A road 3 kilometers away from the destroyed bar, 9:54
The peaceful morning sounds of chirping birds and buzzing bees were shattered by the thunderous roar of Julius's motorcycle as it tore down the uneven road. If it could even be called a road. The smooth, well-maintained asphalt of Nimerath had vanished almost the instant he'd left the city limits. Out here, in the stretches between sovereign territories, the roads were a different story—cracked, cratered, barely held together by dirt and neglect.
The Council of Sovereigns technically had jurisdiction over the unclaimed zones between cities, but they didn't care much about keeping roads intact in the middle of nowhere. Not when they had bigger fires to put out—like the escalating war between the Viremont Empire and the Kingdom of the Iron Vow, or the increasingly bloody human rights crisis in Zul'Azar. Infrastructure maintenance wasn't exactly top of their agenda.
But Julius didn't care about potholes or policy. The ride was bumpy, but the engine beneath him purred like a predator, and the trail ahead was clear enough—faint tire marks carved into the wet dirt from the storm the night before. Alexander's car had left just enough of a signature for him to follow.
For once, the rain actually helped.
He leaned into a wide turn, gravel crunching under his tires. Wind whipped at his face, tugging at his dark hair and fluttering the collar of his leather jacket. He didn't know exactly where the road was taking him, and he didn't care. If everything went to plan, he'd be done with Nimerath by morning—and if not, well, explosions were always a satisfying fallback.
Then his phone buzzed against his chest, vibrating through the inside pocket of his jacket.
He growled under his breath, the wind howling in his ears as he eased off the throttle. His gloved fingers fumbled slightly as he took one hand off the handlebars, fishing around the inside of his jacket. The phone buzzed again. When he finally flipped it open, Caspian's name flashed on the screen, glowing pale against the gray morning light.
No need to worry.
Julius scowled. "What the hell does that mean?"
He thumbed out a quick reply, letting the bike coast along the dirt path. The machine vibrated beneath him, engine snarling as it tore through the battered terrain. The road—if it could even still be called that—had devolved into a strip of cracked earth and scattered gravel. Nothing but untamed land all around, stretching in every direction like a sea of brown and green scars.
Another message pinged onto the screen. Then another. Then another.
I just got word from Lucille that we'll be receiving some assistance soon.And the plan has changed.There will be no destruction of Nimerath.We just need to get Alexander to turn over leadership to us.
Julius blinked. The screen glared back at him in silence.
"No destruction?" he muttered aloud, the disbelief thick in his voice.
He revved the engine out of instinct—agitated, almost insulted. He'd been looking forward to watching that city burn. He didn't even have a personal vendetta. He just enjoyed the spectacle. The fire, the smoke, the collapse of something tall and proud reduced to rubble and silence. It was art, in its own twisted way.
And now it was off the table. Just like that.
He tightened his grip around the handlebars, jaw clenched, eyes narrowed. With a grimace, he typed out one final message.
Who's the assistance?
The pause felt longer than it was. The wind picked up, dry and sharp against his face. He watched the horizon roll by, the distant hills like broken teeth in the land.
Then his phone vibrated again.
Just five words.
Rowen will be assisting us.
His stomach dropped.
For a split second, everything around him slowed. The bike wobbled beneath him as his fingers froze. His balance shifted without warning, and the tires skidded sideways on a patch of loose stone. He barely caught himself in time, boots kicking against the dirt to steady the machine. A sharp jolt shot up his spine.
His breathing turned shallow.
He stared at the message again, as if reading it a second time would change the letters into something else. Anything else.
But it didn't.
Rowen.
The name alone made Julius's throat tighten. The wind around him seemed to vanish, replaced by the thunder of his own pulse. For a moment, the world felt too quiet. Too still. As if it, too, had paused to hear the name.
It wasn't the idea of backup that disturbed him.
It was who.
Rowen wasn't just a name. He was a force—silent, absolute, and terrifying in the way natural disasters are terrifying. You didn't question him. You didn't speak lightly of him. You didn't plan around him—you simply moved out of the way.
His presence didn't just shift a room, it crushed it. Every whisper of him carried weight, like the distant rumble of something massive stirring beneath the earth. Julius had never seen him lose control—because he'd never needed to try to control anything. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't posture. He simply was, and people moved.
Julius sat frozen on the bike as it vibrated beneath him, the landscape blurring past unnoticed. A cold pressure rolled down his spine, as though the wind itself was warning him to turn back.
