Greed looked down upon the City of Blood and sighed.

He made it all so...easy. 

Below, Verweald was alive with noise and bluster despite the late hour. Its streets teemed with ignorant humans out to enjoy the nightlife while its alleys grew increasingly more crowded with others, creatures of fang and claw, monsters who were hungry for the lives of those flippant mortals prancing about.

With the city's mistress gone, the inhabitants of Verweald's shadows had become bolder. Greedier.

Balthier had tipped the county into an inevitable, downhill collision with chaos. He had done so with such ease. Like he hadn't even tried. Like it had all been part of his plan.

Danyel placed the last of Amoroth's cigarettes between his lips and tossed the empty pack from her balcony.

He had begun staying in her penthouse whenever he was needed in Verweald, making use of Amoroth's things now that she no longer needed them. The Sin had always coveted Lust's lodgings. She sat at the pinnacle of society, both in business and her personal life, looming above a city she had groomed and built through her own machinations.

Smoke curled from Greed's nostrils. He felt the cloying burn settle in his chest, felt the microscopic death brush through his lungs—and, just as subtly, the burn was replaced by the sting of regeneration reforming the damaged tissue.

Danyel had always coveted what Amoroth possessed. He had always thought that by usurping her throne, by sitting where she did and assuming the mantle of control and authority she did, he would achieve his goals. He would earn the respect of his peers and garner the power he deserved.

Yet, here he was in Amoroth's domain—here he was standing where she'd stood, crowing from the crown of her glass and steel kingdom, and it felt cheap, like finding the view he had so desired from below was only a vinyl sticker on the wall. 

It's because of Envy, Danyel seethed as he sucked sparks into mouth and swallowed the fire. Because the world bows at his fucking feet and he's responsible for her disappearance. I achieved nothing. I came in like a squatter in the night, scavenging what he left behind.

Danyel flicked the spent cigarette over the railing as the breeze came in off the coast, falling across the seaboard with the swift rasp of midnight air. In the distance, Klau Tower continued its silent sentinel.

I hope he burns this entire city to the ground.

He returned inside, slamming the door to the balcony shut with unintended heat, hairline fissures appearing in the glass. The apartment was a mess. Light from the hazy evening sky illuminated the clutter splayed across the floor and furniture, catching the sheen of Danyel's crumpled silk shirt, glimmering on the plastic buttons of a woman's forgotten jacket. Amber bottles crowded the coffee table with interspersed ash trays overflowing with spent butts.

Danyel collapsed onto the sofa, planting his feet on the floor sticky with stale beer. He leaned with his elbows upon his knees and rubbed the rough, unshaven skin of his face. He glanced above the hearth where a single painting was framed. The woman in the image lay in repose with a beautiful, twisted creature above her, his hand at her throat, a set of black horns spiraling from his temples.

Danyel had tried to remove it, had tried to deface it, but either Amoroth or the artist had paid an enchantress to protect the painting. An earthquake could shake the building to naught but rubble and the painting would probably survive.

Danyel hooked a finger about the neck of a bottle, bringing it to his lips. He drank and wallowed in the brief but rapturous numbing sensation stealing his ability to sense the thrumming energies of the world. The sense of drifting, of falling without a net, was reminiscent of being mortal. 

Memories assailed his inebriated mind. Recollections of a man—a boy, really—rose to the forefront, and Danyel cursed the stupid boy with quick, stilted breaths. He swore at Danyel Hou, the mortal, the weak, greedy little son of a Chinese tailor and a dishonored debutante. He had been born into a family with dreams of attaining wealth and status far beyond their means, and he had inherited the avaricious nature of his parents. 

Danyel Hou was a hundred and twelve years dead in the ground, and yet Danyel the Sin could never fully shed his shadow. Prior mortality was his cross to bear. Balthier was disgusted by him. Darius found him inconsequential. Peroth wouldn't speak to him.

Even as Greed played them against each other in a bid for survival, the Originals couldn't be bothered to notice his existence.

All he wanted was some goddamn respect.

All they saw was Danyel Hou, the mortal.

Danyel threw his bottle at the painting. The glass shattered, but the liquid slid right off the paint and dripped from the gilded frame, staining the wall.

