Crypto Lord: The Digital Dominion System

Chapter 3: Final Gamble, Final Loss

The numbers on the screen blinked red and green. Ethan Cross sat hunched over the tiny desk in his one-room apartment as sweat trickled down his face. His phone vibrated with a notification, and the words flashed across its screen, “Margin Opportunity: 50x Leverage Available.”

His pulse spiked. ‘This is it. My chance. My redemption.’ He muttered sharply. 

Seven days ago, he had been mocked, betrayed, and thrown out of Damien Holt’s launch party like garbage. Clara’s words still rang in his ears, “You’re just a loser delivery boy.” Damien’s smirk, the laughter of strangers, burned him more than fire itself.

And above all, his father’s voice haunted him, “You’ll never make it. Stop living in fantasies.”

“No,” Ethan hissed through clenched teeth, glaring at the charts. “I’m not a loser. I’ll prove it tonight.”

He glanced at the crumpled envelope on the table. Inside was the $10,000 he had borrowed from Victor Kane, the most feared loan shark in the district.

Victor’s reputation wasn’t rumor. People talked about the man who once hung a debtor upside down from a billboard for failing to pay back on time. His name alone carried terror.

Ethan had walked into Victor’s smoky gambling den two days ago with nothing but desperation.

“You’re serious?” Victor had asked, leaning back in his leather chair with the cigar smoke curling like a serpent around his scarred face.

Ethan had nodded. “Ten grand. I’ll double it in a week.”

Victor chuckled low and with a cold face. “Double it? Boy, I like your guts. But guts don’t pay debts. Fail me, and you’ll crawl for the rest of your life, if your legs still work.”

Ethan had swallowed his fear and signed the contract. Now, here he was, staring at the flashing screen, ready to turn borrowed money into the glory he had dreamt of. 

He opened the trading app, entered the leverage option, and fed in every cent of the loan shark’s cash. His fingers trembled as he typed the numbers, $10,000, 50x leverage. Total position: $500,000.

One wrong move and he was finished.

The candlesticks climbed. The market surged in green. Ethan’s heart leapt.

“Yes!” he cried, slamming his fist on the desk. “Yes, it’s going my way!”

Within minutes, his screen showed +$15,000 profit. His lungs filled with fire.

“I told you, Father. I told you, Clara. Damien, watch me rise! This is just the beginning!”

The surge continued, and his profit swelled. +$22,000. +$28,000.

Ethan’s laughter broke the silence of his cramped apartment. He stood with his arms wide, as if the world already belonged to him.

“This is my comeback! My resurrection!”

But the market is merciless.

One minute of green glory turned into hesitation. The chart trembled, then twitched downward.

Ethan frowned, refreshing the screen. “No, no… it’s just a correction. It’ll climb again.”

But the red candlesticks stacked, one after another. His profits shrank from +$28,000  to +$12,000 to +$2,000.

Panic coiled around his chest. He gripped the phone tighter, his knuckles whitening. “No… come on, hold! Don’t do this to me!”

Then the app froze for a split second. When it refreshed, the candlesticks had collapsed into a bloodbath. - $15,000. - $40,000. - $90,000.

“NO!” Ethan screamed, slamming the desk so hard his phone nearly fell. “This isn’t natural, it’s manipulation!”

Somewhere deep inside, he knew. Damien Holt had powerful allies in the hedge fund backers. The insiders who pulled strings in the market like puppeteers.

They had crushed him at the seminar, humiliated him at the party… and now, they were strangling his last breath through invisible hands.

The screen flashed,  Margin Call Triggered.

Half his position liquidated in seconds.

His body shook, sweat pouring down his back. He tried to close the trade, but the app froze again, spinning endlessly.

When the page reloaded, the final message hit him like a blade to the heart:

Account Balance: $0.00. Debt Owed: $20,000.

Ethan stared at the numbers until they blurred. His body went cold and his ears ringing with silence.

It was gone. Every cent. Not just Victor Kane’s ten grand, but double that owed back with interest.

His chest heaved. His dream, his comeback, his redemption shattered in under ten minutes.

The phone slipped from his trembling fingers. It clattered to the floor.

“Why…” His voice cracked. “Why is it always me? Why does the world… hate me so much?”

He buried his face in his palms. For the first time, he felt the abyss truly open beneath him. No Clara, no Damien, not even his father’s harsh words, this was despair that came with teeth and was ready to swallow him whole.

………….

…….

A knock thundered on his door. Ethan’s blood froze. He knew that knock.

The door swung open before he could react, and two bulky men stepped in. They had tattoos curling up their arms like snakes. Between them walked Victor Kane, dressed in a sharp black suit, his grin a predator’s smile.

“Evening, Mr. Cross,” Victor drawled, flicking ash from his cigar. “I trust our little investment has bloomed?”

Ethan’s legs weakened. He staggered to his feet, stammering, “I… I just need time…”

Victor snapped his fingers. One of the thugs grabbed Ethan by the collar, lifting him like a ragdoll.

“Its time.” Victor chuckled darkly. “Do you think the world gives me time when I lose? No, boy. The world takes. And now, I take.”

“I lost it all!” Ethan shouted, desperation spilling from him. “The market was rigged, they manipulated it! Please, I just need…”

Victor shoved the cigar into the ashtray and leaned close with his eyes burning like coals.

“You owe me twenty grand. I give you seven days. Not a second more. You fail, and I’ll make sure your legs bend in directions you never imagined.”

