Five years ago — Mortano, midnight
Kael never trusted the ocean.
It was too much like the city he lived in—wide, dark, and full of things that wanted to drown you.
But Aria loved it. Said the waves made her feel small in a way that felt honest. She would press her hands to the railing of the old pier, eyes closed, wind in her hair like a crown made of ghosts.
That night, Kael watched her do it for the last time.
"Dario's late," she said softly, not turning around.
Kael leaned on the railing beside her, cigarette burning between his fingers. "Dario's always late. He likes people to wait on him."
"You don't."
"I'm not Dario."
"I know." Her smile cracked the tension in her voice. "You're the one who comes when I call."
Kael turned his head, met her gaze.
"Always."
They didn't kiss.
Not yet.
It wasn't that kind of night.
It was the kind where the air was wrong. Where you could smell rain before it touched the ground. Where you knew—without reason—that something was about to end.
"You know what my father told me?" Aria said, tracing a circle on the metal rail. "He said loyalty only means something when it costs you blood."
Kael didn't answer.
Because he agreed.
And he knew what was coming.
Aria looked up at him.
"Do you love me?"
Kael met her eyes.
"I've bled for you. Isn't that what love means?"
She didn't smile.
"Then why do I feel like I'm about to lose you?"
Kael's chest ached. His hand itched for the gun he wasn't carrying.
"You won't."
But even as he said it, he heard footsteps behind them.
Dario's voice was silk dipped in razors.
"I'm sorry I'm late."
Kael turned around slowly.
Dario was alone. Or at least that's what Kael thought—until shadows moved behind the crates near the docks.
Soldiers.
Kael's stomach turned.
Aria stepped away from the rail.
"Dario…?"
But Dario didn't look at her.
He looked at Kael.
"Do you trust me?" he asked.
Kael's voice was a whisper. "Used to."
"That's a shame."
He nodded.
The soldiers surged forward.
Kael went for Aria—grabbed her hand.
She didn't move.
Didn't speak.
Didn't even look surprised.
That was the worst part.
"You set me up," Kael breathed.
Aria's eyes shone with unshed tears.
"I tried to stop them."
"You didn't try hard enough."
"I thought it would save you."
Kael's hands dropped to his sides.
Dario stepped closer.
"You killed a Cazetti heir," he said coldly. "We had to give them something."
"So you gave them me?" Kael snarled. "I did it to protect her."
Dario didn't flinch.
"That doesn't matter anymore."
They beat him.
Hard.
Fast.
Professionally.
He never touched his gun.
Never cried out.
Just kept staring at Aria.
Until she turned her face away.
He woke up in a metal cage deep in the sea.
A prison for men who don't stay dead.
No name.
No trial.
Just water.
And memory.
Present day — Mortano, dusk
Kael's eyes opened like they were knives being unsheathed.
He sat up on the mattress in the safehouse, chest slick with sweat, breathing like he'd been choking.
Dario sat across from him, sleeves rolled up, gun dismantled on his lap.
"You always scream in your sleep?"
Kael didn't answer.
Dario didn't push.
Kael stood, cracked his neck, lit a cigarette.
"Why did you do it?" he asked, voice flat.
"Because I didn't have a choice."
Kael exhaled. "There's always a choice."
Dario looked up at him, tired and sharp.
"And you still came back to me."
Kael didn't deny it.
Didn't look away.
Didn't say what he wanted to say:
Because some betrayals don't kill you. They just haunt every breath after.
~~~
The docks were different now.
Colder. Louder. Cracked from time and rot.
Kael stepped onto the splintered boards like he was walking over bones. Five years ago, he'd come here as a soldier in love.
Tonight, he came as a man crawling out of the grave.
People recognized him.
Not by face. That had changed.
But by presence.
The dockworkers went quiet. The dealers along the edge of the cargo line vanished like smoke. Even the rats seemed to scatter like they knew he was no longer just a man.
Kael moved through them like a ghost that never asked permission.
He wasn't looking for forgiveness.
He was looking for Gianna Castellano.
Gianna used to run shipments for the Virelli family. Guns. Pills. Women.
Now she ran fear. Controlled one of the outer port districts. And she owed Kael for saving her brother from being gutted by a rival five years ago.
She greeted him at the back of her warehouse with a pistol half-cocked and eyes like broken glass.
"You're supposed to be dead."
Kael lit a cigarette.
"You're supposed to be smarter than that."
She lowered the gun, grudgingly.
"Fair."
He followed her inside. The air stank of sweat and spilled secrets.
"Why are you here?" she asked, tossing him a bottle of water.
"I want to know what Aria's doing."
Gianna snorted. "You and the rest of Mortano."
"I'm not like the rest of Mortano."
"Clearly. The rest don't crawl out of ocean cages."
Kael didn't smile.
He stepped close.
"Start talking."
Gianna took a long drag from her vape, exhaled through her nose.
"She's not hiding anymore. That letter she left you and Dario? That was her announcement."
"She's hunting us."