"I am a Sin," he slurred, slapping the flat of his hand against his skinny chest. "I am the Sin of Greed!"

The doorbell rang.

Slumping, Danyel managed to get his legs under himself and shuffled toward the foyer. His mind was still blessedly muddled but he was lucid enough to operate the lock and allow the door to swing inward.

There was a human on the other side of the threshold. He stood a full-head higher than Danyel, his build spare and his attire well-appointed, if lacking in personality. To Danyel, he appeared exactly as a two-dimensional cut-out does: pleasant but flat, polished but forgettable.

A pair of genuine horn-rimmed glasses sat on the human's straight nose. His brow was slanted, the left crossed by a large, pink scar that disappeared into the line of his well-groomed bister hair. His demeanor had been rather placid when Danyel initially opened the door—but once the mortal took stock of Danyel's disheveled, shirtless appearance, it became rigid as steel.

"You are not Luann," the human snapped. 

Greed lounged against the door, smirking. "Who?" 

"The maid." 

Danyel couldn't remember a maid. To be fair, he couldn't remember much of the last day or so, though he distantly recalled turning away a woman in the early morning.

"What are you doing in this apartment?" the mortal demanded, his voice low but firm, brooking no argument.

Danyel was already bored of the impertinent whelp. Who was he to question Danyel? Couldn't the human recognize when he speaking to a predator? "Don't you know who I am?" he drawled, adopting the face he knew adorned many of the billboards in town.

The mortal glared. "No."

Greed sneered, his eyes darkening as thin tendrils of energy escaped with his anger. He hated when mortals didn't recognize him.

The man glanced at the watch on his wrist, its face gleaming as if brand new. "Move. I've a task I must complete."

"Excuse me—?!"

Danyel grunted as the audacious human thrust him aside and entered the penthouse. Drunk and off-balance, it took several seconds for the Sin to register what had just happened. When he did, Greed snarled and chased the man.

He didn't have far to go before coming upon the stern human again. The man was in the once vaunted living room, disregarding the accumulated refuse ruining Lust's home as he gripped the edge of the oak coffee table and flipped it. Glass bottles shattered as they struck the floor.

Enraged, Danyel went to break the impertinent man's neck. His fingers skirted the man's smooth jaw, one second away from twisting—when the human pulled his opposing hand free of his coat's folds. The matte handgun was almost invisible in the encroaching night.

Without looking, the human fired indiscriminately into Danyel's chest.

A fresh kind of burning agony swept through Greed as he bowed to his knees with a hand clasped to the weeping bullet wounds. Gasping for air, he heard it whistle through the perforations as he slumped to the bloody floor.

The human stashed the gun once more in the inner pocket of his coat. Crimson streaks marred the lens of his glasses, and he paused to wipe it clean before continuing his task.

With the coffee table moved, the blood-splattered rug could be peeled aside to reveal a safe Danyel had overlooked set in the floor.

The human knelt after replacing his glasses and began to enter the safe's code. The electronic mechanism beeped once, then again when a dull thud of tumblers shifting echoed in the silent living room.

The interior of the safe was invisible to Danyel, but the man didn't have difficulty extracting several binders and clipped folders, obviously knowing exactly what he was here to find.

Danyel laughed, the sound wet with blood and bile. Startled, the human reached for his gun again, spilling papers from his absconded documents, but he needn't have worried; Danyel wasn't as powerful as his indifferent brethren. He couldn't heal a grievous injury so quickly.

But, despite the numerous holes riddling his front, Danyel was alive, and that was enough to alarm the human.

"She sent you to burn her records, didn't she? All her nasty little dealings that would land all her nasty little employees in the fire right alongside her."

The man pointed the gun at Danyel, unflinching. The Sin spat blood between his teeth.

"You know she's not mortal right, boy? She isn't human. Hasn't been in over four centuries." Greed dragged himself nearer to the man as he spoke, leaving a grisly trail behind. The ugly effluence of the night gleamed on the viscus liquid.

The human stood to his full height and retreated until his back struck the hearth. Above him the painted lovers were trapped in their eternal embrace, oblivious to the violence below.

