A Common Level

In the gas-lit dusk of an unnamed Eastern city, steel-fanged industrialist Matthew Ryan—equal parts Mammon and Mephistopheles—corner the urbane Schuyler beneath smoke-choked skylines, promising to raze the man’s shipping empire unless Marion, Schuyler’s violin-wielding daughter, consents to a Faustian bargain. Marion’s retort—she brands Ryan the modern Attila—lodges like a barbed arrow in his calloused brain; curiosity, the rarest of poisons, gnaws. Back in his mausoleum-mansion Ryan turns parchment pages on the Scourge of God, only to slide into a fevered reverie where a spectral guide drags him through blood-caked steppes, vaulted courts, and wedding chambers reeking of fear. There he witnesses Attila’s rampage—bridges burned, infants trampled, brides broken—until the Hun-king’s own bride, Ildico, slips a blade between ribs during the nuptial night, avenging years of bruised flesh. Ryan awakens slick with existential dread; dawn finds him crawling to the Schuylers’ doorstep, renouncing extortion, loosing Marion from his predatory contract, and perhaps—just perhaps—beginning to cauterize the rot in his marrow.