All Chapters of The God of Ruin’s Pocket Change: Chapter 1
- Chapter 10
103 chapters
PROLOGUE: The Fall of the High Horse
The first thing I noticed was the smell. It hit me like a divine insult—wet dog, rotting cabbage, and something far worse. Despair, maybe. If misery had a scent, this would be it.“Disgusting,” I muttered, lifting a hand to wave it away. My arm felt heavy. Sluggish. Like it had been filled with sand instead of light.That was wrong.I opened my eyes.Instead of the polished gold tiles of the Celestial Palace, I was staring at a cracked concrete ceiling stained with mold and regret. A rusty pipe ran along it, leaking steadily. Cold water dripped directly onto my forehead, each drop echoing in the silence like a slow, mocking countdown.I sat up with a groan. My back popped. Loudly.A mortal sound.A mortal sensation.“Seraphim?” I called, my voice echoing weakly through the space. “If this is a joke, it’s lacking taste.”No answer.No choir of angels. No soft glow of divinity. No attendants hovering nearby with trays of peeled grapes and existential praise. Just the distant wail of sir
CHAPTER 1: The Trash Can of the Universe
The first thing I tasted was the floor.It wasn’t the polished marble of the Celestial Palace, nor was it the soft, grassy weaving of the Nebula Gardens. It tasted like vinegar mixed with old pennies. It tasted like a battery had corroded inside my mouth.I spat.Whatever came out was black, gritty, and burned my tongue.I opened my eyes.Usually, my mornings began with a view of the cosmos, a live feed of swirling galaxies and birthing stars painted across my ceiling. The light would be gentle, golden, and smelling faintly of jasmine.Today, my view was a plastic bag.It was blue, partially torn, and slick with moisture. It was inches from my nose. Through the tear, I could see something rotting inside. Grey slime. Or maybe it was just old noodles. The smell hit me a second later. A thick, physical wall of stench that shoved its way up my nose and sat heavy in my throat. Rot. Chemicals. Stale water.I tried to inhale, but the air was wet and heavy. It felt like breathing soup."Valet,
CHAPTER 2: The Gastronomy of Despair
I was standing in the mud, the rain plastering my white hoodie to my skin, when my knees simply decided they didn't want to support the weight of the universe anymore. I stumbled, catching myself on the rough, wet brick of the alley wall."Poison," I wheezed, clutching my stomach. "Assassination."It felt like something was trying to claw its way out of me. A sharp, rhythmic contraction that squeezed my insides until I saw spots dancing in the grey air. It was a violence I hadn't experienced since the Great War of the Nebulas, and even then, that was just a metaphysical headache.This? This was biological treason.My stomach growled.It wasn't a polite rumble. It was a roar. A guttural, wet, demanding sound that vibrated through my ribs and echoed off the brickwork.I froze. I knew what this was. I had read about it in the manuals for managing mortal species. Step one: The subject requires fuel. Step two: If fuel is not provided, the subject ceases to function."Hunger," I whispered. T
CHAPTER 3: The Copper Sun
The skewer in my hand felt heavier than a planet.It was a thin, rusted rod of iron, bowing slightly under the weight of the charred rodent, but my arm was trembling. The heat radiating from the meat seeped into my cold, wet palm. It was a greasy, aggressive warmth that made my stomach contract in a violent spasm of anticipation.Eat it, my body screamed. Tear it apart. Swallow the bones.I clamped my jaw shut. The saliva flooding my mouth tasted acidic."Not yet," I whispered to myself, my voice lost in the roar of the Sector Z rain. "We are civilized. We pay for services rendered."I looked at the vendor, Old Man Jori.He was watching me with a mixture of boredom and predatory amusement. His cybernetic eye whirred, the aperture contracting and expanding like the breathing of a tiny, mechanical insect. He held out his hand—a palm that looked like cracked leather stained with engine oil and soot."Five credits," Jori grunted. He spat to the side, a glob of something black hitting the m
CHAPTER 4: System Error
I looked up.The crowd had stopped.It was a sea of grey and brown. People wrapped in plastic ponchos, people wearing coats made of duct tape, people with limbs replaced by rusted iron. They were all frozen, standing in the middle of the street like statues in a graveyard.And they were all looking at me.No. Not at me.They were looking at Jori’s fist.They couldn't see the penny anymore. Jori had buried it against his chest. But they had seen the flash. They had seen the color.In a world of rust, copper was a sun. It was a color that didn't belong. It was a promise of heat, conductivity, and value so high it made their heads spin.I saw a woman standing near a drainpipe. She was holding a bag of aluminum cans. She dropped the bag. Clatter. She didn't notice. Her eyes were locked on the old man in the mud. Her mouth hung open, revealing gums black with rot.I saw a man with a shovel strapped to his back. He took a step forward. Then another. His eyes were wide, dilated, predatory.Th