Danyel dipped his hand into the safe, his fingertips flitting over the surfaces of various objects, discerning different textures. The Sin tried to heal his wounds as he searched, but his drinking had stunted his ability to an excruitiating crawl. The slugs embedded in his heart burned like hellfire.

Soon, more blood than a human body was capable of holding covered the floor and pattered from the lip of the safe. The human silently watched, growing paler and paler. Danyel found what he was looking for. He threw the hand bound journal at the human's feet.

"Don't forget that, mortal. Before you burn all of that incriminating garbage, have a look at your mistress's dirty little secrets."

Though the journal was mere inches from his shined shoes, the human didn't bend to pick it up.

A pity. Danyel had hoped he would bring his neck closer.

"Aren't you curious?" Greed hissed as he levered himself upright, causing the mortal to tighten his grip upon his weapon. "You came here to do her bidding, didn't you? Don't you want a peek? Don't you want to know who that woman really is?"

The man blinked, his expression seemingly unimpressed by Danyel's guttural words—but the human slowly, deliberately bent his knees and snatched the journal from the floor without looking away from the bleeding creature.

Danyel grinned.

That grin dissipated when the severe man stepped forward and placed the barrel between Danyel's brows. A trick of the light set his glasses ablaze, hiding the human's cold eyes.

"I am Dorian Ezra, the personal assistant of Grace Amoroth. You think you scare me, or impress me, but you haven't the faintest idea of what I have seen or what I have done. My job isn't one for the faint of heart.

"You shouldn't have underestimated me."

He pulled the trigger. Danyel tried to lash out, to avoid the blow as Balthier would have—but he was too slow. Too mortal. The pain summoned the darkness, and Danyel slipped into bitter, drunken unconsciousness.

Miles from the dismal moors of Crow's End and the malicious streets of Verweald City, the Sin of Envy tore through the Realm's boundary and came crashing into a twilit forest.

Birds took flight from wavering oaks as the creature surged to his feet with a snarl, clutching the bloody stump of his ruined arm. Balthier's torn sleeve swayed with his motions and dribbled ruby drops upon the long grass as a cool draft brought on by his presence stirred the autumn leaves. Flowers withered and curled as the Sin reined in his power, saving the forest from the punishing backlash of his fury.

Envy walked, his gait staggering but strong. Every step brought him nearer his destination and spilled less disease into the atmosphere. Step by step, the tranquility of the old forest restored his composure, returning shreds of his sanity.

Every step resonated with his hatred and his determination.

The girl who smelled of orchids stood in his mind's eye in the arms of Pride.

Peroth waited beyond the bars of his cage with the shadow of Tehgrair heavy upon his soul.

Monster.

Again the word played within his thoughts, again his fury tightened within his chest.

Balthier panted as bones regenerated. Marrow flowed. Tendons snapped like wet rubber bands. Muscles and tissue wove together—and, at last, malleable skin returned. The Sin flexed his new arm, holding the untried hand to the kiss of moonlight filtering through the quiet trees.

I'll have retribution for the terrible things you've done, monster.

Still breathing heavily, Balthier laughed and the sound ran free through the wilds. "Not before I have mine, host."

From the mouth of the forest he emerged into a meadow gone dormant for the coming winter. Beyond, forgotten in the eaves of this untouched place, waited a house of a stone and brick and thatched roofing. Balthier went to it, navigating the tricky meadow, watching the stalks of grass bend and ripple beneath the unmarred sky of naked stars.

He crossed the garden. The wood door waited for him, but Balthier settled against the outer wall amongst the flowerless rose bushes and curtains of ivy. The ivy shrouded him beneath its leaves and vines, his emerald eyes but another spot of green in the sleeping garden as thorns caught the tender skin of his new arm and drew red patterns upon the flesh.

You are the villain. The monster.

"Am I?" he breathed. "Do you think so? How naïve."

A light flared in the house's window, bathing the garden in its warm, flickering glow. The light poured upon the ground at Balthier's side, and he smiled as a slender silhouette appeared in the glow's path.

"I'll play your monster, little Sara. I don't mind. Again I play the hound, the villain. Again I live only for the hunt."

The door opened on a pair of oiled hinges and the sound of classical music was released into the forest.

"I'll be the monster until we've paid for what we've done."