Chapter 1: Chapter 1 — What They Made of Me
Soren Valis never raised his voice.
Not when they lied to him. Not when they dragged him down the stairs. Not even when they broke his ribs.
He didn't need to.
He'd spent most of his life quietly rearranging people's lives like chess pieces. No one ever saw the hand that moved them — only the consequences. A job lost here. A reputation ruined there. A career redirected. A marriage unmade.
Not out of cruelty. He told himself it was justice. Cleaning rot from the system. Fixing what was broken.
But in the stillness after it was done — when the last phone call was made, the final thread pulled — Soren felt something cold and deep settle in his chest.
Satisfaction.
Control.
He never admitted it. Not even to himself.
But every time he erased a threat, shaped an outcome, or exposed a truth that no one else could see… he felt whole.
That was the part they feared most.
Not the things he did — but how naturally he did them.
And how calm he always looked afterward.
The knock came just past midnight.
His wife didn't ask who it was. She just got up, calmly, and opened the door.
Five people entered. No masks. No threats. Only quiet, familiar eyes and a kind of practiced resolve.
Aaron — the closest thing Soren had to a brother. Matteo, his wife's brother. Others he had worked with, advised, protected.
They stood in the kitchen, framed by the soft light of the hallway.
Aaron poured himself a glass of wine and said, "This isn't personal."
Soren looked at his wife.
She looked away.
It wasn't fear in her expression. It was certainty.
"You were getting too close," Aaron said. "Not just to secrets. To people's thresholds."
"You don't just uncover lies," Matteo added. "You rewire lives. You decide what happens next. And then you pretend it's for the greater good."
Soren didn't deny it.
Because it was true.
"I never harmed anyone who didn't deserve it," he said.
"See?" his wife whispered. "That's what terrifies me. You always believe you're right."
"You know I am."
She closed her eyes.
"You were never violent. Never cruel. But Soren… every time you ended someone's career, every time someone 'coincidentally' lost everything — I saw it."
"Saw what?"
She opened her eyes again.
"How calm it made you."
They didn't kill him immediately.
That would have been mercy.
They brought him to the basement — the one he designed, insulated, finished with his own hands. It had always been too sterile. Too quiet. He imagined building a workshop down here. Or a playroom for his son.
Instead, they used it as a cage.
First came the isolation. Darkness. No food. Just a recording of his son's voice on a loop. Laughing. Crying. Asking for him.
Then came the pain.
Gloved hands. Icy pliers. Heated rods. Controlled damage — preserving the nerves. Never the face.
They wanted the world to recognize him when it was over.
But the worst part was the kindness.
The way Aaron spoke to him while tightening the straps. The way his wife knelt beside him after the second night and wiped the blood from his mouth.
"You didn't do anything wrong," she whispered. "But we couldn't wait for the day you might."
On the final night, they brought him upstairs.
Cleaned him. Dressed him.
Sat him at the dinner table.
His wife served his favorite meal. The same one she made when he proposed.
Aaron sat across from him and drank his wine slowly.
"We loved you," he said. "We still do. But you crossed a threshold. You became too capable."
"You're afraid of what I might become."
His wife leaned in.
"No," she said. "We're afraid of how easy it is for you to become it."
He looked at them all, and for the first time, he smiled.
"I understand."
Aaron hesitated. "Understand what?"
"You were right."
They didn't expect that.
And maybe, in that moment, they realized they hadn't destroyed him.
Only revealed him.
They left him tied in the basement to bleed out.
He stared at the concrete ceiling.
He didn't cry. Didn't scream. Didn't beg.
Instead, he thought about how predictable it had all been.
About how the people he had protected were the first to fear him.
About how he'd never trusted them — not really. Not even her.
He had just wanted to believe.
Then came the void.
Cold. Silent. Featureless.
And then a woman.
No scythe. No theatrics.
Just eyes like collapsing stars and skin like chalked marble.
"Hello, Soren," she said.
He stared.
"Don't worry," she said. "I'm not here to punish you."
"People always say that before they do."
She chuckled. Sat beside him.
"I don't deal in punishment. Only potential."
He studied her face.
"You're Death?"
"Close enough."
"What do you want?"
"To offer you a way forward. Somewhere else. Somewhere fitting."
"I don't believe in second chances."
"This isn't one," she said. "This is a continuation."
She held out a mask. Smooth. White. Blank.
"A world of symbols. Of deception. A place where men wear lies like armor, and truth is the most dangerous thing you can say."
He didn't take it.
"Why me?"
"Because you died exactly the way you lived: calculating, watching, remembering. Not many men die without blinking. But you did."
He stared at the mask. Then at her.
"What's the price?"
"You'll never love without suspicion. Never help without weighing the return. You'll feel alone even when people adore you."
He didn't hesitate.
"I already do."
She nodded.
"Then put on the mask."
He took it, but didn't put it on not yet.
He slowly leaned in, went behind her and hugged her slowly and whispered "thank you lady death".
He bit her ear lightly, and it was cold. Colder than anything he ever touched in his life.
You're quite an interesting fellow aren't you, as she looked into is abyssal dark eyes. I've loved too some more time with you, but you have to go now, she said seductively.
And the world shifted.
No light. No roar. Just the subtle, mechanical hum of something waking up.
[System Online: Masked Path]
[Name: Soren Valis]
[System Class: Fragmented]
[Core Trait: Interpretive Control]
[Objective: Survive | Subvert | Ascend]
[Spawn Point: Gotham – Divergence Type: Black]
He opened his eyes in a gutter that stank of gasoline and rot.
The rain fell heavy.
Sirens howled somewhere behind the skyline.
Gotham.
He stood. Slowly. Fingers aching. Breath thin.
He didn't marvel at the second chance. Didn't whisper gratitude.
He smiled.
Small. Cold.
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