Renayo Ezraphor had officially begun his journey as a Grade One demon. The ink on his first hell contract was barely dry when he claimed his first contract points, a small but undeniable step into the vast, brutal game of damnation.
His first assignment came with a tidy little file, nothing more than the bare bones:
Target: Daniel Carter, age thirty-six. Police officer. Faith level at 68 percent. Married to Samantha Carter, thirty-four, a freelance graphic designer. They lived in a modest two-story home in the Maple Heights district of Oroshika, the most affluent part of the city, where prominent men and their families resided.
The file made no attempt to hide the strain in the Carters' marriage. Seven years together, no children. Not for lack of trying, Daniel's infertility had been confirmed long ago. The unspoken resentment between them had calcified into quiet, polite distance. Still, his career was solid, twelve years on the force, five as a homicide detective. By all outward appearances, his life was steady.
The file gave him only the surface. Renny preferred truth over paperwork. A dossier could tell you what, but only the shadows revealed why. To dig deeper, he turned to the Shadow Technique, a basic stealth spell he'd bought from his mark store for a mere twenty points. Unlike Kev, who had a range of flashy spells and seeds to pick from, Renny had found only one. He could only hope the contract store where he could find weapons and tools wasn't as barren as the mark store. Still, he took it, leaving his balance at four hundred and eighty. Cheap, yes, but invaluable. With it, he could vanish from the human eye entirely, slipping into the shadow realm to observe without ever being seen.
He and Kev had practiced for days, testing their limits and sharpening control until they felt ready, or at least as ready as two fresh demons could be. Renny hadn't bothered checking the contract store. This was just simple research, after all. And combat was never his strength. Sick all his life on Earth, he'd never even thrown a punch. His mind was his weapon, and he intended to rely on it.
So, on a rain-slick Tuesday night, Renayo Ezraphor followed Officer Daniel Carter from a careful distance. Streetlamps threw long, wet reflections across the asphalt as the man's footsteps carried him toward his quiet suburban home. Renny was dressed in his typical demon uniform, a black suit with a red tie over a sky-blue shirt, though tonight he also carried a black umbrella, its canopy tilting just enough to hide his eyes. Tonight, he would begin his first true shadow surveillance.