“Sorry to bother you,” the young woman said through Ethan Vale’s door. She cradled a small white cat against her chest. “I live downstairs. The water’s out. Could you spare a little for my cat?”
Right on cue, the cat gave a weak, pitiful “mew.”
On the security feed, it looked thin. Too thin. Small. Vulnerable.
Ethan hesitated just long enough to confirm two things.
One: the cat’s eyes were too glassy, too still—like painted dots that never quite caught the light.
Two: the “downstairs” unit was his.
He opened the door anyway.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling like she’d been waiting for him to do exactly that. “I’m really sorry. I only moved in today. I’ve been hauling boxes all day and forgot to take care of the little guy. Then the pipes… well. No water.”
She was dressed for July heat and for attention: black fitted tee, low neckline, matching skirt. Dust clung to the fabric—and to her skin. A smudge sat right where anyone’s eyes would land, bright against her pale throat, like a deliberate mark begging to be wiped away.
Ethan kept his face neutral.
“You’re thirsty, huh?” he murmured to the cat, reaching out to scratch its head.
The cat pressed into his fingers, then pressed again, almost too perfectly—like it had learned what “cute” looked like from a script.
“Um… could I also wash my hands?” the woman asked, lowering her lashes. “Just quick.”
Ethan stepped aside. “Bathroom’s down the hall. Come in.”
“Thank you, thank you.”
She bent to set the cat down in the living room.
Ethan didn’t look.
He didn’t have to.
The moment her back turned, he clicked the remote.
The curtains glided shut. Daylight vanished. The room sank into controlled shadow.
“Hey—why is it so dark? Why did you close the—”
Ethan flung the cup of water straight into her face.
It hit with a wet slap.
The “woman” staggered, shrieking—and the skin began to run.
Not blood. Not sweat.
Paint.
Paper pulp.
Her “flesh” melted in sheets, peeling away to reveal a pallid funeral doll face: dead-white paper, inked brows, a mouth drawn too thin.
On the floor, the “cat” collapsed into a limp paper shell.
“You—!” The paper doll’s voice went razor-sharp. “How did you see through me?”
Ethan stood in the dark where the blinds made him hard to read. “Easy. You said you moved into the downstairs unit.”
He tilted his head. “I own that unit.”
The paper doll’s painted features warped. Anger. Surprise. Something older than either.
It lunged.
Its arms were rigid paper wrapped around bamboo struts—too stiff to be human, too fast to be harmless. Ethan met it with his Dragonblood Dagger, steel catching paper with a dull, ugly thunk.
It didn’t bleed.
It burned.
The doll’s forearm struck, the edge of it already smoldering. Heat flashed. The blow clipped Ethan’s wrist.
Pain flared. Skin blistered.
Ethan hissed, more from the revelation than the burn.
That power—inside the doll—felt familiar.
Not fire. Not paper. Not the cheap “haunting” vibe it wore like perfume.
Black Dragon.
Skye’s power.
Or rather… the power in Skye’s blood.
In the Endless Sea, Ethan had once forced Skye—Black Dragon, last of her kind—into a binding contract. He’d felt it then: the weight of a bloodline that didn’t belong to humans.
Now he felt the same imprint on this paper thing.
A thread snapped into place in his mind.
So that was it.
The Sorrow Theater wasn’t just a nightmare. It wasn’t just a Lostland.
It carried something buried. Something old enough to stain paper.
Ethan stopped trying to “win” the fight and switched to ending it.
He slashed up at the floor lamp in the living room, smashing the bulb clean off. Glass tinkled down. Metal prongs and naked wire glinted in the half-dark.
He yanked the water jug off the dispenser and hurled it.
The paper doll chopped the jug in half with a contemptuous sweep—
—and the water inside detonated into a sheet, splashing across its body.
“Ha. Water?” The doll’s voice twisted into a laugh. “Pointless—”
Ethan drove his shoulder into it, hard.
The doll’s footing was already off from the swing. It stumbled backward, right into the broken lamp.
Sparks jumped.
The exposed wire kissed the puddled water.
Electricity bit.
***
“How did this happen?” someone snapped in a cramped conference room in Xuzhou, a city just shy of Cloudrise. “Tech was tracking frame by frame!”
A dozen official players sat around the table, tense and sweating. Minutes ago they’d moved on intel that Paper Crane’s servant had entered Xuzhou—heading for a residential complex.
Target: Player 0067.
They’d mobilized. Player abilities. Two cities’ worth of police coordination. A clean capture plan.
They kicked in the door—
—and found nothing.
No paper doll.
No Player 0067.
Just an ordinary apartment… and an ordinary white cat that very much was not made of paper.
The conclusion was brutal.
They’d been played. Again.
Now the trail was cold. The surveillance angle was gone. The chat channel had no response from Player 0067.
On-screen, the frozen frame still showed the “woman” with the cat: pretty face, low neckline, dangerous smile.
Someone swallowed. “This is… messing with me.”
In the chat, messages kept coming.
[CHAT]
“Too nerve-wracking.”
“Yeah. What is Player 0067 doing? It’s broad daylight—say something!”
[/CHAT]
Huang Yanyan, the official liaison for this cycle, was posting a warning every ten minutes. It had been nearly an hour. Still no reply.
Qi Heng stared at the screen. “Do you think… Player 0067 already ran into it?”
The room went quiet.
Qi Heng exhaled, half-joking, half-not. “I kinda wish Player 0067 was a woman.”
Several men nodded like that was the most reasonable statement all day.
“If it wasn’t trying to kill me, I’d marry it,” someone muttered.
Yanyan rolled her eyes so hard it almost hurt. “Are you listening to yourselves? That thing wiped out two families in Cloudrise. Nine dead.”
A veteran player from HQ—older, sharper-eyed—leaned forward. “Look. The worst part isn’t the disguise. It’s what Paper Crane and that servant got from the Sorrow Theater.”
Yanyan’s spine tightened. “What do you mean?”
“The Black Dragon ancestor’s power,” he said quietly. “The old story. The Black Dragon ancestor once poured a god’s worth of power into the earth. The earth shattered. Fragments sank into the sea and became Lostlands. The Sorrow Theater is one of them.”
His gaze went to the screen again.
“And Paper Crane touched it.”
Yanyan swallowed. “So you think the servant also carries that power?”
“If I were Paper Crane,” he said, “I’d share the critical piece with my servant. Insurance. If I die, the servant has enough strength to bring me back.”
No one argued.
Because the logic was clean.
And because every branch of it ended the same way.
Player 0067 alone, in the player world, with no supernatural backup… and something coming to cut his heart out.
A phone buzzed in the silence.
Qi Heng checked it, then went pale. “It’s from headquarters. They want us back in Cloudrise. Prepare for Paper Crane’s revival.”
Yanyan’s jaw clenched.
We’re giving up? The task hasn’t failed yet.
But she couldn’t find a counterargument, not with Player 0067 still silent.
She glanced at the System’s death list.
Player 0067 wasn’t on it.
So where was he?
As they stood to leave, a System announcement hit every player’s vision at once.
[SYSTEM]
Kill Notice:
Player 0067 has eliminated the Paper Doll Servant.
Player 0453 (Paper Controller)’s servant has been destroyed.
Global Task Complete:
Player 0067 has completed the all-player triggered mission:
Stop the Paper Controller’s servant.
Reward settlement incoming.
[/SYSTEM]