2025-11-16 20:30:17Rain came down in sharp, needling sheets, cutting through the night like shards of glass.
The Burro mansion loomed above the city skyline, silver towers, mirrored walls, and a family crest that no longer meant anything to Tom Burro.“Get up,”
a voice hissed. A boot pressed against his ribs. Tom coughed and rolled over, pain streaking through his chest. Blood slicked his fingers when he touched his mouth.
He blinked up through one working eye, the other clouded, dull gray, reflecting only fragments of the chandelier light. “Still playing dead?”
sneered Gabby Miles Burro, his stepbrother. “Guess the curse doesn’t make you immortal after all.”
Tom spat, barely missing Gabby’s shoes. “You done yet?”
Gabby’s grin widened. He looked like the perfect heir, black suit sharp as glass, gold ring glinting under the light, but his eyes were hungry, animal like. “No, brother,”
he said softly. “Not until you stop pretending you belong to this family.”
Behind him, two bodyguards shifted, silent, trained. Snowly, the white dog crouched near the door, growled low, hackles raised. “Touch him,”
Tom rasped, “and I swear I’ll,”
“You’ll what?” Gabby cut in.
“Curse me? Like your mother cursed herself before she died?”
That hit deeper than the boot. Tom’s chest tightened. The rain outside hissed against the glass, like whispers he couldn’t quite hear. “Leave her out of this.”
Gabby knelt, his breath warm and venomous. “She was a liar, Tom. And you? You’re just what she left behind. A broken mistake with a useless eye.”
He stood again, flicked blood from his knuckles, and nodded at the guards. “Throw him out. Tonight. He’s not a Burro anymore.”
Snowly lunged first. The dog’s white fur flashed, jaws snapping, one guard shouted as teeth sank deep into his arm. The other raised a baton.
“Snowly!” Tom yelled, staggering to his feet as the baton came down.
There was a crack. A yelp, an instant pause as Snowly hit the marble floor hard.Tom froze, the world narrowing to the sound of his heartbeat, slow, heavy, wronged and wounded.
He dropped to his knees beside the dog. “Snowly, no you must stay with me,”
A shadow fell over him. Gabby’s voice came quiet, satisfied. “This is what happens when filth tries to live like royalty.”
Something in Tom broke. Not loud, just broke. He looked up, that clouded eye trembling, and the air around him seemed to hum as rain drops outside froze mid-fall.
The chandelier flickered once, twice, then stilled completely.“Tom?”
one of the guards whispered. “What’s happening to his eye,?”
Light pulsed inside the grayness, faint at first, then brighter, like molten silver trying to escape through his pupil. Tom didn’t breathe, he couldn’t.
He heard a whisper, close as thought, sharp as command:“The Spirit System of the Matriarchal Line has found its heir.”
The words weren’t in the air, they were spoken in him. He blinked, and suddenly the room shifted.Threads of pale blue light stretched out from everything,
the guards, Gabby, the door, even Snowly’s still form. Some threads pulsed bright, some dimmed, others snapped and reconnected like living veins.
“What ! what is this?” he gasped.
Gabby took a step back, uneasy now. “Tom,what’s wrong with your eye?”
Tom rose slowly, blood dripping from his mouth. “My eye,”
he said softly, “isn’t blind.”
He didn’t know what the light meant, but one thread, the brightest, connected straight from him to Snowly.
It was fading fast. “Opportunity detected: restore the bond.”The voice echoed again, mechanical yet alive. Tom reached out, hand trembling. “Restore it,” he whispered. “Whatever you are,just do it.”
The thread surged into him, a rush of heat up his arm. The world cracked, light bursting from his eye like fire through glass, and Snowly gasped.
The dog’s body jerked once, twice, then drew breath again. Gabby stumbled back. “What the hell are you,?”
“Leaving,” Tom said.
He didn’t wait for the guards. He didn’t wait for pain. He turned, bloodied hand gripping Snowly’s fur, and ran. Outside, the storm welcomed him with open arms.
He didn’t know how he’d made it to the streets, only that the mansion was shrinking behind him, and the night felt alive.
Snowly limped beside him, eyes glowing faint blue under each lightning flash.“Snowly,”
panted, “you’re,”
“I’m fine.”
Tom froze. He looked down. “Did you just,”
“Yes,” Snowly said.
The voice wasn’t loud; it came from everywhere and nowhere. Calm. Steady. “I’ve been waiting for the System to awaken. It seems… your mother was right.”
Tom stumbled into an alley, breath catching. “My mother’s dead.”
Snowly’s gaze lifted to him, intelligent, almost human. “Not entirely. Her spirit lives through the Nexus, your eye. She entrusted me with your protection until the inheritance is activated.”
Tom backed against a wall. “No. No, this isn’t real. You were just,”
“Just a dog?” Snowly tilted his head. “You think ordinary animals resurrect themselves from broken ribs?”
Tom laughed once, a cracked, hollow sound. “I’m losing my mind.”
“Maybe. Or maybe you’re finally seeing the world as it is.”
Snowly stepped closer, fur still wet from rain, his voice low. “The Spirit System is awakening, Tom. But it’s bound by conditions, vision without courage is blindness. You’ll see opportunity, but not all are meant to be taken. Some will demand blood.”
