Fantasy

Aiden has a year left to live, three copper to his name, and a route of lamps that will all outlast him.
    He's made his peace with two of the three.
    Then a dying rat in a sewer grate offers him a contract: pay six months of his own lifespan, get a bond. By any sane measure it's the worst deal he's ever made. He takes it. He's always taken the deal.
    The rat evolves. The contract pays him back more years than it cost, plus a sliver of the beast's power that stays in his body for good. Acid that melts a lock off its hinges. A step that crosses a room through its own shadow. By the time anyone thinks to laugh at the sewer-rat tamer, he's put a noble's Griffin in a tree and walked out of the exam yard without looking at it.
    Every year he spends ages him where he stands. And the stronger his beasts grow, the harder the world works to chain them, especially once they learn to fold down into human shape and call him by name.
    Four beasts that should have died in the gutter with him. Four women who walk out of them wearing faces. One dying man, and a number in the corner of his eye that every power alive would kill to own.
    [ Lifespan: 0.5 Years ]
    The countdown started the day he decided to live.