Chapter 2: The Banker’s Top Hat

Before dawn in Paris, in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district, the mist had not yet cleared. The damp air carried last night's coffee and the smell of wet stone. Beat stood at the window of his rented attic room in the old city; rain traced crooked lines down the glass, thin black threads trying to tear the darkness. The sound of the rain was not a gift of nature but a heavy sigh from this ancient city, striking the raw nerve endings of every sleepless soul. When the doorbell rang, the sharp sound still vibrated in his eardrums—abrupt, piercing, breaking the deathly silence of the attic. He did not turn around. In the reflection he saw himself: pale, gaunt, eyes without fear but hollow beyond measure. The black thread in his soul still throbbed with dull pain—the residue of Sophia's warning last night, like a cold snake crawling slowly through his marrow. Outside, footsteps on the stairs: steady, arrogant. That was Sophia, lawyer for House Hans. Every step placed with precision, both a declaration of power and certainty of her own standing. She held a legal letter; behind her, two expressionless bodyguards stood at the edge of the rain like silent stone statues, waiting for the bankrupt young man's answer. Rain struck their black trench coats and evaporated instantly, but it could not wash away the murderous chill around them.

Sophia pushed open the door, bringing in the smell of expensive tobacco and old parchment—out of place in the cold, damp attic, almost an aggressive dryness. No pleasantries. Her movements were swift, almost brutal. She slapped a thick file onto the water-stained oak table, her voice cold as ice: "Mr. Beat, your bankruptcy liquidation proceedings have begun. This is the final ultimatum." At those words, the air seemed to congeal. Her gaze ran over the shabby furniture—the rickety chair, the lamp that no longer lit—and a flicker of contempt, barely perceptible, passed across her eyes, as if she were appraising a defective item about to be auctioned off, a piece of refuse destined for the dustbin of history. Beat did not look at the file. His gaze locked on another roll of parchment in Sophia's hand, only partly unrolled: the backup contract. The wax seal had cracked, revealing reddish script inside—under the dim light, the red glared like dried blood. His heartbeat quickened, not from fear but because something glowed faintly at the edge of his vision. In the blurred halo, a few strands of dark-red magical thread seeped out of the contract and wound around Sophia's slender wrist—shaky, fluttering, like moths trying to escape a cage.

"House Hans has decided to purchase the mortgage rights to your countryside winery at a symbolic price," Sophia continued, tone flat yet oppressive, as if stating a settled fact. "This is compensation for the loss of control over your soul anchor. After all, even Swiss franc reserves cannot offset the weight of that curse. Do you understand?" A mocking smile curved at the corner of her mouth. She tapped the desktop lightly with her fingers, each tap a blow to Beat's taut nerves—monotonous, cruel. The sound of rain against the glass seemed buried beneath the tapping; only those two sounds dueled in the room. Beat swallowed the rage rising in his chest, burning all the more for its helplessness. He feigned weakness, leaning back in the chair, coughed lightly to mask the tremor in his voice, but the light in his eyes grew sharper. "Madam Sophia, regarding the specific execution details of the 'soul compensation' clause in the backup contract—could you explain again? I need to confirm whether this means… I must sign before dawn."

Sophia stopped tapping. Surprise flickered in her eyes, replaced by deeper arrogance, as if watching prey writhe comically in a trap. "You actually care about details? What amusing greed." She stood and walked to the fireplace, stirring the long-cold ashes with her fingers; gray-white powder slipped between them like lost time, without warmth. "Line thirteen, 'breach of contract': if the debtor cannot repay the magical debt, the creditor has the right to permanently strip his memory core. This is an ancient contract House Hans has upheld for centuries—even Paris City Hall's law yields to it. If you refuse, by noon tomorrow all your assets will be frozen and you will be expelled from Europe's core financial zone. The old archives Viktor has been investigating—we sealed them last night. Do not try to find allies who do not exist. House Hans's shadow is longer than Paris's rainy season; it covers every corner you think is safe."

