2025-12-18 04:40:00Ethan Rylan’s life had a permanent, suffocating stench.
It was ammonia. It was stale industrial carpet cleaner.
It was week-old coffee.
The smell clung to his worn-out uniform. It was etched deep into the creases under his fingernails.
He pressed the vibrating handle of the industrial scrubber down hard. It scraped deep into the polished granite lobby floor.
His shoulders screamed in protest with every slow, grinding pass.
The time was 2:17 AM. This was his third shift of the day.
It was his night shift.
Innovate Global Tech—that shimmering monolith of glass, steel, and ambition—was his territory. He was the king of its grime.
For the last six hours, he'd been scraping away the invisible evidence of success.
He cleaned the spilled latte drops left by venture capitalists. He cleaned the dried sweat of frantic coders.
Worst of all, he cleaned the microscopic, tacky chewing gum fused into the expensive stone.
Seventeen-hundred and thirty-five days.
That number was a parasite, a thought that wouldn't leave him. It was a metronome ticking inside his skull.
That’s how long he’d been working. Two, often three, minimum-wage jobs.
All since his mother died.
He never got the luxury of seventeen-hundred days of mourning. He’d been working through them.
His mother’s final illness had been a cruel, drawn-out affair.
The debt she left behind was one hell of a devastating legacy. It was immense, insurmountable, and completely suffocating.
It was a crippling, invisible chain.
He wasn't working to pay off the principal of that huge $180,000 medical bill.
He was just working to keep the aggressive daily interest from spiraling totally out of control.
It was a slow, mathematical strangulation. He was perpetually standing in place.
His bank account was stuck at zero.
Actually, it was technically negative zero, if you counted the relentless overdraft fees.
He paused the scrubber. He wiped his sleeve across his forehead.
Sweat stung his eyes. He checked the time on his old, cracked phone strapped to his arm: 2:25 AM.
His arms ached. His eyes stung from the industrial cleaner.
His hands were permanently marked by manual labor.
But the physical pain was just a distant background hum.
His focus was on the numbers. They were the real source of his suffering:
Principal Debt: $180,000
Current Balance (with accrued interest): $192,412.06
Last payment applied (to interest only): $11.00 (three days ago)
Days until collateral seizure: 1
He was totally trapped in a financial labyrinth.
He had traded sleep, a college education, and any semblance of a normal twenty-one-year-old life.
He gave it all up for the dubious privilege of keeping his head just above the waterline of bankruptcy.
He’d once dreamed of a life inside buildings like this. A future of code and innovation.
Now, he only knew the smell of their trash and the feel of their grime.
The shame of his situation felt like a heavy coat he couldn’t take off.
A brief flicker of movement caught his eye in the glass wall’s reflection.
It was his own reflection. Thin. Stooped from perpetual exhaustion.
He had deep, purple hollows under eyes that looked fifty years older than his twenty-one.
He was a ghost haunting the temples of wealth.
He took his mandatory ten-minute break. He collapsed onto a steel bench tucked into a small, windowless custodial closet.
He immediately navigated to his email. He dreaded what he knew he would find.
Subject: IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED – FINAL WARNING (Account: Rylan-9372)
The sender was Aethel Debt Management. They were the cold, impersonal organization that owned his future.
The email was enough to leave his blood running cold.
They were demanding immediate repayment in full. They threatened legal action that would cost him what little he didn't already owe.
He scrolled down, his heart pounding a frantic, useless rhythm. He found the single paragraph that truly mattered:
"Failure to secure full payment or arrange a viable long-term payment plan will result in the immediate seizure of all collateralized assets, including, but not limited to, the antique timepiece listed under Item 4C of the original lien agreement. This seizure will be executed within 48 hours of your default, which is scheduled for 8:00 AM tomorrow."
The antique timepiece. It was his mother’s watch.
It was a cheap, tarnished thing. It had a simple, engraved inscription on the back.
It was the last physical link he had to her. The only memory that hadn’t been swallowed by the relentless hunger of the hospital bills.
Its monetary value was practically nothing compared to the debt. Yet they wanted it.
It was a final, cruel twist of the knife.
A new notification popped up. It immediately overlaid the debt notice.
It was a text message from an old college contact. It was delivered with an almost comical lack of self-awareness.
Marcus Thorne: Hey, Ethan. Just landed my first proper bonus check—$15k! Gonna put a down payment on a new German sedan. You remember my old man’s BMW, right? Anyway, heard you’re still pushing that mop. Don’t sweat it, man. Not everyone can climb out of the hole, right? Keep at it, Debt-Boy.