CHAPTER 5: The Uncuttable Thread
I walked away from the crowd, chewing on a mistake.The rat meat was a rubbery, charred lump of regret. It tasted of sulfur, burnt hair, and the distinct, metallic tang of fear. Every time I clamped my jaw down, a pocket of rancid grease exploded in my mouth, coating my tongue in a film that refused to be swallowed."Texture is... challenging," I muttered to the rain.I kept my head down. My white hoodie was the only bright thing in Sector Z. It glowed with a soft, ethereal luminescence that seemed to irritate the shadows. I felt like a flare drifting through a dark room full of people who had adjusted to the blackness.I could feel their eyes.Back at the stall, the silence had been heavy. Now, as I moved away from Jori’s unconscious body, the silence broke. It shattered into a thousand whispers that skittered along the pavement behind me like dry leaves.I walked faster.My legs felt heavy. My knees popped with every step, a wet, grinding sound that vibrated up my thighs. I wasn't us
CHAPTER 6: The Consultant
The girl was staring at my stomach.Specifically, she was staring at the white fabric of my hoodie, right where her knife had struck. She wasn't blinking. Her chest was heaving beneath layers of wet, grey rags, her breath coming in short, panicked gasps that puffed out like white smoke in the freezing air.She looked like a ghost that had just tried to walk through a wall and bounced off.I lowered the rat skewer. I chewed the piece of cartilage in my mouth, swallowed it with a grimace, and wiped my free hand on my jeans."You dropped your toy," I said, pointing to the mud.At her feet, the shards of her knife lay scattered like broken teeth. The handle was half-buried in the sludge.She didn't look at it. She looked up at my face.Her eyes were grey. Not the soft, misty grey of a morning cloud, but the hard, flat grey of concrete that has been rained on for a century. They were wide, terrified, and calculating."It didn't cut," she whispered. Her voice was scratchy, like rusted hinges
CHAPTER 7: The Engine Roar
"Move," Anya hissed, tugging at the sleeve of my hoodie. "We have to get off the main grid. Now."I stumbled after her, my feet heavy and clumsy in the sludge. The mud in this alley wasn't just dirt and water; it was a living, sucking entity that wanted to pull my sneakers off. Shhh-luck. Shhh-luck."We have a contract," I reminded her, wiping rain from my eyes. "I provided the capital and you provide the logistics. Currently, the logistics involve a lot of walking in sewage.""Quiet," she snapped. Her voice was tight, vibrating with a frequency that set my teeth on edge. She kept looking over her shoulder, her eyes darting to the rooftops, the shadows, the mouth of the alley.I was still chewing on the memory of the rat.The flavor was clinging to the roof of my mouth, a stubborn film of burnt fur and rancid grease. I tried to generate some saliva to wash it down, but my mouth was dry. My stomach, while no longer screaming in agony, was sitting heavy and hot, pulsing with the effort o
CHAPTER 8: The Demand
The engines died, but the vibration stayed in the mud.It was a phantom tremor, shaking the black water in the puddles around my sneakers. The silence that followed the roar of the bikes wasn't peaceful. It was heavy. It was the kind of silence that happens right before a dam breaks.Smoke, thick and tasting of burnt rubber, swirled around us. It created a wall of grey fog, cutting off the rest of the alley, isolating us with the monsters on the machines.I stood there, holding my half-eaten rat skewer like a scepter."That," I said to the smoke, "is going to linger."Anya was on the ground near my feet. She wasn't moving. She was curled into a ball, her hands over her head, her face pressed into the muck. She was making a small, high-pitched sound—a keen of pure terror that was barely audible over the ticking of cooling metal.The rider at the front of the pack—the one with the white skull painted on his welding mask, swung his leg over his bike.The machine groaned as his weight shif
CHAPTER 9: The Flick
The claw was coming.It was a slow-motion disaster, a rusted iron bird of prey descending to eat my face.I stood in the mud, my feet heavy as lead anchors, watching the hydraulic arm swing toward me. Time didn't stop but my perception stretched. I could see everything with an agonizing, high-definition clarity that made my head hurt.I saw the individual flakes of orange rust peeling off the metal knuckles of the claw. I saw the black grease weeping from the loose piston, hanging in the air like a drop of crude oil tears. I saw the duct tape flapping in the wind of the swing.And I saw Spike’s eyes behind the mesh of his skull mask.They were wide. Bloodshot. Filled with the ecstatic, drooling anticipation of violence. He wasn't just trying to hurt me. He was trying to erase me. He wanted to turn the man in the white hoodie into a red smear on the alley wall, just to prove that cleanliness was a lie in Sector Z.My body screamed at me to move.Dodge, my instincts whispered. Duck. Weav