The Art of Machiavellian Suffering
Elias Voss has everything — billions, power, a perfect life — but he feels nothing. As a child, he was sold to a secret cult that erased his emotions, trained him to smile while suffering, and turned him into a cold, calculating machine. Now, as a billionaire, he rules the world from the shadows, but his soul is rotting from boredom.
One night, in his office high above the city, he sees her — a beautiful young ghost girl, standing outside the window in the rain. No one else sees her. She follows him home. In his mansion, she appears for real. She is a Veil Ghost, a being from the hidden world between life and death. She offers him a blood contract: ghost powers in stages, but each stage will cost him his humanity.
Elias agrees. He gains the power to see ghosts, to steal pieces of other people’s souls, to force them to relive their worst memories. He starts using this power to expose the lies of the rich, the fake “heroes,” the fake “lovers,” the fake “saints.” He sees that everyone is rotten, everyone is a hypocrite, everyone is just pretending.
But as his power grows, so does his cruelty. He becomes more Machiavellian, more monstrous. He sees people not as humans, but as tools, pawns, or obstacles. He builds a network of pawns, breaks them, and discards them. He fights Veil Lords, cults, and Hunters, not for justice, but for control.
In the end, Elias must choose: break the contract and lose all power, becoming a hunted, broken human, or embrace the Veil and become a new kind of Lord — a being of pure control, forever playing his game across all of history.
The novel ends not with a clean victory, but with a cycle: Elias, now beyond human, watches from the shadows as a new billionaire, bored and numb, looks up — and sees her. The game never ends.