Beat didn't answer at once. His vision ran rapid simulations, mind churning like precision machinery. The dark-red mana threads trembling between Sophia's fingers weren't normal flow—they were a deliberately severed backflow, like a river cut off, its downstream doomed to dry. In the cross-midnight causal projection, he saw it clearly: if Sophia took this backup contract tonight, at the witching-hour mana backlash, those severed threads would invade her hippocampus directly, collapsing her memory. Not ordinary forgetting—the key intel on the Hans family's true patriarch's hiding place would breach like a burst dam. A century-old secret; once exposed, the entire family structure would crumble. A fatal flaw. Old Lord Hans had left it deliberately for a quick harvest, rushing the curse transfer while ignoring mana conservation, overconfident in his grip. Beat raised his head slowly, his gaze so clear it made Sophia's heart clench—clarity hiding an abyss. He put on a rattled look, voice trembling yet striking her blind spot dead-on: "Grant me two hours. I need time… to say goodbye to family. I hear if I don't sign, Viktor's file is hopeless, right?"

Sophia gave a cold, short laugh, smoothed her handbag strap with elegant finality, like handling routine paperwork. "Patience is a luxury. Bankrupt youth can't afford it." At the door, she glanced back, hunter sizing up prey, smile unyielding. "Two hours is too long. You get thirty minutes. Miss it, and the procedure triggers automatically, signed or not. And a heads-up: the interest calculation in that old mortgage—there's a logic hole in the euro conversion. Won't change the harvest, though. We'll see blood at dawn." She turned and left, heels fading with steady rhythm, swallowed by the stairwell corner like night devouring the last starlight.

Beat stared at the backup contract. The dark-red threads in his vision finally stretched to their limit, emitting a faint snap—the last warning before energy overflow. The attic fell quiet, rain the only sound, as if never disturbed. He inhaled deep, lungs expanding, tasting damp dust in the air. Then he grabbed the phone and dialed a number that had never rung. The seconds before connection stretched agonizingly; a faint current hummed on the line, like whispers from a distant dimension. When the link locked, his voice was terrifyingly calm, no emotion, only cold logic: "Sophia, remember—don't let that contract leave the door. Because at midnight tonight, it'll betray you before the Hans family does." He hung up, turned to the window. Dawn's first light pierced the clouds, illuminating the contract about to become scrap paper—and the dangerous light rekindled in his eyes, the one called hope.

The instant the call ended, Beat didn't let go. He set the receiver back with a crisp click, jarringly loud in the silent attic, as if shattering some long-taut equilibrium. He picked up the backup contract Sophia had scorned, fingers tracing the page edge. In his vision, the dark-red mana threads that had woven a net to lock his fate were now visibly peeling, unraveling, collapsing like dead branches stripped of their skeleton.

Sophia thought she was hunting. She didn't realize she'd handed over not just a contract but a carefully disguised trap. That so-called "interest calculation loophole"—under his vision's holographic analysis—wasn't a math error. It was a mana-circuit rupture point deliberately hidden for seventeen generations. A parasite dormant in a giant beast's heart, silent until one spark detonates the entire Hans family's mana foundation. Sophia rushed to harvest, blind to the fact that what she held wasn't a butcher's knife—it was the detonator wired to her own ancestral shrine.

Beat folded the contract into a square, tucked it into his shirt pocket. The fabric pressed against his skin, transmitting the paper's cold touch—the taste of dead mana. He walked to the window, pushed open the rusted iron frame. Rain dripped along the sill, drawing fine curtains that blurred the city's neon lights. In the distance, the Hans family tower downtown glowed cold blue, piercing the rain, proud and untouchable.

Yet beneath the light, Beat saw something deeper. His Sight activated again. This time he paid no heed to the surface flow of mana, probing downward instead, tracking the faint afterimages of ancient runes hidden in the dust of the air. A silver thread, barely there, stretched from the direction of the contract, pierced the clouds, and vanished into the spires atop the tower. That was the source of the Hans family's main force, and Sophia's most vulnerable weak point at this moment. Her words on the phone—"tomorrow, blood will be drawn"—had carried the certainty of superiority, yet she did not know where the blood would come from. She thought Beat was a lamb led to slaughter, unaware that the lamb held a scythe, and that the edge of the scythe was pointed at the throat of its master.

The rain grew heavier, thunder rolling low across the sky. Beat drew the curtains, cutting off all outside light, leaving only that cold silver trail in his vision. He sat in the shadows, listening to his own heartbeat, steady and slow. Minute by minute, the countdown toward midnight began to tick. Outside, lightning split the night, illuminating the tight line of Beat's jaw. He felt no fear, only a near-bloodthirsty calm. Sophia, what you bring tonight is not a death notice, but a death knell. And that knell will toll before dawn, for you alone.