Tom swallowed. “And if I refuse?”
“Then the System will find another heir. And you will die.”
For a long time, neither spoke. The rain had softened to mist, the city hum distant and cold.
Finally, Tom said, “Why me?”
“Because she believed you’d see what others couldn’t,”
Snowly replied. “Even through pain.”
Tom’s hand drifted to his eye. It still glowed faintly under his skin, pulsing with every heartbeat. “What happens now?”
“You survive. You learn. You earn.” Snowly’s tail flicked.
“And you stay alive long enough to claim what was stolen.”
A shadow moved at the mouth of the alley. Gabby’s men. Flashlights cut through the fog. “There!”
one shouted. Snowly’s ears flattened. “They’re fast.”
Tom clenched his fists. “Then we move faster.”
“New Objective: Escape the Pursuers.”
"Reward: Access to Spirit Vision: Tier I."
The voice again, cold, clear, inside his skull. And suddenly the world changed.He could see their footsteps before they moved,
the energy threads mapping their routes like living algorithms. Each light strand showed possible outcomes, capture, injury, death, and one faint golden path
glowing between trash bins and a crumbling stairwell.Tom grabbed Snowly’s fur. “This way.”
They darted left, weaving through the dark like shadows. Flashlights cut close, too close, but the golden thread led true. Down the alley, across puddles, up a ladder.
Bullets cracked against metal.Snowly barked once, a sharp command, and the ladder’s bolts bent unnaturally, metal twisting like liquid to block pursuit. Tom stared. “Did you,?”
“You’ll learn later,” Snowly said curtly. “Climb.”
They reached the rooftop, lungs burning. The city spread below, towers, lights, thunderclouds reflecting neon.
Gabby’s voice echoed from the street below. “You can run, Tom! But you’ll never outrun what you are!”
Tom turned, rain streaking his face, hair plastered to his forehead. “You’re right,” he whispered. “I’m done running.”
“Decision locked: Confrontation Path Initialized.”
Snowly barked. “Not now, idiot! You’re not ready,”
But Tom was already moving. He jumped, landing hard on the next rooftop. The eye flared, glowing white blue, and the world fractured again into lines of possibility.
Every step showed him what could happen: slipping, falling, dying. He chose differently each time. He reached the far edge,
rain roaring, blood pulsing with light. Below, Gabby’s men looked up, and froze when they saw him standing against the lightning.
For the first time, Tom felt it, not fear, not pain. Power. Raw, strange, terrifying power. He raised his head, eye burning. “Tell Gabby,”
he said softly, “the curse he feared is awake.”
A shockwave burst from the rooftop, light exploding outward, shattering glass across half the block. The pursuers stumbled back, blinded. When the light faded, Tom and Snowly were gone.
They walked until dawn, far from the Burro estate, to the industrial edge of the city where the air smelled of oil and rain, the sky bruised purple.
Tom slumped under a bridge, soaked to the bone. Snowly sat beside him, watching the horizon.“You did well,”
the dog said quietly. Tom laughed weakly. “You call nearly dying well?”
“Survival is a win,” Snowly replied. “Besides, the System has recognized you now. That means your mother’s legacy is truly yours.”
Tom stared into the river. “What legacy?”
Snowly’s eyes gleamed faintly. “The Spirit Economy. A network older than nations. It feeds on choice, opportunity, and will. Those who master it, rewrite fate itself.”
Tom looked up slowly. “Rewrite fate?”
“Yes. But only if you can bear the cost.”
Tom hesitated. “And Gabby?”
“He has his own path. Darkness answers greed. The System never chooses only one heir.”
The wind picked up. Something deep inside Tom’s eye pulsed once, a dull, rhythmic throb.
“New Thread Detected: Blood Connection, Gabby Miles Burro.”
Status: Corrupted. Evolution Imminent.Tom’s breath caught. “Snowly”
The dog didn’t answer. He just stared out at the horizon, where thunder rolled again.
“What happens when corruption evolves?” Tom asked quietly.
Snowly’s voice came low.
“It means your brother just opened his eye too.”Lightning tore across the sky, and the reflection of that light in Tom’s single gray eye burned brighter, hotter, almost divine.
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Chapter 135 — “The Shape That Refusal Takes”
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Chapter 132 — “Inheritance Is a Lie We Tell Systems”
The doors did not rush them as they hovered dozens, then hundreds, suspended in the torn sky like thoughts paused mid-decision. Each door was different: stone, light,bone, script, absence. Some were familiar in the way nightmares were familiar. Others were new, wrong in ways Astra’s mind resisted categorizing.They were not entrances but were offers and Tom felt it immediately pull not toward power, but toward definition. Each door whispered a version of himthat could be finalized, locked, made useful as Snowly’s hackles rose, spirit script crawling across his fur in warning patterns that burned hot and sharp. Lumen pressed closer to Astra, glow tightening until it felt less like light and more like resolve.Nyra’s voice was steady, but her knuckles were white around her weapon “Those aren’t portals,they’re roles.”“Frames,”Orion corrected, eyes wide as his interface tried and failed to map them. “Predetermined outcomes while the system’s offering conclusions.”The Watcher’s shad
Chapter 131 — “The Shape of What Hunts Us”
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Chapter 130 — “The Second Question Had Teeth”
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