Void Lord: My Revenge Is My Harem

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The lane held its breath, then remembered that it did not have one. For a long half–second, all John could hear was the slow drum in his own chest and the soft buzz of the void finally pleased with a job it had been made for.

He put his hand down. The ball shrank obediently, settled, thinned, and was gone. The tremor in his wrist stayed. He let it. He did not look away from Brann's face. He did not like this. He did not pretend he did. He kept his own breath steady and did not throw up in the gutter like another boy might have. He just stood there and knew that there was a line behind him now that had not been there a minute ago.

Edda had stopped smiling. For the first time since they had met her, her eyes showed something other than sport. There was fear there, yes, and anger, but also a quick thinking that had kept her alive in ugly rooms for years.

She backed up one step. Her hand rose for the bell again.

Fizz's paw flicked. A single hot spark stitched the ribbon. The ribbon snapped. The bell clattered to the stone and rolled into a crack. Edda lunged and missed. She swore, not loud, because even swearing had learned not to be loud in front of that black circle.

She chose a new plan. She was not dumb. She threw a hard gust at the stones at John's feet, not to trip him but to throw grit into his eyes. He closed them a blink early because his field told him to. The grit hit his cheek instead and stung. He did not swear either. He lifted his hand again and set the ball from melon back to fist, no bigger.

"Stop," Edda said, suddenly, both palms up. "Wait. Wait."

Fizz's fur stood up. "You had your chance to wait. You rang bells. You threw air. You said you will put me in a jar again. I remember every word."

She laughed—one short, hard sound. "I say many things," she said. "Half of them are to make men with too much chin think I'm simple. I am not simple." She flicked her chin at Rusk without looking. "He was simple. I am not."

Her eyes cut to Brann, then back to John. "You killed clean," she said, with a strange kind of respect. "No mess. No scream. No show. That scares me more than fire."

"It should," Fizz said.

She kept her hands up. "Do not throw that at my big soft chest," she said, and her voice went hoarse for the first time. "Do not. I like breathing."

"You should have thought of that when you tried to stop mine," John said. His voice was flat and tired. He did not raise it. He did not point it like a weapon. He just said the true thing and let it sit in the lane between them.

"I did," she said. "I thought you were a boy. Now I see a wall with a hole in it that eats the boots of men who try to climb it. Fine. Fine." She swallowed and the skin on her throat jumped. "Listen. I will not win here. I am not dumb. My ribs hurt. My bell is gone. My boss is dead. My pants friend is dead. I do not like dying. I do not want to play with you anymore. I want to live more than I want pride."

Fizz snorted. "Congratulations. You have the basic settings of a wise squirrel."

Edda's mouth twitched despite herself. "Good. Then hear my squirrel plan." She took another slow step back, palms still up. "Let me serve."

"No," Fizz said at once. "We do not need a weak one who rings bowls."

"I am not weak," she said. The words came out without heat; they sounded like a fact she had had to prove too often to bother proving now. "You think only fists are strong. I am strong in the dirty fight. I am strong when my eyes are closed to common sense. I am strong in the kind of work you do not have time for because you are busy being a boy who can pull holes out of the air."

John's eyes did not soften. "Say what you can do," he said.

Edda licked a split in her lip and tasted old blood. "I can carry your name to places you cannot go," she said. "Not 'John.' Another name. A fake one. I can make it be a rumor someone smart will believe. I can find old men who sharpen knives and ask them if they ever saw a man with a nose that bent. I can sit in a scribe lane and look like a woman waiting for a husband and listen to which clerk puts the wrong ink on the wrong file on purpose. I can hang your banner in places where the street will see it and no guard will notice the nail. I can buy you chalk in bulk for half the price you pay now because I will trade the chalk seller lies instead of coins."

Fizz folded his arms. "Do you do windows," he asked sweetly.

She snorted. "I do bodies," she said. "Quiet. Fast. All my life I have made men who looked like Rusk be not there by dawn." She pointed at Brann with her chin again. "I can make him a ghost that even his mother would think she forgot. I have a cart with a false bottom. I have a cousin who does not ask questions after sunset and does not answer them before noon. I can throw clothes in a water barrel so they do not smell like the night. I can be your loyal dog."

John listened. He did not blink much. He kept the void the size of his hand now, low, where it would do the most useful kind of wrong if it had to do wrong again.

"And if you betray us," Fizz said, low.

"Then I die," she said, just as low. "I know how you put air to sleep. I do not want to sleep that way."

"Those are words," Fizz said. "People say words. They put butter on them and call them cakes. Then they eat the cake in front of us and call it fair."

"I can make them more than words," she said. "Make me yours."

John's eyes narrowed. "Explain."

She jerked her chin at his hand. "You have a loyal servant. Make me your eyes and ears for the streets. Put a hook in me. Tie a string to me. Make it so if I even think the wrong thought my nose bleeds. You can do whatever you want with me and my body." One corner of her mouth twitched, ugly and brave. "Isn't that what men like you do?"

"Men like me?" John asked, voice dry as dust.

"Men who kill neat," she said. "Men who make decisions inside their eyes. Men who do not write oaths in ink. Men who do not like being lied to and so learn not to need lies. I will be yours. I will do what you ask me. I will do what the cute lord Fizz asks me. Don't kill me. I beg you."

Fizz made a face. "Flatter us more. We enjoy it."

John looked at her for a long beat, then down at his right palm. The skin there was the skin of any boy who worked with tools and did not wear gloves: lined, scarred, small, healed well. It did not look like the place where night comes from. It did not look like a hook.

It hummed anyway.

The line inside his chest that had learned to sing two notes now —the old steady one and the new deeper one— shifted. He felt the void not as a ball in his hand but as a cool room inside him with a dark corner he had not opened yet because it did not have a door.

It brushed that corner. It felt the corner push back, like a cat waking.

Something in him said, not in words: Yes. There is a way. A hole can hold. It can take servants. It can keep them in check.

John did not trust feelings. He had learned not to. He spoke in his mind anyway, to the other voice that had never been a feeling.

"System" he thought. "What is this? What am I feeling?"

The answer came as it always did: calm, plain, never in a hurry.

[System Notification: The host's void affinity has met a new condition. The "Hollow Vow" function is now available to the host.]

[System Explanation: The void does not only remove everything. It can capture the dark part of a target's soul—the oath that lives in shadow, the piece that betrays. If you seed a stable micro–void in the target's heart, the system can bind that shadow. The bound cannot betray without tearing themselves. They can resist, but not betray.]

John did not move. He did not look away from Edda. Inside his head his words stayed thin. "She can do work that I don't have time to do. How can I use it?"

[System Guidance: Form a micro singularity —grain size black hole— and set its pull to "bind" not "break." Place your palm over the target's heart. Release on breath out. The system will shape the seed to sit at the edge of the heart, not in the blood, not in the air. The seed will open only to you. It will answer only to you. It will not eat her heart, unless you want it.]