The rain had been falling since dawn—long, silver knives of water slicing through the fog that shrouded the streets of Blackridge. The city’s skyline loomed like a jagged scar across the clouds, its towers bleeding light through mist and smoke.Ethan Cross stood motionless outside the Vitale estate, an umbrella tilted low, watching the runoff gather at his boots. The rain hit the pavement with the same rhythm as the gunfire he used to hear in another life—steady, merciless, unending.He had once stood at the edge of battlefields like this: waiting, reading the wind, feeling the ghosts of the men he had led. Now he stood at the gate of another kind of war—a domestic one, fought with silence and humiliation instead of swords.The guard by the gate leaned on the iron bars, cigarette smoke curling through the downpour. His uniform was too tight, his smirk too casual. “Forgot your key again, Mr. Cross?”Ethan lifted his gaze, gray eyes cold and distant beneath the shadow of the umbrella. “

The next morning dawned cold and brittle, sunlight sliding pale and uncertain through the tall windows of the Vitale estate. The storm had passed, but the air still smelled of thunder.Elena Vitale stood at her mirror, brushing her hair with mechanical precision. Her reflection was flawless—always flawless—but beneath the perfect poise lingered exhaustion. Her mind replayed the night before, the way the courtyard had glowed, the fear that had crawled under her skin when Ethan told her she should be scared.He wasn’t the man she thought he was.He wasn’t just the husband she’d been forced to marry to cement a fragile alliance.There was something ancient burning behind those gray eyes now—something that looked at her like it remembered a thousand lives before this one.A knock broke her thoughts.“Elena,” came a voice. Matteo. Her cousin, the Vitale enforcer. “Your father’s waiting. Council meeting.”“Coming.”She set the brush down, her fingers trembling once before she steadied them.

By the time dawn broke over Blackridge, the sky had forgotten how to breathe.The storm that had rolled in from the east wasn’t made of clouds. It was smoke—black, living smoke—churning with streaks of gold lightning that didn’t flash so much as move, like something alive hunted across the sky.The news stations called it “a weather anomaly.”The Vatican called it “an omen.”And Ethan Cross, standing at the edge of Don Vitale’s balcony with his shirt clinging to his chest and that faint gold sigil burning beneath it, called it what it truly was.“They’ve found me.”Elena’s voice came from behind him, low, uncertain. “You mean the people who—”“The gods,” he said. “Or what’s left of them.”She didn’t laugh, though her father would have. The air was too heavy, too real. She stepped closer, her robe brushing the marble. “What do they want?”“The same thing they always wanted,” Ethan murmured. “Control.”He turned to face her, and she saw how strange he looked in the gray light — not huma

The rain came down like a sentence that night—unforgiving, relentless.Silver streaks carved across the windshield as Ethan Cross guided the black sedan through the sleeping veins of the Solari District. The city, once gleaming under the gala’s pretense of wealth and grace, now seemed stripped bare. The billboards bled light across wet asphalt, distorted by the downpour into ghosts of color.Behind those flickering images of luxury and power, Ethan saw only lies—gilded cages built by men who had never been forced to bleed for what they owned.He rolled his shoulders, the tension grinding through old scar tissue. The wound beneath his left eye, long faded to a thin white line, throbbed in rhythm with the storm. A scar from a life no mortal should have survived. A mark of divine punishment.The energy inside him hadn’t cooled since the confrontation at the gala. The Viper’s men had been disciplined—too precise, too calculated. Mafia thugs didn’t move like that. They fought like soldiers

The storm hadn’t stopped.By midnight, Blackridge was drowning in thunder. The city’s lights flickered like dying stars, painting the skyline in shards of gold and electric blue. Ethan stood in the courtyard of the Langston estate, his coat heavy with rain, his mind slipping between centuries. Every heartbeat pulled him deeper into a place he had once sworn never to return.He could hear it again—the sound of war drums rolling through his veins.The pulse of gods. The breath of eternity.Kryos.He closed his eyes. Lightning split the heavens, and for a second, the courtyard wasn’t made of marble and rain but ash and fire. He stood on a battlefield carved into the bones of the earth. Thousands of warriors screamed his name, their blades dripping with celestial blood. He remembered standing on that same soil as a god, watching the world burn for him.Then came the betrayal.Then came the fall.A sudden gust dragged him back to the present. The storm smelled of ozone and danger, but ther