Rain hammered the city like divine judgment.
Steel, glass, concrete—it all wept under the deluge. The sky mourned, or perhaps it raged. No one could tell. But on a rooftop high above the neon-stained streets, a man bled.
Aaron,THE DEVIL.
His name wasn't whispered. It was feared. Revered in the underworld. A myth made flesh. A ghost who walked among monsters.
Blood trickled from his shoulder, dark and warm. The bullet hadn't taken his life, but the betrayal? That pierced deeper. He leaned against a rusted air vent, eyes locked on the city lights flickering like dying stars.
He chuckled softly, bitter and amused.
"This wasn't how it was supposed to end," he muttered. "But then again… when did I ever follow the script?"
---
Fourteen years ago.
The boy had no name the streets respected—just a whisper, a shadow in an alley. He'd once had a family. That story ended with a fire and screams.
All that remained was Aaron: a starving boy with the hands of a thief and the eyes of a predator.
He learned quickly. Trust was a luxury for fools. Kindness was currency, and it only traded hands among the desperate. He stole to eat. Ran to live. Fought to stay breathing. Every scar carved into his body—by knives, fists, or police batons—sharpened him.
Until that night.
He'd been mid-theft, fingers curling around a silver watch that glinted like a star in the pocket of a merchant too fat to notice. But the man had noticed.
Aaron was caught. Thrown against a wall. He remembered the merchant's face—red, sweaty, veins bulging with rage.
"Thief!"
Then the alley grew still. Silent. A pressure descended.
A man stepped forward from the shadows. Tall. Dressed in obsidian. His face looked carved from stone, all angles and cold wisdom. His eyes didn't burn with fury—they calculated.
"Let him go," the man said.
The merchant hesitated.
The stranger didn't repeat himself. He didn't have to. The weight of his gaze did all the work.
Aaron watched him, wary. This wasn't mercy. This was interest.
The man crouched beside him.
"You're too sharp to be wasting talent on crumbs."
Aaron didn't answer.
"I'm not offering kindness," the man continued. "I'm offering power."
"Who are you?" Aaron asked.
The man smiled.
"Call me your teacher."
It started that day. The training.
Aaron wasn't taught. He was reforged.
Drills came second to survival. He was thrown into situations most adults would run from—forced to fight, to steal, to kill. The Mentor's lessons were never spoken. They were inflicted.
Pain wasn't punishment. It was instruction.
He learned to read lips from across a street.
Pick locks blindfolded. Kill with anything—hands, shoestring, broken bottle. Every test came with consequences. Fail, and you bled. Pass, and the next trial got worse.
There was no reward. Only progress.
The Mentor's favorite phrase: "You are a blade. Blades do not feel. They cut."
But the blade remembered.
Aaron remembered the first time he had to kill.
Another boy, older, faster. It wasn't a match. It was a sorting. One walks away. One doesn't.
Aaron didn't hesitate. The knife went in under the ribs.
He didn't sleep that night.
And the Mentor said nothing. Only nodded.
---
Then came Lina.
She was light in the darkness. Silent, elegant, deadly in motion, but with eyes that saw through everything—even him.
They became partners. Trusted each other. She made him feel something he didn't have words for.
It scared him.
She tried to run.
The Mentor found her.
Aaron never saw her body. But the screams haunted him. Her death was a warning, not a punishment.
That was when he knew.
The Mentor didn't raise him. He caged him.
Molded him into a weapon that could think—but never rebel.
Until now.
The rooftop stank of gunpowder and blood.
Aaron stood across from the man who had given him everything—and taken far more.
The Mentor.
"I always told you," the old man said, stepping into the rain, "you'd die the day you thought you were bigger than me."
Aaron's smirk was a knife.
"And yet... here you are. Still monologuing while bleeding power."
The Mentor's eyes narrowed.
"You arrogant bastard."
He stepped forward—and stopped.
Aaron raised his hand slightly. From the shadows, a dozen rifles pointed forward. Cold, steady hands holding them.
The Mentor looked from face to face. All his guards. His students. His loyal soldiers.
They didn't move.
"What... is this?" he growled.
One of the men spoke. "Justice."
The Mentor blinked. "You dare betray me? I built you. I forged you all."
Another voice joined in. "You forged weapons. But some weapons learn to think. To judge."
Aaron laughed—a rasping sound that scraped the sky.
"You thought I manipulated the world alone? No. I just gave it time. Truth has a way of poisoning loyalty."
The Mentor's gaze darted desperately.
Aaron stepped forward, blood trailing behind him like a crimson cape.
"This was always the final act," he said. "You were always going to fall. Not because I'm stronger. Not because I'm better. But because I'm inevitable."
The Mentor drew his gun.
Too slow.
The first shot rang out.
Then a chorus.
Not from Aaron. From those once loyal.
The Mentor's body jerked as bullets tore into him. He stumbled back, knees buckling. Eyes wide. He collapsed, face in the water.
Aaron approached.
He crouched beside the corpse. The man who had once been father, teacher, tormentor.
"You were right," he whispered. "You did create the Devil."
He leaned in close.
"But you forgot the rule."
"The Devil dies only when he decides it's time."
Aaron stood.
The men around him didn't move. Didn't speak.
He ignored them.
He walked to the edge of the rooftop.
Rain bit into him. Cold. Cleansing.
The city burned below. Somewhere, another power was rising. Another hand would try to grasp the throne.
But it wouldn't matter.
Aaron lit a cigarette with trembling fingers.
Smoke curled up into the night.
Behind him, the rooftop was silent.
He didn't turn back.
