Chapter Eight: The Rurns' Lie, The Offer of Retribution
Kelna sat upright in her bed, her hair still damp from her bath. The momentary peace was shattered by the forceful entry of her mother, Lady Seraphina Rurn.
"Kelna! Where is that insolent pauper?" Lady Seraphina's voice was a low, dangerous hiss, her eyes sharp with calculating anger. "He vanishes on his wedding night, and now he is absent again. If he ruins us with his insolence, you are useless to me!"
Kelna's lips curved into a placid smile; her fingers stopped fidgeting and her shoulders dropped into ease she didn't feel. The Mask held. She looked at her mother with a calmness she hadn't possessed a week ago—a stillness born of absolute necessity.
"Mother, please. Don't be angry," Kelna said, her voice soft and persuasive, tinged with a feigned wife's pride. "Urca is dedicated. He left early—a man's pride, you know. He didn't want to wake anyone."
Lady Seraphina's fury did not abate immediately. "Pride? He has nothing to be proud of!" She adjusted the jeweled clasp on her sleeve — a habitual gesture when money was mentioned. "He's penniless."
"That's why he left," Kelna insisted, leaning into the lie Urca had unintentionally provided her with. "He told me he was going out to use his remaining connections, to find a small business, a respectable job. He said he simply must cater for me properly, as a true husband, not as a pauper reliant on your charity." She fixed her mother with a direct, earnest gaze. "He wants to provide for me, Mother. You know how important that is to a man."
Lady Seraphina studied her daughter's convincing performance. The lie was simple, traditional, and appealed directly to her own materialistic values. A pauper with ambition was better than a pauper in despair.
"A job?" Lady Seraphina scoffed, though the anger had curdled into a calculating reserve. "Hmph. Well, see that he succeeds. His pride is your only asset now. Keep him focused, Kelna. Do not let him shame us further."
She swept out of the room, leaving Kelna to exhale a slow, quiet breath of relief. The danger had passed. The lie had held. Elsewhere in the city, something that listened for heartbeats answered.
A street away from the Imperial Grand, Urca lounged on a park bench, once more wearing his familiar human form. He watched as the ambulance—its siren a fading, desperate scream—hurried Caleb away.
"Vengeance felt good," he murmured, rubbing his temple, "but fear is a blunt tool." The terror he'd fed on was potent, but fleeting. The psychological complexity required to maintain the threat was exhausting. "Too much paperwork. I need intent. I need sin that lasts longer than a shock. Something I can cultivate."
He sighed, muttering, "I am bored with simple screaming."
Just as boredom settled, he felt it — a spike in the air, metallic and sweet, like blood in water. A beacon of desperate sin, sharp enough to taste. It wasn't the terror of the guilty; it was the intense, agonizing blend of helplessness and burning desire for retribution from the victim.
Urca rose from the bench, his lazy demeanor vanishing, replaced by a focused, predator's energy. He walked away from the mundane world and toward the source of the emotional signal.
The source was a weed-choked, secluded alleyway behind the pristine, high walls of an upscale private school. In the golden light of the setting sun, a young, defenseless boy was pressed against the brick wall. His nose was bloody, his clothes torn.
Three wealthy, sneering students—bullies who clearly saw humiliation as a sport—stood over him. One held a high-end smartphone, filming the act.
"Look at the little crybaby, guys! Begging for mommy to save him," the Lead Bully sneered, nudging the boy with his foot. "Hold still, we need a good angle for the climax. You're not trying hard enough."
The bullied boy, broken and defeated by years of this torment, didn't even fight back.
Please. Anyone. Give me the strength. I wish they were dead. I wish I could make them pay for every single humiliation. I want them to feel this fear.
His thoughts fractured, the world shrinking to the sound of his own breath. The alley blurred — then sharpened. For a breath he considered running, but his legs would not answer; the old fear had taught him immobility. A presence pressed against the edges of reality.
At that moment, the atmosphere fractured. The air grew cold, inexplicably cold, and the setting sun's shadows lengthened unnaturally, pooling into an impossible blackness near the alley entrance.
From that unnatural darkness, Urca stepped out — calm, and somehow squeezing the air thin around him.
He ignored the bullies completely, stepping over a discarded gym bag as if they didn't exist. He walked straight toward the boy, who was trembling, his face a mask of exhaustion and despair. Urca knelt, meeting the boy's gaze.
"Stop wishing, and start asking," Urca's voice was a low whisper, utterly devoid of emotion, yet possessing a strange, hypnotic clarity. "You crave strength and vengeance. I can give you both. Do you desire the power to make your tormentors suffer, to make them fear the shadows they once hid you in?"
The boy's throat worked soundlessly. He wanted to speak, to refuse — but the word no had been beaten out of him long ago.
The boy, his mind numb from pain, could only stare, his desperation clinging to Urca's cold promise like a drowning man to driftwood.
The Lead Bully's voice, though still arrogant, wavered slightly. "Who the hell are you, man? You lost or something? This is private property. Get lost before we add you to the film. This is a private school matter."
"Wait… that's Lord Urca," one of them whispered, uncertainty creeping in, recognizing the face from society pages, but he didn't dare say that this Urca looked entirely too self-possessed and terrifying to be the pauper they'd heard about.
Urca finally rose, slowly turning his attention to the three bullies. His face was placid, but the oppressive air thickened around them, pressing down on their chests, making it hard to breathe. The cold wasn't just physical; it was a psychological weight.
"You mistake my presence for an invitation," Urca said, his voice quiet but carrying the force of a thunderclap. The streetlight nearest the alley guttered; the shadows along the bricks stretched, as if to listen.
"I was addressing the child. But since you asked…"
A faint, chilling smile curled his lips, a smile that promised pain and endless retribution. The Boy stared at the man who had answered his dark prayer, and in that horrifying, beautiful moment, he realized something irreversible was about to happen.
He was no longer a victim. He had been saved by something far crueller than a human hand.