On the rooftop, two n in black trench coats faced off. Below them, the city streets bustled with life. A carriage driver, hurrying along, guided his horses from one end of the street to the other. A woman peering out from her carriage window had no idea what was unfolding just above her head.
"No, no, no, I'm no cultist."
"I heard you. The Eye Collectors' Society."
He edged another step forward.
"So of us do indeed worship that... interesting, great deity, but I'm not one of them."
His expression remained relaxed. As he spoke, the temporary item on the ground—the one used to share his vision—shot straight up and lted into the palm of his hand.
The man held up his left palm, showing Jenkins the eye that was blinking open and shut within it.
"See? It's people like them who ruin our reputation. In truth, I've only ever been interested in collecting special eyes. Hmm, I might have killed a few people, but as an Enchanter, who hasn't?"
He was close enough now.
With a ntal trigger from Jenkins, two overlapping bands of silver light materialized around him. He swung his cane with force, sending a shimring silver sliver flying through the air.
"You can have that eye. To be honest, such a dangerous and uninteresting specin doesn't suit my aesthetic."
He sidestepped the sliver of light and, before Jenkins could take another step to activate his Blasphemous Creation, leaped from the roof. The wind caught his trench coat, making him look like a bat as he flew toward a distant high-rise, leaving only his last words to dissipate in the wind.
There was no thud of a heavy body hitting the ground. In his Eye of Reality, a point of light sped eastward, vanishing from his range of sight before Jenkins could even make it down to the second floor.
Down in the alley, there was only Mr. Stuart. He lay sprawled beside an external iron staircase, dark blood pooling out from under his body.
"What a ss."
Jenkins glanced up at the roof, then back down at the body before him. He figured that, as things stood, this wasn't the worst possible outco. He hadn't lost anything, since the face he was wearing wasn't his own.
He cautiously scanned his surroundings. Once certain the man who had fled wasn't coming back, he knelt and rolled Mr. Stuart's body over.
His yellow coat was open, its tal buttons stained a deep crimson, the embossed patterns on them barely discernible through the blood.
Jenkins clasped his hands together and muttered a quick, "No offense intended," then reached to lift the man's eyelids. Suddenly, the man's hands shot out and clamped firmly around Jenkins's wrist.
"He's not dead?!"
"Who... who are you?"
he asked between sputters of bloody foam. The corner of Jenkins's mouth twitched. A final burst of life, and this was the question he chose to ask.
"Who I am doesn't matter... Do you want to live?"
For soone who jumped from a building, the cause of death would be ruptured organs from the impact, internal bleeding—that sort of thing. If Jenkins wanted to, he could at least prevent this poor soul from dying right here.
Of course, Jenkins suspected the man himself had no desire to be saved.
"Don't save !"
Just as he'd expected. Mr. Stuart's reply was exactly as Jenkins had anticipated. In fact, his words even seed to spark a sense of panic in the man.
Sothing seed to be caught in the man's lungs, making his voice sound strange. More bloody foam sprayed from his lips, staining the white shirt beneath his black suit.
"Was I wrong?"
Hearing that question, Jenkins had the strong urge to wrench his wrist free and leave imdiately. The alley opened onto a main thoroughfare; anyone could just peek around the corner and see the entire scene.
But he couldn't just ignore the magic eye the man possessed. It was a Cursed Item. If it got out into the world again, who knew what might happen. Jenkins had a feeling he'd inevitably be dragged into the ss.
"Yes... you were wrong," Jenkins finally said. "You were wrong because you were unlucky enough to acquire that eye, and as a result, you got all those people killed."
To lie would be to deceive a pitiable man; to tell the truth would be to crush him. Neither was a good choice, so Jenkins simply opted for the truth. Besides, for the innocent people who had died because of him, this answer wasn't cruel at all.
He knelt beside the man, feeling the wind that blew through the alley was exceptionally cold. The cat squird inside his coat, and Jenkins found himself missing his fireplace.
"Bad luck? Yes... I never should have gone into that shop. I never should have stolen sothing that belonged to soone else..."
Mr. Stuart spoke miserably, his voice thick and gurgling as if his throat were clogged with phlegm.
"Huh? Wasn't that eye bought at a souvenir shop?"
Before Jenkins could voice his question, he felt the rough hand on his wrist slowly go limp, then fall away to the ground.
He was dead.
Instantly, a bizarre phenonon occurred. The corpse began to twitch on the ground. Black veins bulged from the surface of its skin like intricate patterns, or perhaps like twisting vines, and all of them converged on the corpse's open right eye.
That was right—after Mr. Stuart died, his left eye had remained shut while his right eye had sprung open. Now, that eyeball was spinning frantically in its socket.
Jenkins imdiately backed away, but thankfully, the corpse's transformation seed to be contained to itself.
The spinning eyeball seed to be drawing sothing out of the body as the black veins pulsed rhythmically. In the view of his Eye of Reality, as the black spiritual aura intensified, a plu of gray smoke rose from above the corpse. Countless roaring faces erged from the surface of the gray mist, and among them, Jenkins could even see the face of Mr. Stuart himself.
But none of the faces could break free from the gray mist. Finally, the mist swirled into a vortex and plunged into the eyeball.
When the dust settled, the corpse gave a few final twitches. Its limbs curled inward, its head lolled to one side, and the veins on its skin returned to normal. The eyeball had stopped spinning.
Jenkins waited for a few seconds, cane in hand. The corpse, now lying face-up, shuddered one last ti. With that final tremor, the magic eye fell from its socket, trailing a few nerve fibers, and landed in the filthy dirt. Then, sohow, it rolled to a stop right beside Jenkins's leather shoe.
The sclera was caked with dirt, but the brown iris stared intently up at the man looking down on it.
Even knowing this was sothing that must never be used, Jenkins felt a faint, insistent urge the mont its gaze fell upon him. That this was true even for soone with a soul as powerful as his own proved that Mr. Stuart's tragedy had been inevitable from the very beginning.
Not daring to touch the magic eye directly, Jenkins tore a piece of cloth from the corpse and used it to wrap the eyeball. Lying in the cloth in his palm, the eye squird a few tis, then sohow turned to the side, its pupil once again fixed on Jenkins.
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