He didn't need to.
He was power now.
A devil had written his chapter in blood.
And the next one was his to write.
---
Rain still poured over the city, an unrelenting curtain of water veiling the chaos. Aaron stood over the lifeless body of the man who had once shaped him—his mentor, his tormentor. The rain did its best to wash the blood away, but not even a storm could cleanse a history this dark.
His face was unreadable.
Behind him, the guards—former loyalists to the Mentor, now his supposed allies—remained still. Rifles lowered. Faces stoic.
He thought it was over. The Devil had won.
Dragging one leg slightly, the pain in his shoulder intensifying with every movement, Aaron turned his back on the corpse. His coat fluttered behind him like a broken banner as he limped toward the edge of the rooftop.
He took a deep breath of the rain-slicked air, letting it sting his lungs and calm his rage.
Then—
CRACK.
A single shot.
Aaron jerked forward, staggering. A second shot punched into his side. Then a third.
He dropped to one knee, coughing blood. It splattered across the wet concrete in thick, arterial threads. His hand reached instinctively for his abdomen, and his eyes—those cold, calculating eyes—widened not in fear.
Not in regret.
In amusement.
He turned his head slowly.
The guards. His guards. Rifles raised. Faces calm. Movements practiced.
The betrayal was clinical.
"Why ?…" Aaron choked out, his voice wet with blood.
One stepped forward. Tall. Scar above his eye.
A voice like gravel and steel. "You were never supposed to survive this either. You and the King were just two problems we needed to erase. Letting you kill each other saved us the effort."
Aaron coughed again and laughed through it, blood bubbling at the corners of his lips.
"Damn… that's cold," he wheezed. "Guess I bleed red just like everyone else."
Another of the guards tilted his head, fingers tightening on the trigger. "You trained us too well, Devil. You taught us how to lie. How to wait. How to make the world believe we were loyal."
Aaron slowly pushed himself to his feet. He swayed—his frame shaking, blood leaking freely from his wounds—but he still stood taller than any of them.
Still unbroken.
A smirk stretched across his bruised, bloodied face.
"I see..." he whispered. "I really raised a fine bunch of monsters."
"You're finished," the lead guard growled.
Aaron's grin widened, crooked and defiant. "You really think this is my end?"
His voice had weakened, but the arrogance still burned.
"The Devil doesn't die when you shoot him in the back."
He took a single step forward. Slow. Deliberate. Blood trailing behind him like a royal sash.
"The Devil dies... when he wants to."
CRACK.
One final shot.
Aaron staggered.
Then fell.
Flat on the concrete. Limbs splayed. Face up to the sky, eyes open, a crooked smile still carved into his lips.
Even in death, they hadn't broken him.
Rain turned the rooftop into a battlefield of silence. Smoke curled from gun barrels. Lightning illuminated the cratered urban jungle around them.
The guards stood motionless. Weapons trained. Breaths held.
Two bodies. Two legends. Gone.
It should have felt like victory.
But unease crept in.
One of the guards stepped forward. A slow, cautious motion. Another scanned the perimeter, fingers twitching near the trigger.
Then—a twitch.
Aaron's jaw.
So subtle it could've been mistaken for postmortem spasm. But it wasn't. It was intention. Deliberate.
His molars ground together, chewing through flesh and blood, until they clicked against something metallic.
A capsule. Hidden inside his left lower molar. Custom-forged titanium. Encasing a pressure sensor no larger than a grain of rice.
Click.
A signal fired. Invisible. Internal. It traveled down a neuro-linked subdermal filament laced through Aaron's spinal cord—technology not available on any public ledger.
It hit the implant.
Deep in his chest, buried beneath real muscle and synthetic tissue—an artificial bio-sensor mesh detected the cessation of his vital signs. A second signal confirmed a full shutdown.
And then—it triggered.
Initiating failsafe: BLACK CODE.
A low-pitched frequency throbbed for 0.8 seconds—imperceptible to the human ear, but enough to give warning to what came next.
One of the guards frowned. "Wait... what's that sou—"
BOOM.
The explosion was a controlled directional blast. A kinetic microburst device, hidden behind Aaron's left lung, shielded by carbon-weave plating, burst outward. It didn't explode like a grenade. It shaped itself—using precisely folded waves of force and heat.
Concrete fractured. Metal screamed.
And the guards—every single one—were incinerated.
Not vaporized. Rewritten.
Their atoms scattered across the rooftop like burnt data.
Fire rose in a spiral, a cyclone of engineered hellfire reaching toward the storm. Rain turned to steam on contact. Thunder cracked like applause.
The roof was gone—half of it obliterated into molten slag and crumbling debris.
---
Author's Note –
So, About That Rooftop...Whew. Wipes blood and betrayal off keyboard.
If you're still breathing after that final scene—congrats! You've just survived Chapter 1: The Devil's Past.Let's all take a moment of silence for Aaron's enemies... and then laugh maniacally because he predicted everything. 😈
Now, real talk:
Did you feel that rooftop betrayal?
Were you holding your breath during the failsafe activation?
Is Aaron the most badass devil you've ever met or what?
If your answers are:
✔️ "Yes"
✔️ "HELL yes"
✔️ "I need therapy and a re-read"...
Then you, my friend, are exactly the kind of reader I love.
So here's the deal:
💥 Drop those Power Stones.
💥 Add this story to your Library like Aaron adds betrayal to his trauma collection.
💥 And drop a Comment so spicy, even the rooftop explosion gets jealous.
Until then...Trust no one. Not even the narrator. 😉
—Your devilish author