"She's doing more than that."
Kael tilted his head. "Explain."
Gianna stepped over to a map pinned to the wall.
"Five bloodline families are dead or crippled. Three lieutenants missing. Two debt houses set on fire with bodies inside."
"All her?"
Gianna nodded. "She's got power behind her. Something dark. Something that makes men piss themselves without a knife even being drawn."
Kael already knew.
The witch.
"She's building a kingdom of fire and bones," Gianna whispered. "And she's not taking prisoners."
Kael's voice dropped to a hush.
"Where is she now?"
Gianna hesitated.
Then said, "You're not going to like the answer."
Elsewhere in Mortano – 9:03 p.m.
The Deluca Theatre
It was beautiful once.
Velvet curtains. Gold-leaf balconies. Phantom whispers of opera in the rafters.
Now, it was empty.
Except for the man strapped to the stage with barbed wire.
And the woman standing over him in a crimson dress, barefoot, hands coated in chalk and ash.
Aria.
The man on the stage — Leo Messini — was the cousin of one of the families that helped betray hers.
He begged. Wept. Promised things he didn't have.
Aria didn't speak.
She reached for the knife.
Salvara stood in the wings, her shadow curling like smoke.
"He's not important," the witch rasped.
"I know," Aria said.
"Then why kill him?"
Aria stared down at the man's broken face.
"Because people forget unless they watch someone bleed."
The knife was curved like a question that didn't want an answer.
She whispered his name.
Not Leo's.
Kael's.
Then drove the blade in clean.
Blood sprayed across the empty seats.
And above the stage, the chandelier trembled like the ceiling knew war had begun.
Afterward, she stood alone.
The blood cooled on her skin.
Her chest was hollow.
She missed them both.
She hated them more.
She would not stop.
Back at the docks – 11:00 p.m.
Kael stood on the rooftop of Gianna's warehouse, wind carving through his jacket.
He looked down at the burning theatre across the city.
He didn't need to ask who had lit the match.
"She's starting with symbols," Dario said, stepping up beside him.
"Then we burn brighter ones."
Dario lit a cigarette and handed it over.
Kael took it.
Their hands brushed.
Neither flinched.
But Kael's voice was like smoke and steel.
"We need to send a message."
Dario nodded.
"Let's send them a scream."
——
Five years ago — after Kael's betrayal
The fire burned for three days.
They said no one survived.
But Aria did.
Barely.
She crawled from the ruins of her family's safehouse with smoke in her lungs and the bones of her brother crushed beneath the rubble.
The fire hadn't been random.
It was a warning.
Dario's men had come while she slept.
They weren't supposed to kill everyone.
But fear is sloppy.
And greed doesn't follow rules.
She staggered into the woods beyond the city's edge, dragging her torn arm, her face scorched, her throat cracked from screaming for ghosts.
She bled under the full moon, and the dirt tasted like iron.
That's when she heard the voice.
"Stop crawling," it hissed.
She froze.
There was no one there.
Just trees. Shadows. Pain.
"You want to live?"
A figure emerged. Robes of black salt. Hair like burnt vines. Eyes like ruined stars.
Salvara.
Witch of the Hollow Throat.
"You smell like betrayal," the witch rasped. "And rage. I like that."
Aria tried to stand.
She couldn't.
"Help me," she whispered.
"No."
"Then what do you want?"
Salvara crouched beside her, fingers trailing the blood from Aria's shoulder.
"To watch what you'll trade for vengeance."
Present day — Mortano's undercity
Kael stepped through the archway into the chamber beneath the ruined church. The air stank of salt and wet stone. Torches flickered. The stairs spiraled downward like they were cut by screams.
This was where secrets went to rot.
This was where he found Mother Elizia.
She was old.
Not in years. But in silence.
A woman who had served the old gods before Mortano became a city of bullets and blood.
Kael bowed his head slightly.
"I need to know what she did," he said.
Mother Elizia didn't look up from her bowl of ash.
"She gave the witch what was owed."
"What did she give?"
"Everything."
"That doesn't mean anything to me."
"It will," she said. "When she comes for your soul."
Kael stepped closer.
The torchlight caught the tattoo along his collarbone — a brand from the ocean prison. Faded. But cursed all the same.
Elizia reached out and touched it.
"You were meant to stay buried."
"I wasn't ready."
"No one is."
Kael pulled out the note Aria left after the Castelli slaughter.
"Loyalty is a knife.
You chose where to cut."
He handed it to Elizia.
"What does she want?"
The priestess stared at it for a long time.
Then said, "She wants your memory."
Kael's chest tightened.
"Memory of what?"
"Of what you did to her."
Kael shook his head. "I didn't kill her family."
"No. But you stood still when she needed you to move."
Elsewhere — the Hollow Shrine
Salvara traced the symbols on Aria's bare back with blood.
Aria didn't flinch.
Each symbol shimmered with dark fire.
"You're losing pieces of yourself," the witch said calmly. "Soon, there will be nothing left but the war."
