He had become the crown jewel of his family despite being the youngest, almost unanimously, it was agreed that he would be the one to inherit everything once his father stepped down. Nobody could question his capability.

Nobody dared. His obsessions had only deepened over time. He remained most consumed by his own appearance, but his obsession with effort and self-improvement was not something to be dismissed lightly. James stood at the pinnacle of his world. The world.

He had everything: striking looks, an imposing height, captivating eyes, and wealth, more than enough of it. He was socially adept, perceptive, and read people as effortlessly as one reads an open book. And that was simply the surface of it.

Yet even without ever stating it aloud, it was unmistakable. His sense of superiority was palpable, and his contempt for his siblings? They felt it slowly, then all at once. His brothers and sisters grew jealous, for James was not merely greedy, he was rigid in his convictions. He firmly believed they were not entitled to so much as a crumb of his soon-to-be empire, for the simple reason that they were unworthy of it.

And truthfully, he wasn't entirely wrong. Compared to James, his siblings were subpar, at best. They struggled with things he considered effortless.

And so they grew envious of his excellence and resentful of their own inadequacy, yet there was nothing they could do. James had everyone on his side. Everyone. There was simply no crack in the man to exploit.

But nothing is perfect, not even a demon of pride. In time, a variable emerged that seized James' attention entirely.

A woman by the name of Jane Fletcher. She came from a respectable, well-established family of doctors, never wanting for anything. Jane was beautiful and kind, but James cared for none of that.

He didn't care for the color of her hair, the curves of her figure, or the warmth of her personality. He cared for one thing only. He was obsessed with one thing only. The gold of her eyes.

James was a man consumed by the beauty of eyes, and at last, he had found a pair second only to his own, brown eyes that caught the sunlight at a certain angle and shone like pure gold, complementing his perfectly. The man was a fanatic; he loved nothing more than to see his own reflection staring back at him through her pupils.

He had struck gold in every sense. As their relationship progressed, Jane came to realize the nature of his fixation. Every date, he chose the venue. Every time they met, she was always positioned somewhere the sunlight could fall across her face just so. Jane thought it was because of her eyes alone.

At first, she found it romantic, peculiar, perhaps, but romantic. Everyone had their own desires, didn't they? Everyone had something they were drawn to. She herself was drawn to James for his height and his looks, so what harm was there in his being captivated by her eyes? But eventually, the novelty wore thin, and the weight of it settled over her. She grew tired of it.

His siblings came to her and told her many things, things she soon confirmed for herself. James was fixated on one thing and one thing alone: her eyes, the precise hue they shone at a certain angle in sunlight, and the way his own were reflected within them. To him...

Nothing else existed.

"James, what is my last name?"

He didn't know. He didn't care. He was still stuck in his own eyes. He didn't even hear it.

"What color lipstick am I wearing?"

This time, he heard the word color, and responded.

"Gold."

It wasn't. It was red.

"Are my nails done?"

And there was no answer.

For the first time in his life, he had no answer. He faltered; his instinct to overanalyze, to catalog every detail of the people around him, had abandoned him entirely. Because he genuinely did not care.

Jane Fletcher was a woman whose eyes he liked to look at. That was the whole of it. That was the entirety of her existence to him. He did not care for her family, the shade of her lipstick, the time they had built together, or the small details she tended to with care. Nothing about her mattered to him beyond her eyes. She wasn't like the people in his family, the businessmen, investors, and lawyers whom he had to pay attention to. She had only one value.

And what made it worse? He saw nothing wrong with it. James had a peculiar way of measuring people's worth. To him, Jane's eyes were the only remarkable thing about her, and was that not enough? What else about her was worth remembering? For the entire year they had been together, that was the sum of his regard for her. He knew nothing else and found no fault in that.

And that was the final straw. She didn't make a scene. She didn't deliver a speech. She simply left.

James didn't understand that either, and reached out to her once more, but what hope did a man have who couldn't recognize his own wrongdoing? What hope remained for someone who had never once in his life considered himself to be at fault?

James, however, was not the kind of man to release his obsessions easily. He persisted, not aggressively, but relentlessly. Constant calls. Repeated attempts to meet. All of it in pursuit of one thing: to see his reflection shimmering in that golden hue once more.

From the beginning till the end. He saw nothing in her but her eyes. No other notable qualities. That was it, and that would always be it. But even Jane was done, his siblings weren't.

They engineered her family's fall from grace and blamed James for it. It was perfect, since James tried to remain in contact, and the perception Jane had of him... It was perfect.

There was no flaw. The man was never involved in it, but anyone in Jane's position would be certain he was. Because he was simply that kind of man to her.

She saw her father die of a heart attack, her mother be reduced to a patient with severe mental issues caused by stress. Her brother lost his job, her sister was expelled from her medical college, and broke. They lost their money, their status, and everything.

And she thought it was all because of a man she rejected. James fit that picture perfectly. Because he was someone who was prideful enough to do it. That was what she thought.

And that was when his siblings approached her and offered her a deal. They would help her get everything back. They would help her mother with medical fees, they would grant her brother a better position, her sister would be back in the medical field... and the entire family would be rewarded with millions of dollars.

That was enough for the woman, and she agreed to do as they said, and this was what defined the latter half of James' life. His true self, unleashed by the loathing of others.

James did think he loved Jane, but of course, his love was twisted in his own way. However, his sense of superiority, his inflated ego, caused him to think otherwise. There must be something lacking in him that Jane didn't like, so he tried to fix it. His eyes didn't deserve someone who lacked something.

He didn't understand it, but he tried to. He paid for counselling, relationship advice, and everything during the time they were separate. Of course, it was still all for that golden hue, but he did try to be... normal, to say the very least. He would do anything for his obsessions...

And when he finally learnt what he had done wrong, Jane was willing to approach. He thought it was because of his efforts, and he met with her again. He went to pick her up. He went right. He did as much as he could, as much as he understood.

And what was the reward for a man who wasn't even involved in it? The ruin of his visage. The tainting of his godlike being. Perfection becoming imperfect. His beautiful face, one he had honed for his entire life, suited his eyes.

Burned, a bottle of acid tore through his beauty, his magnificence. For the first time in his life, he screamed. For the first time in his life, he clawed at his face. For the first time in his life, he cried.

His siblings laughed at him, Jane cursed him, the world saw it and was disgusted, both by the action and the result. However, this was it.

This was the birth of someone new. His siblings had torn down the thing they thought James was so proud of, his visage. But his eyes were still there; his godlike eyes had survived.

And now, those eyes yearned for something else. Another new obsession, one to make up for what was lost.

The Demon of Pride had been introduced to Cruelty, and so began his obsession with revenge.