Chapter 3: The Devil's Contract

Chapter 3: The Devil's Contract

The story was over.

The silence that rushed back into the void left by Veridia was a physical thing, a crushing pressure in Leo’s ears. For two days, he had lived more vividly within those pages than he had in his entire twenty-eight years of life. He had felt the grime of the city under his fingernails, the desperate hope of Kaelen the inquisitor, the intricate, chilling logic of the conspiracy that coiled around the city's heart. He had finished the second stack of pages, the conclusion a perfect, devastating crescendo that had left him breathless. And then, there was nothing.

He was just Leo Vance again. A plumber who hadn't shown up for work, sitting in a dusty, derelict house with a pile of paper that had become his entire world. The hunger was back, but it was different now. Before, it was the ache for a story unfinished. Now, it was the bottomless grief for a story that was complete. There was no more. The well was dry.

He found himself returning to the closet, a pilgrim to a desecrated shrine. He opened the trapdoor, the wood groaning a familiar complaint. He shone his flashlight into the stinking dark, sweeping the beam across the damp earth, praying for a miracle. He knew, with a sick certainty, what he would find.

Nothing.

The crawlspace was just a hole again. A filthy, empty space full of cobwebs and the smell of rot. The source had given all it had to give.

He slumped against the doorframe, the emptiness inside him so vast it threatened to swallow him whole. He couldn't go back. He couldn't pick up a wrench and fix a leaky faucet, not after this. He couldn't read another book. The memory of the manuscript had poisoned every other story ever written. He was a man who had tasted ambrosia and was now being forced to eat dirt.

He spent a day in a stupor, rereading the entire manuscript from the beginning. But the magic was fainter now. Knowing the ending, the perfect, shocking twists, robbed the journey of its power. It was like chasing the ghost of a high. The words were still brilliant, but the life had gone out of them. They were just ink on paper.

It was in the dead of the second night, staring at the title page he'd imagined for it—The Siege of Veridia—that a desperate, insane idea began to form. The story was dead because it lived only for him. Its world had collapsed into his mind alone. What if… what if he let it out? What if other people read it? If they saw the rain on the cobblestones and heard the whispers in the taverns, would it become real again? If he could just talk to someone else who knew, who had been there, maybe the silence wouldn't be so absolute.

It was a madman’s logic, the reasoning of an addict trying to find someone to share a needle with.

Fueled by this sliver of deranged hope, he retrieved his laptop from a box. He sat cross-legged on the floor, the manuscript spread around him like the petals of a dead flower, and typed "top fantasy literary agents" into the search bar. The first name on a prestigious list was Isabelle Rourke of Rourke & Black Literary Agency. Her photo was sharp, professional. She looked like someone who lived in the real world, a world of contracts and deadlines he could no longer comprehend.

He began to type. His fingers, usually stained with grease and grime, flew across the keyboard. He wasn't writing, he was transcribing. He treated each sentence with a scribe's reverence, ensuring every comma, every word, was exactly as it had appeared on the pristine pages. The process was both agony and ecstasy, a pale echo of the first reading. When he reached the end, he typed up a simple cover page.

The Siege of Veridia by Leo Vance

He stared at his own name. It felt like the grossest lie he had ever told. He wasn't the author. He was the first victim. But a manuscript had to have a name on it. It was a practical necessity. He wrote a short, clumsy query letter, attached the file, and stared at the "Send" button. His finger hovered, trembling. This was foolish. He was a plumber sending an unsolicited manuscript he hadn't written to one of the biggest agents in the country. They would delete it without reading past the first line.

He clicked the button. The email vanished into the ether. He felt a moment of profound relief, followed by an even more profound emptiness. He had done the only thing he could think of. Now, there was nothing left to do but wait for the silence that was sure to follow.

He didn't have to wait long.

Three minutes later, his laptop pinged. An email notification. His brow furrowed. It was probably a delivery confirmation, or spam. He opened his inbox.

From: Isabelle Rourke [email protected] Subject: MANUSCRIPT - THE SIEGE OF VERIDIA

Leo’s heart stopped. His blood ran cold. Three minutes. Impossible.

He clicked it open.

Mr. Vance,

I don't know who you are or where you have been hiding, but I have just read the first ten pages of your submission, and I can say without a shred of hyperbole that this is the most extraordinary work I have ever encountered. My assistant is printing the full manuscript as I type this. Do not send this to anyone else. Do not speak to anyone else. Expect a call from me within the hour.

Isabelle Rourke

Leo read the email three times, the words swimming before his eyes. It had to be a mistake. A joke. Some kind of cruel, automated prank. He was still trying to process it when his phone, silent for days, screamed to life on the countertop. The screen displayed an unknown number with a Manhattan area code.

His hand shook so violently he could barely answer it. "H-hello?"

"Is this Leo Vance?" The voice was female, sharp and breathless, crackling with an energy that felt almost manic.

"Yes," he whispered.

"Leo, this is Isabelle Rourke. My god. This book. This book. I'm on page 150. I've cancelled my afternoon. I've had my assistant hold all my calls. What Kaelen does at the salt docks… it’s genius. Utter, unmitigated genius. It's like nothing I have ever read. It feels… real."

The word hit him like a physical blow. Real.

"I… I'm glad you like it," he stammered, the words feeling foreign and false in his mouth.

"Like it?" she laughed, a high, jittery sound. "Mr. Vance, I would kill to represent this book. We need to talk about an offer. A big one. I'm talking a world-altering, life-changing auction. The world needs to read this story. It deserves to."

He could hear papers shuffling, a frantic energy on the other end of the line. She wasn't a cool, professional agent. She was a convert. A fanatic. He could hear it in her voice—the same desperate hunger he felt in his own bones. She wasn't just reading it; she was consuming it.

"I'm sending you our standard agreement now," she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Sign it, Leo. Sign it, and I promise you, the world will know the name Kaelen. And they will know your name alongside it."

Before he could respond, another ping from his laptop. The contract was there. A devil's contract, delivered by a speed that defied all logic.

Leo stood in the center of his silent, empty house, the disembodied voice of a fellow addict buzzing in his ear, promising him that the story would not die. He was an imposter, a fraud, a thief. But in that moment, none of it mattered. All that mattered was that the world of Veridia, the only place he’d ever felt alive, would be given breath again.

He opened the file. He didn't read the clauses or the percentages. He just scrolled to the final page, to the dotted line waiting for a signature. He clicked the box, and his name appeared in a sterile, digital script.

He had just sold his soul for a story that was never his to sell. The hook, cold and sharp, was set.