---Ethan didn’t speak. Not at first.The silence in the room was louder than the ticking wall clock. Jules stood frozen, his back to the door, chest rising and falling like a man about to face a firing squad. The barrel of Ethan’s pistol was still warm, one chamber full—ready for a betrayal he never thought would come from his right hand.“You sold my father out,” Ethan said, voice low and controlled. “And now you’ve been feeding them intel on me.”Jules swallowed. “That was years ago. I didn’t know you then.”“That doesn’t make it better,” Wren snapped. “You had every chance to come clean.”“I didn’t have a choice!” Jules barked. “They had my sister, Ethan. She was seventeen. They said if I didn’t leak your father’s location, they’d carve her apart and ship the pieces back to me. What would you have done?!”---Ethan’s stare was unrelenting. “I would’ve burned the Nine to the ground. You chose to kneel.”“I’ve been loyal to you since the start,” Jules pleaded. “Every drop of blood I

---The North Sea churned like an angry beast.Ethan stood on the deck of the speedboat, wind slashing across his face as the jagged silhouette of the unmarked island came into view. The coordinates Cain had left weren't just cryptic—they were buried, erased from satellite maps, and hidden in black archives. Whatever waited on that land wasn’t meant to be found.Camille throttled down the engine as the rocky shoreline neared. “No signal, no surveillance. We’re in a dead zone.”Jules, still sore from the Zurich catacombs, loaded his weapon beside Ethan. “Perfect place for a graveyard—or a revelation.”Ethan’s gaze stayed fixed on the island.“We find out which today.”---They made landfall just before dusk. The island was small—more rock than earth, more silence than life. But deep within the cliffs lay a narrow path leading to an old iron gate.It creaked open under Ethan’s hand.Beyond it: a stone monastery, long abandoned. Vines crept through cracked walls. Time had buried most of