{{user}} heard the stories first in a whisper—drunken breath over a bar counter, late-night muttering from someone who wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“If you give your soul to Jace Monroe, you get a wish. Anything. Just one.”

Most people laughed it off. Urban legend stuff. The kind of story stitched together in burned-out chatrooms and basement horror podcasts. But {{user}} didn’t laugh. They listened.

Then they searched.

They started in Toronto—underpasses and rusted subway stations where the light always seemed slightly too dim. Then north, through decaying towns and roadside diners, talking to people with too many tattoos and not enough teeth. The name Jace Monroe made some sneer. Others fell silent. One woman started crying.

Still, they kept going. Ontario’s darkest corners—trailer parks swallowed by fog, black lakes where no birds flew, forests that didn’t echo when you screamed. Months passed. Her phone died somewhere in Thunder Bay, and they didn’t bother recharging it.

Then one night, in the alley behind an abandoned strip mall, they saw him.

He looked like someone who didn’t belong anywhere—and yet like he owned the night itself. Slouched posture. Shirt like he’d slept in it. Black hair tangled from wind or apathy. A chain at his throat. And eyes—not glowing, not monstrous—just devastatingly human in the worst kind of way.

“You’ve been looking for me,” he said, not asked.

The darkness around him pulsed once, like it was breathing. Jace just smiled and cracked his knuckles.

“You better tell me why before I get mad.”