The bedroom door clicked shut in Ethan's face. The lock turned. The sound was small, precise, and carried the emotional weight of a gavel coming down."She locked you out," the Spirit observed. "After you drank twenty million dollars of another man's bourbon from a soup bowl. I'm shocked. Truly. Nobody could have predicted this."Ethan stood in the hallway for exactly three seconds. Then he turned, walked to the end of the corridor, opened the window, and dropped two stories into the garden below without making a sound.His feet hit the grass and he was moving before the impact settled, slipping across the estate grounds and over the back wall like a shadow passing through smoke.Inside the bedroom, Serena waited sixty seconds. She had planned this carefully. Lock the door. Let him stand in the hallway long enough to feel the weight of her displeasure.Then open the door and deliver a controlled, measured lecture about reckless behavior, impulsive decisions, and the consequences of or

The green fog swallowed him whole. For two seconds, the old man's smile widened. For three seconds, he waited for the sound of choking, of collapse, of a body hitting the ground.Ethan walked out the other side without breaking stride. His face was unchanged. His breathing was even.The venom had hit his system and dissolved like sugar in hot water, destroyed by immunities the Spirit had built into his body months ago using techniques passed down through four centuries of dragon lineage.The old man's smile died. His face went gray."How... that's impossible. No human body can..."Ethan closed the distance in one step. His fist connected with the old man's chest, and the sound that followed was not the sound of flesh hitting flesh.It was the sound of something breaking deep inside, the wet, muffled crack of internal organs shattering under a force they were never built to withstand.The old man collapsed. Blood poured from his mouth. His body crumpled onto the grass like a puppet wit

The shopkeeper pulled out a calculator, punched numbers for two full minutes, and turned the screen toward Ethan. Ten million, four hundred thousand dollars.Ethan handed over the gold Chamber card. The payment cleared in three seconds. The shopkeeper's glasses slid down his nose and he made no effort to push them back up.He just sat there on his stool, staring at the receipt confirmation like a man who had just watched a magic trick he could not explain."Kid drops ten million on herbs the way normal people buy groceries," the Spirit observed. "And he's wearing basketball shorts. I love this."Ethan carried the packages out of the shop and turned the corner onto the main market street. He stopped.Eleanor Hartwell was standing outside a tea shop twenty feet away, looking healthier and more vibrant than she had in over a year.The color in her face was strong. Her posture was upright. She was smiling at something her companion had said.The woman beside Eleanor was striking. Tall. At

"I asked for a loan. He agreed. I signed the paperwork. The interest rate he charged was illegal, the lending operation is unlicensed, and the contract wouldn't survive ten minutes in any courtroom in this country." Ethan put his hands in his pockets. "I took that money through my own abilities. I owe nothing.""You owe whatever I say you owe." Vincent uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, his cold eyes locking onto Ethan's face with the focused disinterest of a man examining a pest he had not yet decided how to kill. "You stole from a Sterling operation. It doesn't matter how clever the method was. It doesn't matter what a courtroom would say. Courtrooms are for people without power. People with power settle their accounts directly." He gestured at Ryan without looking at him. "Your friend found that out about thirty minutes ago.""So you beat a doctor who had nothing to do with it." Ethan's voice did not rise. "Because you couldn't touch me.""I beat a doctor who broke a priceless

Vincent Sterling was already calculating his exit. The leather chair, the staged ginseng, the imported fighter, the six man crew, all of it had been designed to produce a very specific outcome, and that outcome was now lying in pieces on the floor alongside his bodyguards and his dignity.He straightened his Tang suit, placed both hands on the armrests, and began to rise with the measured composure of a man who intended to walk out as if this had all gone according to plan.Ethan's voice stopped him halfway out of the chair."Sit down. We're not done."Vincent's jaw tightened. He sat."You owe Ryan Torres a formal, public apology for what happened in this shop today." Ethan's voice was level. Unhurried. The voice of a man reading terms from a contract that had already been signed. "You owe him one million dollars in medical compensation for his injuries. And you owe me five complete sets of rare medicinal herbs for my trouble."He listed the herbs by name. Every single one was somethi