Chapter Two: The Cripple's Love, The Master's Lie
The iron gates of the Rurns felt like the rusted maw of a trap. It was just past dawn. The chill air carried the scent of wet grass and the deeper, acrid scent of old money—maintenance over substance. Our MC, now wearing the body and the Mask of Urca, walked with an effortless confidence that was wholly unnatural to the original owner of the body.
The guards at the gate, and the two housemaids sweeping the portico, paused their work to stare. Their expressions were not pity, but mocking superiority and disdain. They saw the disgraced groom, the pauper chained to the family's disabled daughter as a deliberate insult to the family.
Urca noticed the glares, but his mind, tempered by the Totem's terrifying clarity, processed them as trivial noise. He was wielding unimaginable power in the shadows; why would an elephant bother with the judgment of ants? He strode toward the main entrance, his posture straight, his face a mask of casual satisfaction.
He was met immediately by a wall of fury, embodied by Lord Valerius Rurn and his wife, Lady Seraphina Rurn. Lord Rurn was a large man with a face like sun-cured leather and an expression that usually sat somewhere between bored disdain and outright cruelty.
"Urca, where the hell have you been?" Lord Rurn's voice was a low growl of suppressed rage. "Do you have any idea how close you came to disgracing this family completely? Running off on your wedding night—it's an open admission of defeat!"
Lady Seraphina, thinner and sharper, eyed Urca's slightly disheveled appearance with cold distaste and annoyance. "It shows a severe lack of appreciation for the generosity we've shown you, boy. We expected you to at least pretend to be grateful."
Urca met their gaze, and for the first time, he used the Mask to its fullest potential. His voice was warm, confident, and falsely sincere.
"Forgive me, father. I simply needed to celebrate." The term 'father' was delivered with a subtle, mocking emphasis that only he understood. "Today marks the happiest day of my life. I had to raise a glass to the kindness you've shown me, giving me your daughter." He let a small, genuine-looking smile touch his lips. "They took everything else from me, but you've given me a sanctuary. I needed a private moment to drink in that realization. I apologize if it caused any inconvenience."
The lie was flawless because it was what they wanted to hear—that they were generous, that he was desperate, and that he was grateful for the humiliating arrangement. Lord Rurn's face relaxed slightly, his social obligation satisfied.
"See that it doesn't happen again, Urca," Lord Rurn said, his tone softening to a warning. "Your primary duty is to my daughter now. Go to her chamber."
As Urca walked away, a young maid named Lena paused her dusting in the hallway. Her eyes tracked him, noticing the subtle but profound change. The original Urca had been a shambling, heartbroken shell; this man moved with purpose and an icy, self-possessed calm. The discrepancy made the hairs on her arms rise as she suddenly felt a chill from particularly nowhere.
The marriage chamber was large, richly furnished, yet felt sterile and unused. Lying in the massive four-poster bed was his new wife, Kelna Rurn. Her face was turned away, buried in the pillow, but the slight tremor of her shoulders indicated she was weeping. The room felt heavy with sorrow.
But Urca saw more than sorrow. The moment he stepped across the threshold, the Totem's power flared, granting him a subtle, sensory reading. Around Kelna, a faint, pure aura pulsed—clean, untainted by the complex sins and desires that governed everyone else he had encountered. She was genuine. She truly loved the broken man Urca had been.
He approached the bed slowly, sitting on the edge, the mattress dipping slightly.
Kelna did not look up. Her voice was a barely audible, broken whisper. "You don't have to love me, Urca. I know you don't. Please. Just understand this is all I have." She finally lifted her red-rimmed eyes, which were filled with genuine anguish. "I know you love Celeste, and I won't stand in your way outside these walls. But please, in public, act like it. For my father. For the family. You can have any affair you want, just keep it a secret. I won't ask for more."
The sheer purity of her sacrifice confused Urca. Her expectation was so low, her loyalty so high. He was a creature of sin bound to a monster, and he had been given a woman who embodied selfless virtue. This was a psychological battlefield, he felt trapped.
He realized he couldn't simply accept the terms; he had to destroy them and replace them with his own lie. He had to secure her complete loyalty to his new mask.
"Kelna. Look at me," he commanded, his voice gentle but firm. When she finally met his gaze, he channeled the raw, desperate emotion he had extracted from the original Urca's final moments—the deep sense of betrayal—and twisted it into manufactured affection.
"Don't ever say that. Do you think so little of me?" His thumb gently wiped a tear from her cheek. "They took everything, Kelna. My fortune, my dignity, my home… Celeste was a part of that rotten world. Finding you, finding this… purity…" He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "It is all that matters now. They thought they were punishing me by giving me you. They were wrong. They gave me the only true thing left in this miserable place."
He held her close, his words hitting her like a powerful, emotional anesthetic. They weren't just lies; they were precision tools designed to exploit her own selflessness and guilt. He watched as her emotional defenses shattered, replaced by a grateful relief.
"Oh, Urca…" she whispered, tears flowing freely now, but these were tears of emotional release. She clung to him, believing the man she loved, the man who had been shattered, had finally been restored by her kindness. She kissed him fiercely, pulling him down.
Urca responded with calculated passion, deepening the kiss while his mind remained detached. He mapped her reactions—the way her breathing hitched, the slight tremble in her hands as they clutched his shoulders. He needed her fully committed to the illusion he was building.
He broke the kiss only to trail soft, deliberate kisses along her jawline, whispering against her skin. "Let me prove it to you, Kelna. Tonight. Forget the world outside. Forget everything except us." His hand slid beneath the thin silk of her nightgown, finding the curve of her waist. He felt her stiffen momentarily, a lifetime of insecurity flaring. He knew her deepest fear—that her disability made her undesirable.
He paused, pulling back just enough to meet her eyes again. "You're beautiful," he murmured, his gaze unwavering, projecting absolute sincerity. "Every part of you." He saw the flicker of disbelief warring with desperate hope in her eyes. He leaned in, his lips brushing her ear. "Let me show you."
His touch became purposeful, unhurried.
Miles away, the alley was cordoned off with yellow tape. Detective Karris, a man whose face was perpetually etched with the exhaustion of dealing with the city's grim reality, stared down at the remains of the serial killer, Elias.
"Call it in again, Johnson. Tell them I want a full forensic sweep, but I don't want any press getting wind of this."
His younger partner knelt by the body. "Boss, I'm telling you, there's nothing. No blood spatter, no defensive wounds, no tracks. It looks like he just… dried out. Like a mummy. The clothes are still damp from the rain, but the man is desiccated. How does a perfectly healthy guy go from fine to a husk in an hour?"
Detective Karris ran a hand through his thinning hair. His job taught him that sometimes, the simple answer was the only one that mattered in a courtroom.
"This city is full of things we don't have paperwork for, son," Karris grunted. "We write what we know. The official report states: sudden, severe dehydration event. Heart attack, drug-induced, whatever. Get him to the morgue. I don't want this hanging over our heads."
The official dismissal of the supernatural was swift and cold. The first sin was now a cold case, categorized as a medical curiosity. The world beyond the cave remained safely, willfully blind. Urca's window of opportunity had opened.