A Message from the PastThe room is dark, save for the glow of the screen in front of me. The grainy video flickers, static crackling like an old memory fighting to stay alive. Then, my own face appears.I don’t remember recording this.The version of me on the screen looks different—leaner, sharper, eyes burning with something raw. I lean in, pulse hammering against my ribs, as my past self speaks."You were right to betray The Oath."My breath catches."Finish what you started."The video ends abruptly. The silence that follows is deafening.My hands tighten around the edges of the desk, knuckles pale. A slow exhale escapes me, but it does nothing to settle the storm churning in my gut. My past self—this version of me—was certain. Unwavering. But I don’t feel that certainty now.I hit replay.Once again, the same flicker, the same voice. The same message."Finish what you started."I rub a hand down my face. The weight of my choices settles deep in my bones. The Oath—the organizatio

The Oath Strikes BackThe first bullet misses me by half an inch.The second one doesn’t.It tears into my side, a burning-hot bite of lead carving through flesh and muscle before ripping out the other end. The force sends me staggering back, slamming into the desk, and my breath punches from my lungs. I barely have time to register the pain before the next wave of gunfire explodes through the room.Shadows move in the darkness. Silent. Precise.They don’t hesitate.They’re here to kill me.I dive sideways as bullets shred through the space I occupied a second ago. My laptop explodes in a flash of sparks, the recorded video—my voice from the past—dying in a burst of static. The warning, the message, everything I needed—gone.I hit the ground hard, rolling behind the overturned desk as another round of gunfire tears through wood and glass. My breathing is sharp and uneven, my fingers slick with blood as I clutch my side. It’s bad. The pain is hot and searing. But pain means I’m still a

The Temptation of PowerJulian’s office is a tomb.I step inside, and it’s as if the walls themselves are holding their breath. The room is untouched—books still aligned perfectly on the shelves, a glass of whiskey half-finished on the mahogany desk, the chair turned slightly as if he’d just stepped away for a moment. As if he might walk back in, smirking, spinning another one of his mind games.But Julian is gone.And his throne is empty.The remaining leadership of The Oath stands before me—men and women who have survived the bloodshed, the betrayals, the culling. They look at me with something between wariness and expectation.One of them steps forward. An older man, silver-haired, sharp-eyed. Malcolm Roarke. He was always a shadow in the background, a quiet hand that moved the pieces while Julian played the game in the spotlight."You have a choice, Nathan," he says, voice smooth, practiced. "Walk away, and chaos will swallow everything we built. Or…" He gestures toward the chair.

The World on EdgeThe world is holding its breath.I feel it in the way the streets seem quieter than usual, in the way people glance over their shoulders, waiting for something to happen. The Oath’s foundation is crumbling, and with it, the delicate balance that keeps the monsters in the shadows.I see it in the news reports—governments on high alert, politicians scrambling to prepare for the worst. Secret factions circling like vultures, waiting for the final collapse so they can feast on the remains.And I see it in Riley.She hasn’t looked at me the same since that night on the rooftop. Since she saw what I was too afraid to admit.Now, she stands across from me in the safe house, arms crossed, her face a mask of control. But I know her too well. The tension in her shoulders, the stiffness in her jaw—she’s afraid. Not of the world outside, but of the war raging in my head.“We need to leave the city,” she says, voice sharp, practical. “Now.”She’s right. The moment The Oath truly

A Night AloneThe city hums outside, but inside this room, everything is still.I sit in the dark, the only light coming from the faint glow of the skyline beyond the window. The shadows stretch long across the floor, swallowing the space whole, like the weight of my own thoughts pressing in from all sides.The chair beneath me is cold, unyielding. The kind of chair meant for kings, rulers, monsters.Julian’s chair.I lean forward, my elbows resting on my knees, my fingers locked together as I stare at the floor. Every decision, every move, every betrayal—it all led me here.To this moment.To this choice.The watch on the desk ticks on. A reminder. A sentence.Twenty-four hours had seemed like a long time. Now, with only a handful of those hours left, time is slipping through my fingers like sand.I think of Riley. Of the way she looked at me before she left.Like she already knew what I would choose.Like she saw something in me that I hadn’t even admitted to myself.Or maybe she sa