The city burned.
Not in flames—but in silence, smoke, and fear.
Three days had passed since Dante's appearance. Since he vanished like a ghost and left nothing but questions behind. And in those three days, Black Sun collapsed from the inside out.
No more calls.
No more missions.
No more trust.
Only whispers—rumors about how Victor died. That he was murdered. That I was back from the dead. And most dangerously of all…
That I was the one who killed him.
Lance and I kept moving. The old hideouts weren't safe anymore. Some operatives had gone dark. Others turned. One of our own, a sharpshooter named Kael, tried to sell our location.
He didn't get the chance to regret it.
I didn't like killing my own.
But this wasn't about like or dislike anymore.
It was survival.
Damien finally opened his eyes in the backroom of an abandoned clinic. The bandages wrapped around his torso were stained, but he was alive—barely.
He blinked up at me, groggy.
"You look like hell," he muttered.
"You should see yourself," I said.
His lips twitched, like he wanted to laugh. But then his face turned serious.
"Victor's really dead?"
I nodded.
He looked away.
"Good," he whispered.
Lance glanced over from where he leaned against the wall. "Rest. We'll need you on your feet soon."
"Why? What's coming?"
I hesitated.
And then I told him about Dante.
Everything.
Dante wasn't just a player. He was a dealer—a manipulator. Someone who didn't just want power. He wanted to control the narrative, the world's very shape.
And worse—he knew about the System.
He knew how I stole powers from the dead.
Which meant…
He knew what I was becoming.
That night, I couldn't sleep. I used Crimson Echo on one of the bloodstains left behind from Kael. Just a drop. Enough to let the past whisper.
I fell into the memory.
Kael had been on a call. Not to Dante, but to someone else. A woman.
Her voice was sharp. Elegant.
"Target Leon Graves is alive. Confirmed visual. He killed Victor. Orders?"
A pause.
Then, the voice on the other end spoke clearly.
"Let him run. Let him burn. When he's desperate enough, we'll make our offer."
My heart skipped.
There was someone else.
Someone even higher up.
The next day, Lance pulled out something from Victor's vault. A half-burnt map. Strange symbols etched along its borders. A territory map—but not of the city. Not entirely.
It showed zones. Dangerous ones. Awakened zones. Places the government had locked down and hidden.
At the center of it all was a place circled in red.
Ashgrave.
"Ever heard of it?" Lance asked.
I hadn't. But the name stirred something in the back of my mind.
Damien coughed, still weak. "Ashgrave… that's where the first Awakening happened."
My eyes widened. "The original Event?"
He nodded slowly.
"And guess who just bought the land?" Lance said, holding up a paper.
Aegis Corporation.
Victor was gone, but the pieces were still moving.
The Covenant.
The Syndicate.
Aegis.
The Wardens.
And now… Dante.
Every faction had their own goals. Their own monsters. Their own awakened soldiers. I had to figure out what they wanted—and why they wanted me alive.
Ashgrave was the key.
I didn't know what I'd find there. Only that whatever it was… it was old. Powerful.
And if Dante wanted it, that meant one thing:
It could change everything.
As the sun rose, casting its pale light over the dying city, I stood on the roof of a half-destroyed safehouse and stared toward the east.
Toward Ashgrave.
Lance joined me, arms crossed. "You sure about this?"
"No," I said. "But we don't have a choice."
He smirked. "Sounds like a yes to me."
And in that moment, something settled inside me. Something cold. Something final.
Victor was the beginning.
Dante is the warning.
And whatever's in Ashgrave?
That's the war.
To be continued....