Ethan’s hands shook with a pure, white-hot, impotent rage.
Marcus was his polar opposite. Born with every advantage. Blessed with an effortless charisma.
Now, Marcus was working a lucrative white-collar job three floors above where Ethan was scrubbing the floor.
Marcus’s casual cruelty wasn't intended to destroy. It was intended to remind Ethan of his immutable, low place.
The injustice made Ethan’s jaw clench until his temples throbbed.
He drafted a venomous paragraph. It detailed exactly what he thought of Marcus and his inherited, undeserved success.
But then, with a sigh of weary resignation, he deleted it. It wasn't worth the emotional energy.
Marcus had already won simply by existing in his elevated status.
He folded the crumpled debt notice. He slid it into his pocket.
He was done with interest payments. He was done running.
He was going to the Aethel office tomorrow morning. He would directly face the collection agency.
He would beg. He would plead. He would grovel for mercy on his mother's watch.
It was a final, desperate act of submission.
The next morning, Ethan dragged himself through the city streets. He hadn't slept.
The anxiety had kept him cycling through excuses and apologies all night.
The Aethel offices were downtown. It required a long, exhausting walk he couldn't afford to skip for the subway.
He clutched the final notice in his sweating hand. It was his white flag of surrender.
He rounded the corner onto Main Street. He pushed past the hurried morning commuters.
His mind was consumed by the script of his upcoming plea.
Please, just two more weeks... I'll sell the TV... I just need the watch.
That’s when the world began to end.
It started not with a bang, but with a color. A sickly, pulsating green and purple tore the clear sky open like cheap fabric.
A vortex of swirling energy—a spatial rupture—manifested directly over the main square.
It spat out small, chaotic, monstrous forms. They looked like badly rendered nightmares.
The sound was a deafening, tearing screech. It was like a thousand pieces of metal grinding against each other.
Commuters screamed. They dove into doorways and behind cars. Chaos exploded in a matter of seconds.
Ethan, the perpetual observer, froze.
He saw a grotesque, gargoyle-like creature claw its way fully through the swirling Gate. Its eyes burned with orange fire.
He spun to flee. But a frantic businessman, trying to hurdle a fallen street vendor cart, slammed directly into Ethan’s back.
The force was stunning. It knocked the air from his lungs.
Ethan pitched forward, completely losing control of his momentum. His body was a helpless, flailing thing.
He didn't hit the concrete.
He fell straight through the shimmering, violent threshold of the interdimensional Gate. His body was enveloped in cold, searing energy.
The last thought
that flashed in Ethan Rylan’s mind was utterly devoid of fear.
It was the bitter, absolute knowledge of his life: I failed even to escape. And now I’ll never pay the debt.
Then, darkness.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
The Iron Skin Protocol
Chapter 6: The Iron Skin ProtocolThe third strike was delivered with a calculated, furious snap of the wrist.It wasn’t just a hit; it was an execution of dignity. The reinforced hide bit into Ethan’s shoulders, and for a split second, the world turned into a silent, white void.It felt as if his skin were being flayed away by molten metal. His legs finally gave out, his knees hitting the stone floor with a dull thwack, but the iron shackles held him upright, his arms strained in their sockets.He hung there, a limp silhouette against the scarred wooden post. His breath came in shallow, ragged gasps that whistled through his grit teeth. The room tilted dangerously, the faces of the watching Delvers blurring into pale, ghostly smears.Kaelen stood back, chest heaving slightly from the exertion. He waited for the break.He expected the sobbing, the pleas for mercy, or the hollow-eyed stare of a man who had finally realized he was nothing.What he got was a terrifying rigidity. Ethan d
The Unseen Strength
Ethan stared at the massive, half-collapsed pillar section. It was a jagged tooth of reinforced granite, easily weighing a thousand pounds.Even for a B-Rank Strength specialist, this would be a challenge. For an exhausted E-minus who had spent the last hour sweeping dust, it was a death sentence for the joints.But Marcus Thorne wasn’t asking for a clean workspace; he was asking for a public confession of worthlessness. He wanted Ethan to strain until he snapped, providing a mid-morning comedy routine for the elites.Ethan’s mind went cold and analytical.Failure condition: Inability to execute a physical task under extreme social pressure.Goal: Maximum humiliation. Maximum strain. Maximum payout."I... I can try," Ethan said, forcing his voice to crack. He let his shoulders slump, playing the part of the broken dog perfectly.Marcus and his squad erupted. "Hear that? He’s going to 'try'! " Marcus shouted to a passing group of A-Rank mages."The Debt-Boy thinks he can move the mount
