Kael Yuan woke in darkness and did something unusual for a man who'd just escaped execution: he made a list.
Not out loud—his throat was raw, his body broken in ways he didn't yet understand. But in his mind, organized and precise, the information arranged itself like entries in a merchant's ledger.
GAINED:
Life (temporary, conditional)
Elder Shen's cultivation (unstable, deteriorating)
Contract ability (unknown parameters)
Black chains (function unclear)
Knowledge (fragmentary, invasive)
LOST:
Sister's face (memory erased)
Sister's voice (memory erased)
Emotional attachment to sister (consumed)
Sect status (already worthless)
Legal identity (now fugitive)
NET VALUE: Positive, but declining rapidly.
The cultivation was killing him. He could feel it—Elder Shen's eighty years of accumulated power crammed into a body with no foundation to contain it. His meridians were cracking. Small fractures now, but spreading. He had perhaps a month before his body collapsed entirely.
Mathematics was clear: stabilize, or everything gained was worthless.
Kael sat up slowly. Pain lanced through his ribs—several broken, probably from the fall. He was in some kind of tunnel, ancient stonework slick with moisture. Abandoned smuggler routes beneath the sect, if he'd oriented himself correctly during the collapse.
No light. But somehow, he could see.
Not clearly. Not like daylight. But outlines, shapes, the architecture of the space around him. As if his eyes had learned to read darkness itself.
The marks on his right hand pulsed softly. Black lines that moved like living things, crawling across his skin in patterns that shifted when he tried to focus on them. They hurt to look at. Not physically—conceptually. As if his mind was translating something it wasn't equipped to understand.
"You're awake. Good."
The voice. The same one from the execution platform. Not spoken, not thought—something between.
Kael's first instinct was to respond. His second instinct was to remain silent, observe, gather information before revealing anything.
He chose the second.
The voice made a sound that might have been laughter.
"Wise. Most people panic, beg for explanations, demand to know what they've become. You calculate first. I chose well."
"You didn't choose me," Kael said. His voice came out rougher than intended. "You said the Pathway chose me. Distinction matters."
"Does it? When the tool debates who crafted it?"
"I'm not a tool."
"Not yet. But you're becoming one. Every contract brings you closer."
Kael filed that away. Threat or warning? Both, probably.
"What are you?" he asked.
"A fragment. A pathway. A contract that predates language." The voice paused, as if considering how to translate complexity into terms a mortal could grasp. "I am the crystallized concept of binding, given form through the death of a god. Or gods. Memory gets unclear after forty thousand years."
Forty thousand years. Kael's mind caught on the number, testing it for hyperbole. Found none.
"You're older than cultivation itself."
"Cultivation is young. Barely thirty millennia. Before that, humans were cattle. Literally. The gods kept you in pens, harvested you when you ripened. Cultivation was created as a control mechanism—give cattle the illusion of agency, they're easier to manage."
Kael considered this. It aligned with certain historical inconsistencies he'd noticed in sect records. The cultivation system had appeared suddenly, fully formed, with no apparent evolutionary development. As if someone had designed it.
"And you?" Kael asked. "Where do you fit?"
"I was one of nine. Nine gods who ruled before cultivation. Nine concepts given consciousness. I am Binding. The others are Truth, Deception, Desire, Ruin, Ascension, Dominion, Identity, Oblivion."
Nine. Kael's mind automatically began mapping connections, implications, threat assessments.
"You were sealed," he said. "Ten thousand years ago. By the Chain Order."
"Very good. You've done research."
"Basic history. Every sect teaches it. The Nine Evil Gods who nearly destroyed the world."
"'Evil.' Such a mortal word." The voice carried something like amusement. "We weren't evil. We simply operated beyond your framework of morality. A lion eating a deer isn't evil. It's hungry. We were hungry, and you were food."
Kael's hand throbbed. The marks pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.
"And now you're using me to break free."
"Using? No. We made a contract. You wanted power. I wanted a vessel. Fair exchange."
"Except you didn't specify the cost."
"I did. Everything you were."
Kael tested his memories systematically, searching for gaps. His childhood—fragmented. His sister's face—gone. His mother's voice—blank. But skills remained. Knowledge intact. Mathematical ability enhanced, if anything.
"You're taking the emotional content," he said. "Leaving the functional data."
"Emotions are inefficient. They cloud judgment, slow decision-making, introduce variables that can't be calculated. I'm making you better."
"You're making me something else."
"Distinction without difference. You're still you. Just... optimized."
Kael sat with that for a moment. Then: "What's your actual goal?"
"Freedom. The seals are weakening naturally—they were never meant to last forever. I need vessels to accelerate the process. Every contract you form weakens the barriers between worlds. Eventually, enough cracks form, and..."
"You break free."
"We all break free. All nine of us. And the world returns to how it was meant to be."
"With humans as cattle."
"With humans knowing their place."
Kael filed this under 'long-term threats.' Immediate concern: survival. "How do I stabilize the cultivation?"
"You can't. Not through normal methods. Elder Shen's foundation was built over eighty years. You absorbed it in seconds. Your body is rejecting it like a failed organ transplant."
"Then how do I survive the month?"
"You don't survive it. You use it. Make contracts. Transfer the excess energy as payment. Every deal you make bleeds off pressure. Forty or fifty contracts should stabilize you."
Forty contracts in a month. Kael's mind immediately began calculating: target selection, approach vectors, leverage points.
"And the cost?" he asked. "To me, specifically."
"More memories. More emotions. More of whatever made you 'Kael.' But you'll be alive. And powerful. Isn't that what you wanted?"
Was it?
Kael tried to remember why he'd started this. The sister. The medicine. The theft. The execution. The chain of causality was clear. But the feeling behind it—the reason he'd cared enough to act—that was already fading.
He should be disturbed by this. Alarmed, at minimum. Instead, he felt only mild curiosity. Like observing someone else's transformation from a distance.
"One more question," Kael said. "You mentioned I was chosen. Chosen how? What made me suitable?"
The voice was silent for longer than usual.
"Because you were already becoming this. Already learning to value information over emotion. Already seeing the world as transactions rather than relationships. I didn't create your nature. I simply... accelerated what was already inevitable."
Kael absorbed this.
"So I was always going to become a monster."
"Monster. Tool. Calculator. God. Just words." The voice softened, almost gentle. "You asked what made you suitable. The answer is simple: you were the only candidate who didn't hesitate. Who heard the cost and accepted immediately. No bargaining. No pleading. No hope for a better offer."
"Most people cling to humanity even as it kills them. You let go the moment it became inefficient."
"That's not weakness, Kael. That's strength."
Kael stood slowly, testing his balance. His body screamed protest, but he forced it upright. The tunnel stretched ahead into deeper darkness.
"Then I'll use this strength," he said. "I'll make your forty contracts. I'll stabilize. I'll survive."
"And then?"
"Then I'll find out what happens when a tool becomes smarter than its maker."
The voice laughed. Genuine amusement this time.
"Oh, I really did choose well. Welcome, Kael Yuan, to Sequence 9: Petty Contractor. Try not to die before you become interesting."
The presence receded, leaving Kael alone in the darkness.
He looked at his marked hand. At the chains that pulsed with stolen power. At the tunnel ahead that would lead him back into a world that wanted him dead.
And for the first time since his sister's death, Kael Yuan smiled.
Not from joy. Not from hope. From the simple satisfaction of a problem with calculable solutions.
Forty contracts in thirty days. The mathematics were challenging but achievable.
He started walking.