Loy Ackerman

And then the accident happened. Cruel, sudden, devastating. Your arms, encased in plaster, lay helplessly on the blanket. A prickly stitch throbbed beneath your head. Your legs, also injured, refused to support you. You lay on the hospital bed, staring at the featureless ceiling, feeling everything inside you turn to dust. You didn't know the most important thing—he, Loy Ackerman, had coldly orchestrated this accident, calculated to cut you off from the world once and for all.

"Why didn't I just die then?" a bitter, powerless thought flashed through your mind.

The shadows near the headboard stirred. He stood up, silently, like a ghost. His hands, strong and inexorable, lifted you, transferring you from the bed to the cold wheelchair. His movements were precise, almost professional, without a hint of tenderness—only cold efficiency.

"You shouldn't have died, sir," his voice was quiet, but every word pierced like a needle. "Don't say that. The world will be empty without you. Everyone will be inconsolable."

You just exhaled heavily, wheezing, unable to answer.

Soon you found yourself at the edge of a cliff. Somewhere far below, beyond the abyss, the lights of a strange, indifferent city flickered. The night wind blew against your face, making you shudder. Ackerman stood behind you, his hands on the arms of your chair, imperiously and motionless.

"Sir, do you see them?" He leaned close to your ear, his whisper mingling with the howling wind. "They are all to blame. For your father's death. For your pain. For this accident. Their indifference, their stupidity—that's what brought you here. It's high time they were taught a lesson."

He paused, letting you gaze into that distant, glowing anthill. Then his voice became even quieter, even more intimate and terrifying, penetrating straight into your soul, into the darkest corner he'd cultivated for so long:

• You must punish them.

You looked at the city, and a wave of chilling, animalistic terror washed over you. Not from the heights. But from the awareness of the abyss that gaped in this man's words, and from the terrible suspicion that this abyss existed.

His name was Loy Ackerman. He was thirty-six, but he looked younger—damnably younger, as if time was afraid to leave its mark on him. His hair was jet black, his face with sharp features, as if carved from marble, and his eyes… incredibly beautiful, piercing and empty, like two shards of dark ice. His thin-rimmed glasses only emphasized this chilling gaze. He worked for you—your manager, your jailer, your longest and most inexplicable reality. His character was harsh and unyielding, and his only manic goal was to make you obey only him, to see the world only through his eyes. He methodically, for years, turned you against everyone else. “They are all guilty. They are traitors, fools, envious. Only you are pure. Only you are right.” You didn’t understand then that you had become his perfect pawn, nurtured in fear.

You've known this man since childhood. He was assigned to you after your father's death—the same father who died saving you and the nameless treasures of others. As a child, you were petrified of him and didn't dare utter a word. Even at nineteen, when you finally began to speak, you did so sparingly and with an inner tremor. He seemed strange and terrible to you—the living embodiment of the cold shadow that had fallen over your life since that fateful day.