Cleaning the Silver Spear
The morning after the lashing, Ethan walked with a stiff, mechanical stride that made every joint in his body protest.The 10% damage reduction from [Iron Skin (Lvl 1)] hadn't worked a miracle; his back was still a lattice of angry, weeping welts that stuck to his cheap linen shirt.But the skill had done something more subtle—it had muted the sharp, white-hot edges of the agony into a deep, heavy ache. It was the difference between being stabbed and being crushed.He could function. He could move. And in his line of work, that was all that mattered.His assignment for the day was a masterpiece of psychological warfare from Commander Kaelen. Instead of the dark anonymity of the sewers, Ethan was sent to the surface."The Silver Spear entrance needs a shine," Kaelen had growled that morning, barely looking up from his coffee. "The A-Ranks are complaining about the dust. Try not to bleed on the marble, Rylan. It’s hard to get out."Kaelen wanted him visible. He wanted the "trash" of the
The Price of Defiance
The air in the Cleanup Corps staging area didn't just smell like rot anymore; it snapped with the kind of static tension that precedes a lightning strike.Usually, this room was a graveyard for ambition, filled with the low-grade despair of E-Ranks who had realized they were the background characters in someone else’s epic.But when Ethan Rylan stepped through the door, the atmosphere shifted. He looked like he’d crawled out of a mass grave—covered head-to-toe in the dark, putrid sludge of the Sewer’s Labyrinth—but his eyes held a terrifying, cold clarity.Commander Kaelen was waiting. He stood like a monolith of scarred granite, arms crossed over a chest that looked like it could stop a ballista bolt.Two burly guards flanked him, their hands resting on the pommels of their sidearms.A small circle of other Delvers stood in the shadows. They were the "lifers"—men who had survived months of cleaning up hero-messes.They watched Ethan with grim, hollow expressions. They knew what happe
The Reversal
The voice wasn’t some booming god or a shimmering fairy. It was digital. Cold. Absolute.It sounded like the startup chime of a high-end combat drone, cutting through the sludge in his brain and the fever in his lungs with the precision of a scalpel.{ERROR! MISSION OBJECTIVE FAILED.}Ethan’s eyes snapped open. The world was still a sewer, but now a translucent blue interface was stitched into his retinas.It didn't just hover in front of him; it felt like it was hard-wired into his nervous system.{FAILURE DETECTED: Total Effort Expended (98.4%). Objective Goal Achieved (10.1%).}{ANALYZING FAILURE STATE: Target—Physical Stamina & Environmental Contaminant Resistance.}Ethan coughed, a glob of green phlegm hitting the floor. He watched the numbers scroll.The System wasn't judging him for being weak. It was calculating his sincerity.It had watched him break his back against that wall of sludge, watched his heart nearly explode from the effort, and it had verified one thing: he hadn'
Kaelen's Jurisdiction
The heavy iron door slammed shut with a metallic bang that echoed like a gunshot.The sound instantly severed the world of the elites—the cheering, the golden light, and Marcus Thorne’s smug face—from the reality Ethan now occupied. On this side of the door, there were no heroes.There was only the smell of damp stone, unwashed bodies, and the sharp, chemical burn of industrial solvents."Keep moving, trash. I don't have all day to watch you mourn your lost potential."The voice belonged to Commander Kaelen. He didn't look like a legendary warrior; he looked like a man who had survived a meat grinder and come out the other side with a grudge.He was a mountain of scarred muscle, his skin the color of old parchment. One side of his face was a map of puckered scar tissue, and his eyes held the kind of deep-seated cynicism that only comes from burying a lot of people.He didn't wear shining silver. He wore heavy, scuffed leather that had been stained dark by years of blood and sewer muck
You may also like
VINCENT MILES: AND THE FIST OF FIRE
Kurt Dp.16.6K viewsThe Billionaire's Revenge
Unique13.5K viewsSon Of The Universe
Evanscapenovel99.4K viewsONCE BULLIED: LYON ARMSTRONG IS BACK.
ASystem18.5K viewsEarth's Lone Avenger
Leo Tee303 viewsRebirth of the Dark Prince
Maxtang2.8K viewsDemonic Ascendance: A Devil's Chronicles
Floating_Pavilion1.2K viewsHow I Become The World's Greatest Villain
IceFontana181.4K views