Leon was crying over his body.
Kael Voss lay on a plain of cracked glass and black ash, one arm bent at a shape no arm should ever take, his chest half-open from a wound that had already stopped pretending to be mortal.
Above them, the sky had split like wet paper.
Things moved behind it.
Not birds.
Not clouds.
Too many eyes.
Too many mouths.
The Earth was dying in pieces.
Leon's hands shook as he pressed them to Kael's bloodless face, as if grief could weld the world back together.
His mouth moved around the same stupid words Kael had heard a thousand times from men who had never paid for anything they broke.
"I'm sorry."
Kael wanted to laugh.
It would have been ugly.
It would have hurt.
Leon buried his face in Kael's torn coat and sobbed.
Somewhere beyond the horizon, something colossal turned in the dark and the mountains started to scream.
Kael died angry.
Then he opened his eyes to steam, cutlery, and cheap jazz.
He was sitting at a small café table with his hands folded neatly over a linen napkin.
A waiter was arguing with a woman near the counter about sugar packets.
Someone laughed too loudly near the window.
The smell of roast beef, butter, coffee, and rain soaked into the room with a civility that almost offended him.
He did not blink at the mirror on the wall.
A digital clock above the pastry display read 11:50.
Kael's gaze stayed on it for one second too long.
Ten minutes.
The Apocalypse began at noon.
He reached for the menu, read it once, and set it down.
"The most expensive steak you have.
Rare.
And a bottle of red that does not taste like paint."
The waiter, a thin man with an apron too clean for the city, hesitated.
"Sir, we have a lunch special."
Kael looked up.
The waiter forgot the rest of the sentence.
"Bring the steak," Kael said.
"You'll have time to regret the special later."
The man left.
Kael leaned back and listened to the room breathe.
A tremor passed through the floor.
So slight that everyone else ignored it.
Kael did not.
The steak arrived.
Thick.
Bloody.
Better than it had any right to be.
Kael ate in silence.
The wine came next.
Dark, sharp, expensive enough to insult the poor.
He took one sip and decided the bottle was acceptable.
That counted as praise.
On the far side of the café, the light around the customers had changed.
Not enough for them to notice.
Enough for him.
A haze clung to some people like spilled oil.
Gray, weak, forgettable.
Others had a steadier burn.
Blue, silver, sickly green.
A few glimmered with something almost painful to look at.
Kael's fingers stopped on the stem of his glass.
There it was.
A golden aura.
Not bright.
Not yet.
Latent.
Hidden under a coat, under a lazy posture, under the arrogance of youth that always thought itself natural and not inherited.
At the corner table sat a young man with styled hair, a sharp jaw, and the easy disgust of someone who had never needed to survive a bad day.
Two friends laughed too loudly around him.
The gold around him pulsed once, soft as a heartbeat.
His mouth turned very slightly.
Not a smile.
Something meaner and more efficient.
There it was.
〔Destiny Plunder System: Initialized.〕
〔Host compatibility confirmed.〕
〔Primary directive: seize, strip, and consume the fortune of designated fate-bearers.〕
Kael held perfectly still.
〔You may perceive Auras of Fortune.〕
〔You may mark Destined Targets.〕
〔You may steal growth, inheritance, and opportunity by direct interference.〕
Kael let the notification sit there.
Then he looked around the café again, sharper this time.
And the boy with the gold aura.
That one mattered.
Kael took another bite of steak and watched the chosen one laugh at something his friend said.
The laugh was easy.
Careless.
He stood, walked to the counter, and emptied his wallet onto it.
Two bills.
Some coins.
A life reduced to paper and metal.
"Is there a convenience store attached?" he asked.
The cashier, a tired woman with chipped nail polish, nodded toward the side door.
"Next unit over."
"Good."
He turned, then paused.
"Hold the table.
I'll be back before the world gets rude."
She stared at him.
Kael left before she could decide whether that was a joke.
The convenience store was cramped, fluorescent, and full of things designed to survive worse days than this one.
Kael moved through the aisles with the calm of a man shopping at his own execution.
He took a metal-tipped umbrella from a display near the door.
Cheap frame.
Solid point.
Good enough to punch through flesh or glass.
Then he picked a kitchen knife from a blister pack, the kind sold to people who imagined slicing bread with more dignity than they had.
He weighed it once.
Acceptable.
Not elegant.
Functional.
The clerk watched him from behind the register, suspicious but not brave.
"You pay for those first."
Kael set the money down.
"I am."
The clerk glanced at the umbrella, then at the knife.
"Planning something?"
Kael slid the items into a plastic bag.
"Yes."
He looked at the wall clock.
11:57.
Three minutes.
He returned to the café and saw the golden-aura boy still seated, still smiling, still safe inside the joke the universe was about to make of him.
Kael took his seat again.
The bottle was half-empty now.
He poured the rest into his glass and drank.
The room felt thinner.
More brittle.
The young man with the golden aura glanced over, caught Kael looking, and frowned.
"What?" he asked, with the lazy annoyance of someone annoyed by the wrong species.
Kael wiped his mouth with the napkin.
"Nothing.
I was just wondering how long it takes a person like you to realize the floor has already been sold."
The young man blinked.
"Are you drunk?"
"Not yet."
One of his friends snorted.
"Ignore him."
Kael did.
He watched the boy's aura again.
That golden sheen had thickened.
Then the clock above the pastry display changed.
11:59.
The café went quiet in that peculiar way places do when the world is about to be broken but everyone still insists on their small tasks.
Forks slowed.
The waiter froze in the hallway.
The woman by the window looked up, unsettled for reasons she could not name.
Kael placed the umbrella by his chair, the metal tip angled outward.
He rested the knife beneath the table.
The last second dragged itself forward.
12:00.
The ceiling screamed.
Not metaphorically.
The sky split with a sound like a continent being torn in half, and every window in the café flashed white.
Customers shouted.
Glass bowed inward.
Several people dropped to the floor, hands over their heads, as if prayer had ever stopped an invasion.
Outside, the clouds peeled apart.
Beyond them, something vast and black opened its eye.
A voice rolled through the city, too large to belong to any throat.
〔Global Notification: Tutorial Activation Complete. Welcome, Earth. Survival will now be evaluated.〕
Somebody screamed.
Kael did not look at the sky.
He looked at the golden-aura boy.
The young man had gone pale.
His friends were shouting at each other.
One was already crying.
Then the front window exploded inward.
A shape vaulted through the frame in a spray of glass and rain and cheap metal noise.
It hit the floor on four limbs, low and twitching, all knife-bone and hunger.
Skin the color of old mushrooms.
Eyes like wet pebbles.
A grin full of needle teeth.
A goblin from the Rift.
The first one.
It sniffed, jerked its head, and fixed on the nearest warm body.
The café became a riot in one breath.
Kael rose, umbrella in one hand, kitchen knife in the other.
The goblin lunged.
And the boy with the golden aura looked straight at Kael as if, in that stupid instant, he understood who had just entered the room.
Kael smiled without warmth.
"Try not to die," he said.
"I have plans for you."