Lena wasn’t the type to get rattled.

  Dante had seen her smirk through threats, debts, and the kind of violence that left people in pieces—sometimes literal, sometimes worse. He had watched her stare down bounty hunters, out-talk soulbinders, and casually flip a dagger between her fingers while a man twice her size debated whether trying to kill her was worth the trouble. (Spoiler: it never was.)

  But when she examined his contract—really examined it, eyes narrowing as she traced each twisting line of ink—something in her expression shifted. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t even shock. But for the briefest flicker of a second, her smirk slipped.

  And that scared the hell out of him.

  They had moved to a rented backroom of the bar, a space meant for illicit business and conversations people didn’t want overheard. The kind of place where promises were whispered over cheap liquor and regrets got written in blood. The only light came from a single flickering lamp, throwing jagged shadows across the battered table where Lena had spread out his contract like a body on an autopsy slab.

  It wasn’t normal paper. Not even close. The ink twitched as she ran her fingers over it, curling and shifting like it had a mind of its own. Living glyphs, bound magic. Dante had seen contracts before—hell, he had signed one—but this was different. This thing breathed. It pulsed. It waited.

  Lena muttered something under her breath, brow furrowed, her fingertips tracing along the edges of a phrase that refused to sit still. Then she stopped.

  Frowned.

  Leaned in closer.

  Her voice had lost its usual lazy amusement, replaced by something sharper—curiosity edged with caution. She reached out, tracing the line of shifting ink with her fingertip, and Dante swore the contract reacted. The letters rippled like disturbed water, pulling away from her touch before settling into new formations, as if they were trying to hide.

  Lena’s frown deepened. She muttered something under her breath, words laced with magic, and pressed her palm flat against the page. The ink shuddered. For a brief, flickering second, Dante saw something beneath the contract’s surface—a shadow, a shape, a presence just beyond comprehension. Then it was gone, swallowed back into the shifting script like a secret refusing to be told.

  Slowly, she pulled her hand away, flexing her fingers like they’d gone numb. Whatever she had just seen, she didn’t like it. Not one bit. That was when she leaned in, eyes narrowing, voice quiet but certain—

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  “Well. That’s not supposed to be there.”

  Dante’s stomach tightened. He had spent enough time around contract work to know that any phrase starting with "that’s not supposed to be there” was never, ever good. “That’s not what?”

  Lena didn’t answer right away. Instead, she reached into her belt, pulled out a small silver knife, and pressed the tip against the surface of the contract. The ink reacted instantly—recoiling from the blade, bleeding backward as if trying to escape.

  Dante felt it before he understood it—a cold pressure blooming in his chest, like something inside him had just flinched. His vision blurred for half a second, the world pressing in at the edges. Then it was gone, leaving only a faint whisper of unease, a certainty in his bones that something had just moved.

  Lena exhaled slowly. "Shit. You’ve got a Ghost Clause.”

  Dante blinked. “The hell is a Ghost Clause?”

  Lena finally looked up at him, and her expression was different now. Serious. Calculated. Not quite worried, but close enough to make his pulse pick up. “It means your contract wasn’t just signed. It was altered. Someone added a hidden clause before you even touched it.”

  Dante’s pulse kicked up a notch. That wasn’t possible. Was it? Contracts were bound to intent, shaped by agreement. You couldn’t just slip something in without the signer knowing—at least, not unless you were playing with forces way above standard Pactmaker trickery. “Who?”

  Lena rolled a shoulder in a shrug, but there was a stiffness to it, like even admitting she didn’t know made her uneasy. “Dunno. But whoever did it? They weren’t human.”

  The words sat between them, heavy and sharp.

  Dante swallowed hard. He didn’t like where this was going.

  Lena tapped the contract again, watching the ink pulse beneath her fingers, its movements slower now, almost deliberate. "Here’s the fun part. Whatever they added? It’s buried deep. Locked under something old. The kind of old that doesn’t just deal in life and death."

  Dante clenched his fists. “What the hell does that mean?”

  Lena drummed her fingers against the contract, gaze flicking between the shifting ink and Dante’s face like she was debating how much trouble he was really in. Judging by the tightness in her jaw, the answer was “a lot.” She exhaled sharply and leaned back, crossing her arms. “It means someone tampered with your deal before you ever put pen to paper. And not just any someone—something old, something powerful. Something that doesn’t bother with mortal contracts unless it has a damn good reason.”

  The words sat heavy between them. Dante felt the weight of them settle in his chest, cold and growing colder. This wasn’t just about getting out of a bad deal anymore. This was bigger. Messier. Dangerous in a way he hadn’t even begun to understand. There were plenty of things that could twist a contract—Pactmakers, demons, the occasional ambitious sorcerer—but the kind of magic Lena was talking about? That was something else entirely. That was playing in a league where the consequences weren’t just debt or death.

  His mouth was dry when he finally spoke. “Why me?” It wasn’t quite a question, more of a whispered demand to the universe, because none of this made sense. He wasn’t important. He wasn’t powerful. He was just another poor bastard who thought he could outplay the system and lost. So why had something ancient gone out of its way to make sure his contract came with extra chains?

  Lena gave him a slow, measured look. The kind of look that said, You’re not gonna like the answer, but you’re sure as hell gonna hear it.

  "It means, Dante, that you didn’t just sign a bad deal."

  "You signed a deal that was never meant for you."