The words still echoed in his mind:
"The heir of John Smith. The bearer of the Karmic Eyes."
Lucy barely remembered what had happened after. His memory was foggy, like a dream blurred at the edges. He recalled the man's shadow, the weight of his voice, and then… nothing. When he came to, he was alone in his grandfather's old house, the letter in his hands, the notebook open on the desk.
Sometimes he wondered if the encounter had been real, or just an exhaustion-born hallucination. But deep down, he knew. That man knew too much. And sooner or later, he would return.
Back at school, the contrast was jarring. The noise of hallways, laughter, arguments, backpacks slamming onto desks—life carried on as if nothing had changed.
For Lucy, everything had.
The threads were everywhere. He had tried to ignore them, hoping they'd vanish, but they were permanent now. Students brushing past each other revealed emotions in colors louder than their words.
A faint pink between two friends pretending to be nothing more.
A yellow strand among boys sticking together only out of interest.
A gray one tied to a teacher who walked into class dragging invisible chains.
Lucy wondered how he had lived without seeing this world. And how he would survive now that he did.
At lunch, he sat in the corner of the cafeteria, observing. His childhood friends still greeted him, but he felt the distance growing. It was hard to talk about video games and music when he could see their hidden sins and wounds.
Emily Fischer, his classmate—and, once, his first crush—laughed with her friends at a nearby table. Her thread toward Lucy was a faint pink, almost fading. That hurt more than he wanted to admit.
But then something else made his blood run cold. For a moment, Emily's thread flickered with a dark undertone, and his eyes dragged him into a vision: Emily crying, yelling at a closed door in her house.
The flash vanished, leaving him breathless. No one else noticed.
"Am I going to see this from everyone? Even from those I want to protect?" he thought, clenching his fists.
The first conflict came quickly.
Shouts erupted in the main hallway. A crowd had gathered around two boys pushing each other. Lucy pushed through. One was Mark, the notorious bully. The other was David, quiet and awkward, known for his obsession with food.
The threads told the story first. Between Mark and David pulsed a strong black strand—pure hatred. But when Lucy focused on David, his stomach dropped. The boy's karma was thick with a gluttonous shadow.
Mark slammed him against the lockers.
"You thief! You damn glutton!" he shouted.
Lucy's eyes burned. The noise around him faded. A vision struck: David stealing food from the cafeteria, hiding wrappers under his bed, eating until sick while ignoring his family's calls.
Lucy's heart pounded. This was too close to the story he had once read, The Assassin of Sins. Was the first sin standing before him already?
The crowd cheered for a fight. Mark raised his fist. David wept with fury, powerless. And Lucy, with his eyes glowing, knew this was the beginning of his path. He had to decide whether to step in—or look away.
The threads tightened. Judgment was about to begin.