# Chapter 1: The Gentleman's Execution
They strapped Rex to the chair at 11:47 PM, and he spent his final thirteen minutes studying the micro-expressions of the witnesses who'd come to watch him die_he tightness around their eyes, the way their fingers twisted together, the delicious cocktail of fear and righteous satisfaction.
The leather restraints bit into his wrists with practiced efficiency. Rex noted the guard's trembling hands as he tightened the final strap across his chest. Fear. Even now, separated from him by steel and protocol, they were afraid. The observation brought him a flicker of something that might have been warmth in another person, but in Rex was merely professional satisfaction. He'd perfected the art of being frightening while appearing perfectly civilized.
The execution chamber was exactly as sterile as he'd imagined during his three years on death row. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting everything in harsh white reality. No shadows to hide in here. No masks to wear. Just Rex and the twenty-seven witnesses who'd earned the right to watch justice served.
"Rex Morrow." The warden's voice carried the weight of ceremony as he unfolded the official document. "For the murders of seventeen victims between March 2019 and November 2023, you have been sentenced to death by lethal injection. Do you have any final words?"
Rex smiled_he same charming smile that had convinced neighbors he was just a helpful accountant, colleagues he was a devoted son caring for his sick mother, victims he was a good samaritan offering assistance. "Only that I regret nothing," he said, his voice measured and calm. "I lived exactly as I chose."
The prison chaplain flinched. Good. At least one honest reaction in this theater of manufactured morality.
They'd assigned him a chaplain anyway, despite his repeated refusals. The man stood near the observation window now, clutching his Bible like a shield, lips moving in silent prayer. Rex watched him with clinical detachment. The chaplain's terror was palpable even from fifteen feet away_isgust mixed with theological obligation, the desperate hope that some shred of humanity might reveal itself in these final moments.
There was none to find. Rex had accepted that truth about himself long ago, back when other children cried at funerals and he'd felt only curious emptiness. He'd learned to simulate the appropriate emotions, to mirror the responses expected of him. By adolescence, the mask had become perfect. By adulthood, even trained psychologists had failed to see through it until the evidence became undeniable.
The IV line slid into his vein with professional precision. Rex barely felt it. He'd endured worse during his arrest_he tackle that broke two ribs, the "accidental" strikes during processing. The law enforcement officers had been less professional once they'd understood what he was.
"Any final words for the families?" the warden asked, a last attempt at extracting some show of remorse.
Rex's gaze swept across the observation window, cataloguing each witness. The woman in the front row_ictim number four's sister, if he remembered correctly. She wanted to see him suffer. The older couple in the back were victim number twelve's parents. They wanted closure, that meaningless concept people clung to. The district attorney who'd prosecuted him stood near the door, wanting validation of his successful conviction.
"I hope this brings you what you need," Rex said, and meant it with perfect sincerity. He understood needs. His had simply been... different.
The warden nodded to the technician behind the mirrored wall. Rex felt the first chemical enter his bloodstream_odium thiopental, meant to induce unconsciousness. He'd researched the process thoroughly during his trial. Knowledge was power, even in powerlessness.
The chaplain's prayers grew more fervent.
Rex's vision began to blur at the edges. His carefully maintained awareness started fragmenting. For the first time in his life, control slipped away not by choice but by chemical inevitability. The fluorescent lights became stars, then streaks, then nothing.
His heart stuttered. Pancuronium bromide_he paralytic. His diaphragm stopped. Breathing ceased.
The final injection. Potassium chloride. His heart stopped beating.
Darkness engulfed him completely, and Rex's last thought was a cold analysis of the execution's efficiency. Modern medicine had perfected killing with the same precision he'd once aspired to. There was almost poetry in
Pain.
Agony exploded through his consciousness like lightning through a corpse. Rex's awareness fragmented and reformed, shattered and rebuilt. He was dead. He was alive. He was drowning in sensation after an eternity of nothing.
His lungs burned. His chest felt crushed. Every nerve ending screamed.
