crowds had gathered outside the massive stone building. Desperate faces. Hollow-eyed workers. Beggars turned petitioners. All of them queued in ragged lines, waiting for an audience with Mayor Alaric Voss.
To most, Voss was salvation. To Damien, he was rot wearing a crown.
Damien didn't bother with the line. He walked straight through the crowd, drawing curses and suspicious stares. A few men stepped forward, fists clenched. One of them, a broad-shouldered dockhand with a battered coat, blocked his path.
"Hey, stranger. No cutting. We've been waiting hours."
Damien looked him over — the man's stance, his clenched hands, the way his eyes darted nervously. He recognized him. The name surfaced from memory like a body rising from dark water.
Lonely Snow.
In his first life, this man had clawed his way out of obscurity, carving a name as a mercenary feared by guilds and governments alike. He had become a blade in someone else's war — before being sacrificed like a pawn.
Damien softened his gaze.
"You're wasting your time here. That man won't save you."
Snow's eyes narrowed. "And what would you know of it?"
Damien stepped closer, lowering his voice so the restless line couldn't hear.
"I know the mayor's gifts come with chains. You think you'll walk out with a blessing? You'll walk out with a shackle on your soul."
Snow flinched, half scoffing, half unsettled. "You sound like one of those doomsayers. The streets are crawling with 'em."
"No," Damien said. "I'm someone who's seen the ending."
Snow studied him, torn between disbelief and curiosity. Damien pressed on, offering a crooked smile.
"There's a better path. A place where the Dominion's gaze doesn't reach. Go there, and you'll grow strong — stronger than you'll ever be groveling at that man's feet."
Snow's skepticism faltered; desperation won out. "And where is this place?"
Damien leaned in, whispering the location — an abandoned district at the city's edge where lesser spirits roamed, their hunger manageable, their deaths rewarding. Not a lie. Not the whole truth, either.
Snow hesitated, then reached into his pocket, pressing a few grimy coins into Damien's palm. "For the information."
Damien accepted with a nod. He remembered how precious coin was at the beginning of all this. Yet desperation made men generous.
As Snow turned to leave, he glanced back. "What's your name?"
"Damien."
The dockhand's lips curled faintly. "Mine's Snow. Lonely Snow."
And with that, he disappeared into the rain-soaked streets, walking unknowingly toward a fate Damien had already rewritten.
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Inside City Hall, the air reeked of incense and velvet rot. The mayor sat enthroned beneath a chandelier, corpulent and smug, attendants bustling around him.
Damien ignored the crowd's angry protests as he strode forward.
"What's he doing?"
"Is he mad? Cutting straight through?"
They expected guards to drag him out. They expected Voss's men to cut him down. But Damien didn't slow.
He reached into his coat and pulled out the object he had purchased outside: a ripe, crimson tomato.
He bit into it slowly, savoring the shocked silence that fell across the chamber. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he hurled it across the hall.
It struck the mayor's face, red juice running down his jowls like blood.
Gasps rippled through the onlookers. Someone shouted, "He's doomed himself!"
But Damien only smiled coldly. He hurled another tomato. And another. Each strike carried venomous words:
"Parasite. Hypocrite. Bloodsucker."
The chamber froze in horrified silence. No one dared laugh. No one dared move.
Voss trembled, not with shame — but with fury. His smile curdled into a snarl, and for a heartbeat, Damien saw past the mask: the faint glow of runes beneath his skin, the twisted power barely restrained.
The mayor rose, voice booming like thunder through the chamber:
"Damnable insect! I'll send you down to hell!"
The chandeliers flickered. The walls groaned. And Damien knew the veil between worlds was about to tear.
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