The sky, moments ago clear, was now overcast. The sun had vanished behind a wall of sudden clouds. The road ahead looked longer than it had just a moment ago.
He slipped the phone back into his jacket with slow, deliberate care. He didn't need to read that message again. One word had been enough.
From here on, every mile felt different—charged, unstable, like something vital in the air had shifted. He was still riding toward Nimerath, but now the destination felt less like a mission... and more like a sentence.
His explosives, his thrill for destruction, his appetite for fire—none of it mattered anymore.
This wasn't about chaos.
It was about Rowen now.
And that meant everything had changed.
Julius's fingers tightened around the handlebars. His shoulders locked. He pushed forward because he had to—but there was no longer any illusion of control.
Wasn't putting the two of them on the same mission a little... overkill?
The destroyed bar, 9:55
Moonlight spilled into the room like a pale ghost, slipping through the fractured glass of a long-forgotten window. The cracked pane threw warped reflections across the hardwood floor, fractured beams of silver that shimmered like broken light on water. Dust drifted lazily in the air, catching the glow and making it look as though the room itself was suspended in stillness.
Four men stood within that silence.
Alexander stood closest to the window, his frame half-illuminated. One side of his face was cast in soft, ethereal light—serene and untouched. The other half was lost in deep shadow, etched with age and wear, like a portrait torn in half. He didn't move. His hands hung at his sides, loose, defeated. His eyes stared through the glass, not at the view beyond, but at something else—something far behind him.
His expression was unreadable. Not angry. Not sad. Not afraid. Just... hollow.
The silence was thick, oppressive, a blanket of stillness that pressed down on the room like fog. Until it was broken by a voice far too delighted for the moment.
"Wow!" Seymour said, his tone mockingly jubilant. "I really wasn't expecting that!"
His voice bounced around the empty bar like a child reacting to a surprise twist in a storybook—gleeful, unhinged, and sharp-edged.
Johnathan stood near him, proud and cold, a glimmer of malice dancing in his eye.
"So what do you say, Grandpa?" he said, the words soaked in arrogance. "Will you make me your successor now?"
The corner of his mouth curled upward—not into a smile, but something hungrier, meaner. His eyes, dark and intent, glittered like obsidian in the moonlight.
Alexander didn't answer. He couldn't. The words Johnathan had spoken just moments earlier still echoed in his mind. Layla isn't even your real granddaughter. That wasn't a lie. That was the part that hurt the most. Truth had a way of cutting deeper than deceit.
No. This wasn't shock. This was recognition. A slow, sinking realization. One that dragged like chains behind his heart.
He hadn't raised Johnathan to be like this. But the venom in the boy's voice, the hunger for power—it was there now, plain as day. How did this happen? When did he become this?
Or worse... had he always been this way?
And had Alexander simply chosen not to see it?
Johnathan took a step forward. His boots thudded against the wood. Then another step. Until he stood just inches away from Alexander, so close he could feel the elder man's breath.
"You're not listening," Johnathan said, voice low and venomous. "Listen well. If you don't name me your successor, I'll take the title from you."
There was no ambiguity in his tone. He wasn't speaking metaphorically. This was more than ambition. This was a threat.
"You little bastard—" Jackson snarled from the corner, rushing to Alexander's side, fists clenched, eyes wild. "Are you threatening him!?"
Johnathan didn't answer.
Alexander slowly lifted his gaze. The glow in his left eye caught the moonlight, making it look like a smoldering ember in his skull.
"I will never," Alexander said, each word heavy as iron, "entrust the company to someone like you. Or... whatever it is you've become."
His voice didn't shake. It was stone. Cold, final, absolute.
Then his eyes slid toward Seymour.
"And you..." Alexander said, voice turning to a growl. "What did you do to him?"
Seymour scoffed, arms crossed, trying to look insulted but too smug to pull it off.
"Me?" he said, voice pitched high with mock innocence. "What are you blaming me for now?"
"You twisted him," Alexander said, his voice low and laced with restrained fury. "Or maybe you just brought out what was already there."
Something shifted in the room.
The air changed.
The space around Alexander began to shimmer. A subtle glow, deep and red-orange, started to pulse from beneath his skin. Like a furnace slowly coming to life. Sparks danced in the air near his hands, barely visible—flickers of heat that made the dust twist unnaturally.
