James Beauford sat in his cubicle with his back to the gadget strewn desk as he stared at the wall clock, lower lip caught between his teeth.

He didn't want to be here.

Of course, nobody else wanted to be there either. Not after the grisly sight that had greeted the first employees through the doors the other morning. James saw it. He saw the blood, black and waxy, painting the floor and darkening the pond water. He saw Robert half-slumped upon one of the benches with the fetid air thick about his bloated form, his chest open like a sprung cage while his heart was shriveled and congealed in the donation basket.

Mary mother of God, James thought as he remembered the sight. He drew a tissue from the pocket of his lab coat and dabbed at the perspiration beading his upper lip. His hand trembled, the tissue shredding uselessly between his fingers. Other technicians lingered in their cubicles as they fidgeted with their work, eyes always returning to the clock on the wall.

James couldn't leave. Not yet. He could stare at the clock and watch its golden arms waver closer and closer toward the day's end, but he couldn't leave. None of them could leave until their shift ended. James didn't understand why. He only knew that though the muscles of his scrawny legs were coiled tight and ready to propel him from his rolling chair, he could not rise. Not until those sweeping golden clock arms reached their destination.

Oh God, Robert. Was this my fault? James clutched his leather satchel to his chest, hearing the subtle crinkle of paper being compressed inside. He raked bony fingers through his mussed hair and rubbed the stubble growing on his chin. The skin of his face felt loose, the muscles beneath taut with stress. His leg bounced, creating a rapid succession of squeaks arising from his chair. The others didn't notice, so intent on ignoring the creeping passage of time. The dismal weather brought the night early, darkening the busy city streets waiting beyond the narrow windows. Headlights occasional whipped over the opaque glass and the sharp light blossomed on the misted panes.

When the clock hands aligned and it was six o'clock, an audible sigh rustled through the technicians' floor. James didn't wait a moment longer. He lurched from his chair and sprinted for the double doors with his briefcase smashed to his chest, white coat billowing behind him. He had to leave. Had to escape.

His shoulder struck the left door and it swept open, knocking aside an incoming tech. James ran into a pretty, raven-haired sylph of a woman, throwing her to the floor. She had been staring at that bulbous chandelier—the one James knew was wrong, in the same way he knew he couldn't leave before his shift ended. He told others there was something wrong with the enormous light fixture, something sinister about the large, jaggedly cut crystals swinging from its proffered branches like sweet, poisonous fruits—and yet no one listened. The more he told others that there was something wrong with this place, the more they mocked him. His colleagues thought he was cracked.

The woman's male companion—boyfriend? Husband?—stepped out of the reception line and looked as though he was going to flay James alive if he got his hands on the scurrying technician, but James was already rushing from the building, bumping into more oblivious people on his way out, earning a sharp rebuke from Jervis, one of the guards on duty at this hour.

When he reached the shared parking garage and found his on the third level, James threw his satchel into the backseat and jumped behind the wheel. He shook so profusely, starting the car proved impossible. James forced a breath through himself and concentrated on the finer muscle movements of inserting his key into the ignition. Sweat trickled from his hairline into his collar, staining the fabric. The skin of his neck was clammy and his face was numb from hyperventilating.

Jesus, Robert. What the hell happened to you? Who could do that to you? Was it them? Who did you tell?

The engine came on with a low rumble of well-tuned machinery. The tires screamed on the concrete when James gunned the motor too quickly, the sound echoing deep into the shadowed recesses of the structure, turning heads of tired workers meandering to their cars jerked upright as James' sedan raced by. He didn't slow for turns or pedestrians, and the undercarriage banged every speed bump.

James drove with reckless intent, forgoing the wipers to allow the rain to lash across the windshield with audible pops of sound. His breath continued to leave him in raw, broken gasps, but as the surface streets melted into highway and back again, James grew calmer. The three prongs of Verweald's pitchfork had become nothing more than thin lines of black penciled against a smog-brightened horizon. He had driven over the aqueduct, skirting the residential and agricultural districts while keeping an eye on the swell of flashy colors marking the tourism district farther west. The houses on the northern border of the city's residential district were larger than the complexes dotting the aqueduct's concrete shores and the tract homes sprawled further beyond the northern lip of mountains, just a breath outside Verweald's limits, but they were also smaller than the mansions and manors further to northwest, where the mountains dipped their toes in the Pacific's unruly waters. James and his family had a nice, upper-middle-class craftsman here on the outskirts of the Pinegrove neighborhood. They had a nice, normal life too.

Or so James liked to think.

He parked the sedan in his cluttered garage, leaving the door wide to the slick driveway. He shuffled into his home as he shivered in his wet clothes, the satchel once more crushed to his chest as his wet footprints traced his passage like a trail of sodden breadcrumbs. The house was quiet, unlit, cold in the unseasonable weather. His wife, Janine had taken his son to visit her parents in Los Angeles. James was supposed to join them after leaving work—but there was something James was determined to do first.

He moved to the living room and found it just as dark as the rest of the house, though the glow from his neighbor's security light cut a sharp line from the window, catching part of Janine's piano, the white carpet, the brown sofa, and the brick fireplace. Licking rainwater from his lips, James stumbled to the hearth and knelt on the bricks.

He drew dry kindling from the tidy stack at the fireplace's side and situated it inside the hearth. The book of matches inside his pants pocket had gotten damp, but after several attempts and much swearing from James, the kindling caught and a red glow began in the belly of the hearth. A ring of spent matches lay forgotten around James, leaving smoldering marks of black on the carpet's fibers.

