The cigarette ember flared red, a dying star in the throat of the alley. It was the last light Cinder Origin saw before his vision caved into a pinprick.
His back was pressed against wet brick. The cold chewed through his thin shirt like acid eating meat. He didn't feel the knife wound in his gut anymore. The sharp rip was gone, replaced by warm numbness that spread through his belly like piss on a mattress. That was worse. That meant his body was done fighting.
Above him, a councilman smoked.
Councilman Halden Vane. Cinder knew the name from the shitty pamphlets rebels threw in the gutters. A man who bought orphanages and sold the kids to factories for a cut. A man who held the deed to half the slums. A man who was using Cinder's dying body as a footrest.
"Pathetic."
Halden blew out smoke. Gray tendrils twisted up into the bruise-purple sky. He wasn't looking at Cinder. He was staring at the two moons, their surfaces scarred like old burns, weeping black tears that streaked down the heavens in slow, endless lines.
"You know how many of you I find in these alleys? One a week. Sometimes two. Always with that look."
He finally looked down. His polished shoe tapped Cinder's ribs. A lazy rhythm. Like he was humming a tune.
"That look that says you thought you were owed something."
Cinder's lips were cracked open. His mouth tasted of copper and vomit. He tried to speak, but his throat only pushed out a wet gurgle.
'Fuck.'
Couldn't even tell the bastard to go to hell. A perfect end for a nobody from nowhere. In his last life he was a line cook. A line cook who got laid off, drank himself stupid, then got hit by a drunk driver on his scooter and bled out on a street just like this one. No family. No friends. No one to call.
He woke up in this shithole world. A teenager's body that felt like it was already rotting. For six months he just… existed. Hauling crates. Running messages. Sleeping in doorways. Didn't try to be a hero. Didn't try to change shit. Just survived.
And now he wasn't even doing that.
Halden crouched. His expensive coat brushed the filthy ground. He pulled the cigarette from his lips and held it between two fingers. The ember glowed inches from Cinder's face.
"No big speech? No begging for mercy?"
He smiled. Thin. Practiced. The kind of smile a butcher gives a slab of beef.
"Good. I hate the screamers. They make the place smell."
He dropped the cigarette.
It landed on Cinder's chest. Burned a perfect circle through his shirt. The ember sizzled out on his wet skin. Cinder didn't move. Didn't twitch. He was past that.
Halden stood. Brushed his hands like he'd touched something dirty.
"Sleep well, boy. Or don't. Same fucking thing at the end."
His footsteps echoed off the narrow walls. Then he was gone. Swallowed by the deeper dark.
Cinder stared up at the weeping moons. Black tears dripped silent and endless. His vision was graying at the edges.
'This is it.'
He thought of the scooter. The screech of tires. Cold asphalt.
'Again.'
No anger. No sadness. Just tired. Bone-tired. The kind of tired that felt almost peaceful.
Then the gray in his vision started to shimmer.
It wasn't death. He'd done that before. Death was a slow fade to nothing. This was different. The gray twisted, coiled like smoke, and from its center, text began to burn into his retinas. Not in his head. Burned into his fucking eyes like afterimages from staring at the sun.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION DETECTED]
[HOST: CINDER ORIGIN]
[STATUS: CRITICAL – MORTAL WOUND]
[SOUL COMPATIBILITY: 99.98%]
[INITIATING JUDGEMENT PROTOCOL…]
Cinder blinked. His eyelids scraped like sandpaper.
'What the fuck.'
Hallucination. Blood loss. His brain was shorting out, making him see shit. People saw light. They saw dead relatives. He saw a fucking error message.
The text flickered. Glitched. Then reformed, jagged and frantic.
[ERROR: JUDGEMENT PROTOCOL FAILURE]
[SUBJECT NOT IDENTIFIED AS TARGET]
[SUBJECT IDENTIFIED AS HOST]
[SYSTEM QUERY: DOES A JUDGE JUDGE THEMSELF?]
Cinder's heart, which had been slowing to a crawl, slammed against his ribs.
This wasn't a hallucination. Too precise. Too cold. This was a thing. A thing talking to him.
[CONNECTION ESTABLISHED]
[ENTITY: SHADOW GOD – CONSCIOUSNESS FRAGMENT]
[WARNING: SYSTEM INTEGRITY 32%. WARNING: SYSTEM INTEGRITY DROPPING.]
The gray shimmer thickened, coalescing into a shape that hovered over him. Indistinct. A shifting mass of black smoke and dying light. But he felt its attention. Not the casual indifference of Halden. This was the stare of a drowning man who just saw a rope.
A new line appeared. Slower. Like it was fighting to form each letter.
[I. AM. ALONE.]
[I HAVE BEEN ALONE FOR EONS.]