Rex gasped_ctually gasped, drawing air into lungs that shouldn't exist_nd his eyes snapped open.
Cold stone pressed against his cheek. Torchlight flickered somewhere above. The air smelled of mildew and old blood and something acrid he couldn't identify. Every breath sent knives through his ribs.
Wrong. This is wrong. I'm dead. I should be
Memories crashed into his mind like waves. Not his memories. A boy's memories. A decade of hunger and pain and hatred and despair. Beatings in this very corridor. A father who looked through him as if he were transparent. A brother whose fists taught him his place. A stepmother's contempt.
Caelus.
The name surfaced from the flood of alien experiences. Caelus val-Corvus. Ten years old. Trash. Worthless. Cursed.
A face swam into focus above him_olden hair, aristocratic features twisted with disgust, a fist still raised. The face from the memories. The source of so much pain.
"Still breathing, trash?" The words were in a language Rex had never heard, yet he understood perfectly. "Unfortunate. I'll have to correct that."
The golden-haired boy_aius, the brother, the heir, the blessed one_owered his fist and turned away, boots echoing on stone as he walked down the corridor. Leaving Caelus to die alone on the cold floor.
Leaving Rex to die.
But Rex hadn't survived thirty-three years by accepting death easily. He tried to move and discovered his new body was catastrophically damaged. Broken ribs ground against each other. Something wet and wrong shifted in his abdomen_nternal bleeding. His skull throbbed with the promise of fracture.
I'm dying. This boy is dying. Was dying. I'm... what am I?
The memories provided answers in fragments. Caelus, beaten to death by his blessed brother. Caelus, whose final thoughts had been hatred so pure it burned_atred for his family, for the world, for the gods who'd cursed him with black hair and no magical affinity.
That hatred resonated with Rex like a tuning fork finding its frequency.
And something ancient stirred in response.
The air pressure changed. The torchlight dimmed. A translucent interface materialized in Rex's vision_o, in Caelus's vision, in his vision_ith script that writhed like living shadow:
[VOID-TAINTED BLOODLINE DETECTED]
[COMPATIBLE SOUL IDENTIFIED]
[INITIATING SYSTEM]
Knowledge flooded Rex's consciousness. This world_storia_uilt on rigid hierarchies and blessed bloodlines. The Church of the Luminous Path, hunting "heretics" and "cursed" ones. The noble houses with their divine-granted powers. The persecution of anything Primordial, anything that remembered the world before the Church's rise.
The System explained itself with cold efficiency. It fed on Fear. On Betrayal. On Subjugation. On Forbidden Knowledge. Everything the Church called sin, everything society deemed evil_he System thrived on it.
And Rex, who had lived his entire Earth life studying fear, who had betrayed every trust, who had subjugated and destroyed without remorse, who had accumulated forbidden knowledge of the human capacity for darkness...
Rex was perfect.
For the first time in either life, something approximating joy kindled in his chest. Not the brief thrill of a successful hunt, but deep, profound satisfaction. Earth had constrained him with laws and surveillance and consequences. But this world_his beautiful, hypocritical world of blessed nobles and righteous persecution_his world had just handed him freedom.
[WARNING: CURSED AURA DETECTABLE BY CHURCH INQUISITORS]
[SKILL AVAILABLE: VOID'S VEIL]
[HIDE YOUR TRUE NATURE. COST: NONE. ACTIVATION?]
Rex activated the skill without hesitation. A cold shroud settled over his awareness, muffling the alien wrongness that had been radiating from his bloodline.
Footsteps echoed in the corridor again. Gaius, returning. Probably to dispose of the corpse.
Rex forced tears to Caelus's eyes_asy enough with the genuine pain wracking this broken body. He made himself small, pathetic, reformed.
When Gaius appeared in the torchlight, Rex looked up at his murderer with perfect, calculated terror.
"Brother, please," Rex whispered through bloody teeth, his new face a perfect mask of terrified contrition while behind his eyes, the predator smiled. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
**