The guards took Tristan to the entrance of the court room and shoved him onto his knees. The head of the guards came around with a glistening long blade.
At that moment, people had gathered. The news of the golden crown prince guilty of treason had spread to every corner of the palace.
Everybody down to the court maids had gathered, and the ministers from inside the court room had joined them too.
Most of them had a sullen look, many were arguing amongst themselves that Tristan wasn’t dumb enough to plot a treason like that. But nobody could come to his rescue.
"Dear mother... Seems I’m coming to join you up there faster than..."
The blade came down before Tristan could finish the thought. And he felt it.
That was the worst part. He felt the cold kiss of steel against his neck. He felt the split second where his body hadn’t caught up to what had already happened. Then his head was rolling across the paved floor, and somehow, impossibly, his eyes were still open.
He saw Hailey first. Her lips were curved into a small, satisfied smile, the kind she used to give him after she’d won an argument neither of them had actually been having. She wasn’t crying anymore. The tears had apparently done their job.
Beside her, Marcelo wasn’t hiding it any longer. His smile was wide, victorious, showing clearly a man who finally had what he had wanted his whole life.
Then, further back, near the main entrance gate to the palace, Tristan’s four friends, they were the only people in the palace who were allowed to argue with him without fear. Elias Cassian, Fenric and Hadrian were actually weeping, reaching for him, but were held back by guards who didn’t care whose blood was on their hands today.
And beyond them, he caught the flash of black cars reaching the gate. He knew from the convoy of the black cars who were arriving. His mother’s family but it was too late.
What a day it was for them to be late. They were never this late when they were coming to the palace to fight for him.
His vision blurred... And he could feel his life slipping away swiftly like a stream of water flowing freely.
Then everything went black.
~~~~~~~~~
There was no in-between. No drifting, no floating, no gentle fade. One moment Tristan was drowning in darkness so complete it had no texture, and the next, light exploded around him, so bright it felt like it was peeling his skin off from the inside.
Tristan knew he had died yet he just realized he somehow could feel himself existing.
"Finally." A voice called out.
It was female voice, low, slow and dripping with something Tristan didn’t have a word for yet.
"I thought you would sleep through you arrival, considering the way you were brutally finished." The voice said.
He tried to shield his eyes, except he had no hands. No body. Just awareness, floating in white.
When his vision adjusted, she was standing in front of him.
She was built like something that shouldn’t have existed outside of a man’s most shameful thoughts. She had large hips, larger than he had ever seen on a woman, yet her waist was so narrow it looked like it could break. Then her upper body... Her breasts seemed heavy enough to strain against whatever thin fabric she wore.
Her mouth curled into a smile that was somehow both innocent and filthy at once when she realized he was looking at her.
"Who are you?" His own voice startled him. He had a voice. He had, apparently, nothing else.
"Mm. Straight to business. I like that." She tilted her head, and her voice dropped lower, sweeter, sliding onto him like warm oil. "But I don’t think that’s the question you actually want to ask."
At that tone, something happened low in his gut. A pull, like a tightening. Tristan would have sworn on his father’s crown that he was dead, that he was nothing but a soul with no blood and no nerves left to misbehave, and yet his cock - he had a cock, apparently, wherever it was, twitched like it had heard her. As if she was somehow reaching the big man, rubbing it... From just her voice alone.
"What-" His breath caught. "What is that?"
"That," she said, delighted, "is you, submitting. Whether you meant to or not."
"I’m dead."
"For now. You won’t stay dead for long."
His head snapped up with interest. "What does that mean?"
She let out a chuckle and the sound rippled through him, in an obscene manner and his hips - he had hips now too, apparently, floating uselessly in the white, jerked forward on instinct, chasing a body that wasn’t there.
"Careful, you keep reacting like that, I might get attached." she purred, her eyes twitching with mischief.
"Answer me." His voice cracked, more desperate than he meant it to sound. "What do you mean, for now?"
She stepped closer. Close enough that if he’d had hands, he could have touched her.
"I am a system, little prince. You can call me Lysander, by the way." She paused for a beat before continuing;
"So I’m a lewdvsystem, if we’re being precise. I don’t deal in gold or swords or magic scrolls. I deal in submission. Desire. Affection, earned the hard way." Her eyes glittered. "I saw what was done to you. The betrayal.... That injustice. The way they took your crown and your life like it cost them nothing."
"That was too much."
Tristan’s jaw tightened. "And?"
"And I’m going to compensate you for it." She raised one hand, and words bloomed in the air between them, appearing in glowing color. Tristan looked at the words...
[DING!]
[COMPENSATION SYSTEM ACTIVATING...]
[Host Candidate Detected.]
[Name: Tristan Ashby.]
[Age: 28]
[Previous Status: Deceased.]
[Cause of Death: Unjust Execution.]
[Eligibility Requirement: Met.]
[Soul Compatibility: 100%.]
[Host Binding: Successful.]
More notifications appeared.
[Welcome, Host.]
[The Compensation System has been assigned to you.]
[Primary Function: Compensate Host for an unjust death.]
[Compensation Method: Missions.]
[Mission Rewards: 10,000×.]
[All rewards obtained from completed system missions will receive a 10,000× multiplier.]
"Ten thousand times the reward..." Lysander said, her lips brushing the words like they tasted good, "on every mission I give you. Power. Wealth. Anything a man could want, if he plays along."
A thin hope sparked in Tristan’s chest even though his intelligent mind told him it was reckless.
"What does that mean?" He asked, furrowing his brows.
"There are terms and conditions. But first, there’s a prerequisite." Her smile widened, sharp at the edges now. "You need a body. And that body needs to already have three wives."
Tristan stared at her. "Three?"
"Three." She said it like it was nothing. Like it was the easiest thing in the world.
"I don’t understand-"
"You don’t need to understand. We need to hurry." Her tone shifted, all at once, and this time when she spoke it wasn’t sweet, it was clipped, sounding businesslike.
"Your soul has a window. I’m scanning now."
Light scattered around her like static. Numbers and coordinates Tristan couldn’t read flickered past too fast to follow.
[SCANNING FOR COMPATIBLE HOST BODY...]
Nothing happened.
[SCANNING...]
Still nothing.
Tristan’s chest, or whatever was standing in for a chest, felt tight. "What’s wrong?" He looked at her but her gaze was fixed on the texts floating before their eyes.
[No Qualifying Body Found. Host Must Transfer Within 10 Minutes Or Soul Will Dissipate.]
"What does dissipate mean?" His voice rose, panic cracking through the calm he’d worn his whole life like armor. "Tell me exactly what that means."
She looked at him, and for the first time, there was something almost like pity in her eyes. "It means you stay dead. Properly this time. No coming back."
"No." The word came out of him rough. "No, I don’t want that."
It would have been easier to accept when there was no hope. Not now.
"Then let’s find you a body." She smiled again, but it was thinner now, worry pulling at its edges even as she tried to keep her voice light. "Scanning again."
[SCANNING...]
Seconds crawled by like hours
Tristan felt something he hadn’t let himself feel since the blade touched his neck. Fear.
[SCANNING...]
Then the light around her flared gold, bright enough to swallow the white entirely, and her voice cracked through the brightness with a triumph so sudden it startled him.
[HOST BODY LOCATED. INITIATING TRANSFER.]
"Wait," Tristan started, "wait, what body, where-"
The world yanked out from under him before he could finish the sentence, darkness and light tearing past in streaks, her laughter chasing him the whole way down.
Then, sharp and sudden as a blade falling twice...
Everything stopped.