"I don't want to be soft anymore."
"You won't be."
"I don't want to remember how they touched me. How I laughed with them. How I cried."
"You won't."
Aria turned her head.
"Erase them from me."
The witch smiled.
"Good girl."
The final mark burned as it was sealed.
Aria's scream didn't sound human.
Because she wasn't, not anymore.
Back in Mortano — Midnight
Kael climbed from the undercity, ash clinging to his jacket. His hands shook.
He hadn't cried since the betrayal.
He still didn't.
But inside him, something cracked.
Because now he understood.
She didn't want to kill him.
She wanted to take him apart.
Piece by piece.
Memory by memory.
Until he couldn't even remember why he'd loved her in the first place.
He looked at the skyline.
Mortano glowed like a dying ember.
And he whispered into the dark:
"I'm not afraid of forgetting you."
He paused.
Then added, quieter:
"I'm afraid I'll still love you… even when I do."
…
Dario moved like a man with nothing left to prove.
He sat in the backroom of a crimson-lit brothel, shirt half-buttoned, sleeves rolled, blade in hand.
Across from him, Tomaso Fel, one of the men who had helped send Kael to the bottom of the sea, was tied to a chair, bleeding from his mouth.
"You're going to tell me everything," Dario said calmly.
Tomaso spat blood at his feet. "You think you're still feared, Dario? Mortano answers to her now."
Dario smiled faintly.
"I don't need fear."
Then he carved three inches of skin from Tomaso's cheek.
Tomaso screamed.
The girls in the hallway didn't blink.
They'd heard worse.
Kael arrived just as the third scream died.
He leaned against the doorframe, arms folded.
"Making friends?"
Dario didn't look up. "Finding answers."
Kael stepped in. "He talk yet?"
Dario held up a bloody earring.
"He didn't need to. He still had this in his coat. See the crest?"
Kael took it.
Cazetti sigil.
The same family whose heir Kael killed — the death that started all of this.
Only now... the earring had been modified.
There was a black crescent carved behind the gemstone.
Not a mafia mark.
A witch's glyph.
"They're working with her," Kael said.
Dario nodded. "Somebody sold her old power for new protection."
Kael's stomach turned. "She's building something too big for bullets."
Dario stood, wiping blood from his hands.
"That's why we don't use bullets."
Kael arched a brow. "What then?"
Dario's voice was low.
"We use you."
Elsewhere — a rooftop, 2:00 a.m.
Aria watched the city from above like a god with nothing left to worship.
Her red dress was gone. She wore black now. Like grief that learned to dance.
Salvara stepped from the shadows.
"You killed again tonight."
Aria didn't respond.
Salvara smiled. "You're not even trembling."
Aria looked down at her hands.
"Is that good or bad?"
"Both."
They watched the fire spread across the block where the Cazetti under-boss had been hiding.
His body would never be found.
Aria lit a cigarette, even though she didn't smoke.
The gesture reminded her of Kael.
That pissed her off more than anything.
She turned to Salvara.
"Can you take the rest of him out of me?"
The witch tilted her head.
"You don't want to erase the memory."
"Why not?"
"Because it still gives you power."
Aria's jaw tightened.
"I don't want power. I want him to feel what I felt."
Salvara's smile widened.
"Then stop chasing death."
"Why?"
"Because you're not done being alive."
Back in Mortano — underground vaults
Kael and Dario sat across from Matteo Grimm, an information broker with one glass eye and a habit of coughing blood.
"You want me to tell you who else sold you out?" Matteo said, voice wheezing. "That'll cost."
Kael dropped a gold chain with the Mortano blood-seal onto the table.
"Paid."
Matteo picked it up, whistled low.
"Well then."
He leaned in.
"You won't like this."
Kael's voice was cold. "Try me."
Matteo said one name.
And Kael froze.
Gianna.
The same woman who had given him shelter.
The same one who told him Aria was hunting the five families.
She'd been feeding information to Salvara for months.
Kael stood slowly.
Dario didn't speak.
But he looked at Kael.
And for the first time… he wasn't sure what Kael would do.
"Are we burning her?" Dario asked later, voice neutral.
Kael didn't answer.
He stared out the window.
"She's the last person who helped me before the cage."
Dario lit a cigarette.
"Help is just betrayal in a nicer dress."
Kael didn't flinch.
He just said, "Then I'll rip the dress off before I put a bullet in it."
Gianna's warehouse, 3:14 a.m.
She didn't fight.
Didn't run.
She was already packing.
Kael stepped in through the broken skylight like a shadow no one invited.
She looked at him, slowly, sadly.
"I didn't give them your location."
Kael said nothing.
"I only told them about the prison mark. They needed it to track the curse."
"You knew what they'd do with it."
Gianna sighed.
"Maybe I was tired of surviving without choosing a side."
Kael raised the gun.
She didn't beg.
Didn't blink.
Didn't move.
He fired once.
And walked away before the body hit the floor.
End of Chapter Two