His hands were trembling again as James dumped the contents of his dappled satchel, allowing the papers to scatter and flutter where they may as pencils and scraped notes rolled into the hearth. One by one, James smashed a document in his fist and fed it to the growing fire. Heat returned to the room, but James continued to shiver. His mouth was dry, lips still numb. Paper smoldered in the yellow embers and James' heart thundered. Jesus, Robert. It's almost gone. I'll get rid of it, then run. We shouldn't have sold that information. Shit. I need to get out of here. What did they do to Robert? God, I didn't know. I didn't know what type of people they were!

A soft plink arising from Janine's piano brought James' head up. Another note joined the first, whispering in a slow resonance. They wavered together, deep and low, and James' face paled in horror as he realized someone was sitting at the piano's keys.

The person was partially hunched, arms held stiffly as he plunked out the low, single notes. James knew it was a man by the broad silhouette of his shoulders, though his face was shadowed by the artificial light at the window behind him.

"Good evening," the man said as he played at the keys, his voice striking with the resonating sound. James choked on his own breath and tried to rise—tried to run in fear—but the man spoke before he could. "No, don't get up. Stay awhile. Let's have a chat."

His shadowed hands came down on the keys in a cacophony of sound, jolting through James. He was still kneeling and he didn't know why. His limbs were rigid, muscles tense—and yet, he didn't move. Even as his thoughts screamed for him to run, another part of James didn't want to twitch so much as a hair. W-what is going on?!

"Do you like it?" the man asked, voice rising over the increasingly violent volume of the music. "It's Liszt's Sonata in B-Minor. No, don't speak," he said when a sound slipped from James' unstuck throat and the terrified technician bleated in fear. His throat shut again as soundless words slipped from his fumbling mouth. "Just listen. Sad, aggressive song, isn't? One of my favorites."

The man's hands slid from the piano mid-note, the sound awkward and uncoordinated. He rose with a smooth motion, keeping his tie flat to his chest. He was tall, much taller than James, and even while his body was rather lean and spare, his presence was demanding. The breadth of his shoulders blocked the light from the window, and as he carelessly stepped closer to James, the light of the fire further illuminated his features.

Oh shit, his eyes! James sucked in a breath and screamed noiselessly when he saw the man's black, merciless eyes. As he knelt, James could see his own reflection on their flat, gleaming surface. The man smiled and began gathering James' spilled paper—even the ones already crumpled and smoldering in the weak blaze. The man's skin smoked and burned, but he didn't notice. James trembled.

"And what have we here?" the man inquired, brow quirking over one of those unearthly eyes as he unfurled a half-burnt document. His smile took on a sinister edge and his words were coated in a mocking, deprecating lilt. "Oh, this won't do at all, will it? James?" He flicked James' nametag, cracking it in half. James felt a shock reverberate through him, as though the nametag had given off an electrical discharge. The man licked the pad of his thumb and flipped through the documents gathered in his hands. "Stolen blueprints, misappropriated funds, and—oh, how lovely. Information on little Amoroth's work schedule. Simply divine."

The man straightened and let the accumulated papers scatter again except for the CEO's schedule. He folded that page into a precise square and tucked it into the front pocket of his emerald sports coat. "I imagine our darling Amoroth would be quite upset if she knew you and the night guard were selling her secrets to the highest bidder. She would undoubtedly rip your spine out through your throat."

The panicked thump of James' heart became a horrifying canter. He knew there was something wrong with that woman, just like there was something wrong with that chandelier—something wrong with the entire goddamn building. He had seen employees ride that glass elevator to the top floor and never return. The others didn't notice and didn't give credence to James' worries. But he knew. He remembered when the others forgot.

"You're quite the scam artist, aren't you James?" The man cupped the technician's chin, tilting his gaze up until it could meet his own. The man wasn't toying with James any longer. His voice had taken on a decidedly caustic tone, and his sneer had dissolved into a wide baring of glittering teeth. "A lying, thieving, waste of a soul in a sack of flesh. A disgusting slip of creation—an error in the cosmic design. That's what you are. You are a filthy and deceitful menace to society living without regard to other beings. I'd be doing Amoroth a favor by disposing of such living trash. The very sight of you disgusts me."

Words escaped James in a desiccated gasp of strangled air. "Who—who—?!"

"Who? Do you mean me? Do you wish to know who I am?" The man dipped himself into a bow, leveling his face with James' while managing to keep his grip on the technician's chin. James stared in the ebony mirrors of the man's eyes. He tried to find some fault in the glassy perfection, some line that would show him the falsity of what was before him, something that would ground him in reality and remind the shivering man that this couldn't possibly be real.

Tapers of green fire sparked in the darkness, highlighting shrunken pupils. James stopped breathing. "You may call me Balthier."

The Sin of Envy flipped his wrist, and James Beauford's neck snapped with an audible crack. He toppled backward, nearly landing in the belly of the dying fire. A thin vein of blood trickled from his nostril and dripped on the carpet.

Balthier stood as he ran his fingers over the legs of his slacks to wipe them clean. He inhaled, his shoulders lifting as his breath rattled deep in his chest. An exultant rush washed over him, and for a brief moment, Balthier allowed himself to bask in its effulgence, eyelids easing shut, lips curling into an easy, dimpled smile.

When the moment was over and his eyes had contracted to their usual state, Balthier hissed, tongue flashing over the length of his sharp teeth. He spat on the damaged carpet by James' askew arm. "Filth," he muttered as he adjusted his cuffs as he turned on his heels, wrinkling thrown papers as he walked across them. He paused at the piano, allowing his fingers to chase the lingering melody of Liszt's haunting sonata. The music was low, mournful.

Balthier stared out at the waiting storm, at the green blades of the lawn glistening in the artificial light as his hands danced blind upon the trembling keys. "Again I must play the hound," he whispered, eyes brimming with sickly green color. The fire crackled a weary breath in the hearth before receding to its embers. "Again I live only for the hunt."

* * *