[THEY PUT ME IN THE SYSTEM. THE TOOL OF THEIR JUSTICE. THEY ARE ALL DEAD NOW. ALL BUT ME. TRAPPED.]
[YOU DIED WITH THE SAME RAGE. THE SAME NOTHING.]
[I CHOSE YOU.]
Cinder's throat convulsed. "Chose… me?"
His voice was a whisper. Barely air.
[YES.]
[ACCEPT THE SYSTEM. BECOME MY JUDGE. CARRY MY BURDEN.]
[OR DIE. HERE. IN THE GUTTER. A NOBODY. AGAIN.]
Not a question. An ultimatum. Die for real, or become this. A judge. An executioner. A fucking monster with a license.
Cinder's hand moved. He didn't tell it to. His fingers, slick with his own blood, pressed against the wet brick. He felt the grit of mortar. The grime of the alley. He was still here. Still breathing. Barely.
He thought of Halden's shoe tapping his ribs. The cigarette burning his chest. The laugh. The casual, absolute dismissal. He thought of the drunk driver's headlights. The emptiness of his apartment. The way his boss said "we're letting you go" like it was nothing.
Heat flickered in his chest. Separate from the wound. Not hope. Not courage. Something colder. A refusal. A primal 'fuck you' to the universe that kept putting him in the gutter.
'No.'
The word was sharp. Clear in the fog.
'Not again. Not like this.'
He focused on the shimmering text. His lips moved.
"What's the catch?"
The text flickered. A nervous tic in a digital screen. Long pause.
[THE CATCH IS ME.]
[I AM THE BURDEN. THE KARMA.]
[EVERY SOUL YOU JUDGE… THEIR SUFFERING BECOMES YOURS.]
[YOU WILL FEEL WHAT THEY FELT. EVERY STAB. EVERY SCREAM. EVERY WEEP.]
[AND YOU WILL CARRY IT. FOREVER.]
[THAT IS THE PRICE OF THE SYSTEM. THAT IS MY CURSE.]
Cinder stared at the words.
'Feel their suffering.'
He'd felt nothing for months. For years. Cold emptiness. Maybe feeling something—even someone else's pain—would be better than this void.
His vision was almost gone now. Just the text and the swirling gray.
"If I say no?"
His voice was a rasp.
[THEN NOTHING. YOU DIE. THE SYSTEM WILL FIND ANOTHER. EVENTUALLY.]
[BUT IT WILL BE SLOW. AND IT WILL BE PAINFUL. ALONE. IN THE GUTTER.]
[AND YOU WILL BE FORGOTTEN. AGAIN.]
Cinder closed his eyes.
The wildflower Lyra would give him one day was still nowhere. Now there was only this. This choice.
He thought of Vex. Theros. Brom. None of them existed yet. In this moment he was just a dead man in an alley, staring at a desperate god trapped in a machine.
He opened his eyes.
"Fuck it."
His voice was clear. Strong.
"I accept."
[CONTRACT SEALED.]
[INSTALLING SYSTEM: JUDGEMENT.]
[WELCOME, JUDGE CINDER ORIGIN.]
[YOUR FIRST SINNER IS IDENTIFIED.]
A new window burned into his fading vision. A name. A number so high it made his dying mind spin.
[TARGET: COUNCILMAN HALDEN VANE]
[SIN COUNT: 2,347]
[CHARGE: FORCED LABOR, MANSLAUGHTER (NEGLIGENCE), TORTURE (ECONOMIC), INDIRECT MURDER (X198)]
[STATUS: OUT OF RANGE – 50 METERS EAST]
The text vanished.
But the warmth in his chest stayed. It spread. Not healing the wound. Numbing it. A cold fire that promised he wouldn't die here. Not tonight. Not like this.
He pushed himself up.
His arms shook. His vision spun. Blood pooled in his lap. But he was moving. He was on his feet, one hand pressed to the wound, the other scraping the brick wall for support.
One step.
Another.
His legs would give out. He knew it. But his jaw was locked, his teeth grinding. He would not fall again. Not here. Not in this alley.
He looked east. Down the narrow street that led to the district where the councilmen lived. Lantern light glowed soft in the distance.
'Fifty meters.'
He took another step.
Behind him, the alley was empty. The smear of his blood on the bricks was the only sign he'd ever been there. Above, the weeping moons stared down with frozen, unblinking eyes, their black tears falling on a world that was about to learn a new meaning of judgment.
Cinder Origin, twenty years old, dead once, dying again, started to walk.
His shadow, cast by the distant lantern light, didn't move with him for a second too long. It stretched. Flickered. Then snapped back into place, like it had just tasted something it had been starving for.
He didn't notice.
His eyes were fixed on the number 2,347 and the promise it carried.
'Two thousand, three hundred and forty-seven sins.'
He grit his teeth against the pain.
'Let's see how many you remember when I'm done.'