The thug slammed Ethan against the wall before dropping him. His ribs ached, and his knees hit the floor.

Victor straightened his tie, turning for the door. “Tick-tock, Ethan Cross. Just seven days and pray for a miracle.”

The men filed out, leaving Ethan gasping in the dark silence of his apartment.

Ethan stayed on his knees long after they left, his body trembling and mind fractured.

He had nothing. No savings. No allies. Not even respect. Only a debt that could kill him.

But as the minutes crawled, something inside him hardened. His humiliation at the seminar. His betrayal at the party. Clara’s cruel words. Damien’s smug face. His father’s endless scorn. And now Victor’s threat.

All of it twisted together, forging a single spark in the black pit of his soul.

“I will not die like this,” he whispered, voice raw but steady. “I will not be their joke.”

His fists clenched so tight his nails drew blood.

The rain poured down from the sky in relentless sheets. It was hammering against the cracked sidewalks of downtown as if the nature was fun of  him. 

Ethan Cross stumbled forward, his shirt soaked and his sneakers squelched with every step. He had nothing left, no money, no food and no home. Just an empty wallet and a heart burning with failure.

‘Is this what I’ve become?’

The thought echoed louder than the storm. His once-shiny dreams of being a crypto visionary were nothing more than broken glass underfoot.

Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Damien Holt, smiling smugly at that party, with Clara at his side. Her words cut deeper than any knife,

“You’re just a loser delivery boy. Damien is the future.”

That line replayed like a broken record, taunting him with every passing second.

And now Victor Kane’s shadow loomed over him too. The memory of the loan shark’s gravelly voice still hissed in his ear:

 “Seven days, Cross. If I don’t see twenty grand, I’ll break more than your dreams.”

Ethan’s stomach clenched violently. He hadn’t eaten in two days. A stale pretzel from a street cart yesterday morning had been his last meal. Now he walked aimlessly through the financial district, surrounded by neon tickers and glowing skyscrapers.

Lightning lit up the sky, and Ethan ducked under a flickering streetlamp. He slid down against the cold wall of an abandoned storefront, wrapping his arms around himself for warmth.

His father’s voice rose in his head in a harsh and unrelenting manner,

“You’ll never make it. You’re not built for success, Ethan. Stop chasing childish fantasies.”

Those words had been chains all his life, choking every ambition before it could even come to life. He had tried to prove the old man wrong but every failure seemed to prove him right.

And then came a softer voice, his mother’s. Ethan’s lips trembled as the memory washed over him.

Flashback

He was fifteen years old, sitting at the kitchen table, tinkering with an old computer, wires scattered across the surface. His mother had leaned over, brushing her hand through his messy hair.

“Look at you,” she whispered with a smile, “you have the eyes of a dreamer.”

“Dad says I’m wasting my time.” Ethan muttered, looking at the charts. 

His mother’s gaze sharpened. “Don’t listen to him. You were born for something greater, Ethan. One day you’ll change the world.”

Her words had been a candle in his darkest nights. But now? That candle felt extinguished.

And the worst part? She wasn’t here to see him. She wasn’t here to remind him that hope existed. He had betrayed her faith.

“Mom…” His whisper was drowned by the roar of the rain.

Ethan’s eyes blurred with tears, though he forced himself to blink them away. Crying wouldn’t feed him. Crying wouldn’t save him from Victor Kane’s threats. Crying wouldn’t bring his mother back.

The city buzzed around him, indifferent. Executives that wore tailored suits walked past him shielding themselves with umbrellas. None of them spared a glance at the drenched, broken young man clinging in the dark.

He staggered toward a bench near the stock exchange tower, each step heavier than the last. His legs gave out, and he collapsed onto the cold metal.

His phone buzzed faintly in his pocket. He pulled it out, it's 3% battery. The cracked screen glowed weakly, mocking him with the one app he dared not open, his trading account. The red numbers still seared into his mind. His last gamble, his last chance were all wiped away in seconds.

The hunger gnawed at him until his head spun. His hands trembled violently as if his own body was rejecting him.

“Maybe Dad was right,” he muttered bitterly. “Maybe I was born to lose.”

The streetlights flickered. The sound of the wave became a dull roar in his ears as exhaustion dragged him under. His head dipped forward. His eyelids grew heavier. The world tilted sideways, changing into black.

And then… the  flicker.

A faint glow danced before his eyes. At first, he thought it was delirium. Hallucination from hunger and rain. But no, this light was real.

Right there, in front of the bench, a holographic screen pulsed into existence. It glitched, sparking with static and  hovering in the air like a shard of the future tearing through reality.

Ethan blinked hard. “What… the hell?”

The interface was translucent with coded lines spiraling across it. Symbols he had never seen before rearranged themselves, morphing into words he could read:

“System Protocol Detected… Initializing…

User: Ethan Cross.”

His breath caught. His rational mind screamed impossible. But the part of him that had always believed in something greater leaned forward with his heart pounding.

The hologram glitched again, expanding into multiple windows, each one shimmering with data streams.

“Welcome, Ethan Cross. The Classic Crypto Lord System has chosen you.”

Ethan’s pulse raced. The rain, the hunger, the pain, all of it faded as he stared at the impossible sight before him.

The world around him blurred into insignificance.

Something far greater had just entered his life.

And as his body finally gave out, his head slumping against the bench, Ethan whispered into the storm:

“…Mom… maybe this is it.”

The holographic screen pulsed brighter, as though answering him. And then…. Heavy darkness.