Seymour's smirk faltered for a moment before a cold grey aura began to build around him as well. Not warm, not fiery—his was still and lifeless, like fog crawling across the ground of a graveyard.
Energy crackled in the air like static before a lightning strike. Invisible, but suffocating. The floorboards beneath Alexander's feet groaned under the weight of raw power building between him and Seymour. The atmosphere was on the verge of collapse.
Then—
"All right, all right! Let's all calm down, yeah?" a voice rang out from the doorway—cheerful, misplaced, and utterly unwelcome.
The tension fractured for a moment. All eyes snapped toward the entrance.
Boots crunched across the shards of shattered glass as a man stepped into the room. He moved like someone unbothered by consequences—swagger in his step, hands loose at his sides, the confidence of a man who had nothing to fear and everything to control.
"Let's not kill each other just yet," he said, a grin curling across his face. Wide. Bright. Completely inappropriate.
Julius.
His long black coat fluttered behind him, catching the air like a cape, the fabric worn at the edges but still commanding. A glint of metal at his belt flashed as he walked through a shaft of moonlight. Not a weapon drawn—but visible. Deliberate.
He scanned the room with eyes like glass—clear, sharp, reflective. In the span of a breath, he read every soul in the room. Who was ready to strike. Who wasn't. Who mattered.
Alexander turned slowly to face him, brow creasing with the first hints of real confusion.
"Who the hell are you?"
Julius's grin widened, flashing teeth like a wolf baring fangs.
"I'm the man," he said smoothly, "you're going to answer to."
Alexander's expression darkened.
"Answer to?" he repeated, voice low and coiled tight with fury. "As if I'd listen to some stranger."
He took a step forward. The ground beneath him seemed to shudder as power rippled outward—visible, red-orange heat waves rolling off his body like pressure from a furnace. The dust in the air danced in frantic spirals.
"Now give me one good reason," he growled, "not to kill you where you stand."
Julius didn't flinch.
Not a blink. Not a breath out of place.
He simply reached into his coat, pulled out a scratched phone, and tapped the screen. A single image filled the display, and he held it up.
Alexander stared.
The screen glowed dimly, the image grainy and washed in the sickly yellow tones of poor lighting. Julius held the phone out like a weapon, and even in the faint light of the ruined bar, the picture's contents hit like a sledgehammer.
Blood.
It was the first thing that registered. Vivid streaks of it, painted down locks of long black hair. The strands were matted and clumped, soaked so thoroughly the blood seemed to pulse in the frozen frame. It glistened along her scalp like ink spilled across parchment.
More of it was smeared across her cheek, dried in uneven streaks that followed the curve of her jaw. It coated her neck, thick and congealed, crusting at the base of her throat like some dark, obscene necklace. The light caught the texture of it—sticky, flaked, real.
The girl's head slumped forward, limp. Her chin hung against her chest, and her body offered no resistance to the hand holding her up. A pale, veiny hand clutched a fistful of her hair, pulling it just enough to keep her face visible in the shot. Fingers dug in hard enough that the tension on her scalp was obvious even in stillness. The grip wasn't gentle. It was meant to hurt. Or to humiliate. Or both.
And despite the poor resolution, despite the lack of motion, the expression on her face—or the lack of one—was unmistakable.
She was unconscious. Possibly worse.
Her eyes were shut, lashes dark against her bruised skin. Her lips were slightly parted, but not in speech. Her arms dangled out of frame, offering no defense, no resistance, no sign of life.
Alexander stared at the image.
Everything else in the room faded. The warmth of the power still pulsing beneath his skin dimmed. The fire in his chest collapsed inward. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, drowning out the creak of the floor, the whisper of the wind through broken windows, even Julius's breath across the room.
Layla.
It was her. There was no mistaking it.
Even broken and bloodied, even surrounded by the evidence of violence, her face was familiar in a way that shattered him. He saw not just the woman she was now—but the girl she'd been. The one who used to tug on his coat when she had questions. The one who stayed up late reading in the corners of rooms where she thought no one would notice. The one who called him Grandfather like it still meant something pure.
And now she was just a figure in a frame, reduced to proof of leverage.
He didn't feel rage. Not yet.
What he felt was colder. Deeper.
It was terror. Not for himself.
But for her.
Because someone had taken her. Someone had done this to her. And now they were showing it like a threat. A promise.
And he knew—beyond all doubt—that if he made the wrong move, that image wouldn't just be a warning.
It would be the last time he ever saw her alive.