2025-07-26 17:35:22By dawn, the smoke from the underground vault had reached the streets above. Firetrucks surrounded Goodman Tower, lights flashing red and white like a battlefield wound pulsing through the concrete.
Local authorities swarmed the area, trying to contain the damage unaware they were standing on top of a war.
Jeffrey watched it all from across the street, cloaked in a black hoodie and a baseball cap pulled low over his face, Camilla leaned on the bench beside him, pale, stitched, and still trembling from the adrenaline of the night before.
Victor hadn’t spoken in twenty minutes, he sat across from them, one eye swollen from the beating he took. Bandages covered one side of his jaw. His pistol was tucked under the long coat he wore like a second skin.
The city had no idea it was on the edge of collapse. Yet, Jeffrey broke the silence first. “Henry didn’t know it was a decoy. That bought us maybe twelve hours.”
Victor gave a dry, blood-flecked cough. “Should’ve let me shoot him when I had the chance.”
“He had fifty guards,” Camilla said. “You wouldn’t have made it past the second bullet.”
Victor grunted. “Still worth dreaming about.”
Jeffrey glanced back toward the tower, the smoke now rising like a dark halo above the city skyline.
“They’ll rebuild it. But they won’t find the real drive. That was the last move my father taught me, hide the truth in plain sight. Let them destroy what they think matters.”
Camilla stared at him. “And what do we do now?”
Jeffrey’s jaw clenched. “We go after the one person Henry never controlled.”
Victor raised an eyebrow. “Who?”
Jeffrey pulled out an old phone, burner style, scratched and battered. He powered it on. One contact. No name. Just a single encrypted line. Camilla’s voice was tight. “Who are you calling?”
Jeffrey didn’t answer until the phone started to ring. “Someone worse than Henry Vance.”
A static voice answered. Coded. Disguised. “You were told never to use this number again.”
Jeffrey kept his voice level. “You were told never to betray my father.”
A pause.
Then the static voice replied, “The dead make strange demands.”
“I need to meet.”
“Impossible.”
“I’m holding Revenant.”
Silence Then “Midnight. The Glass Docks. Come alone.”
Click.
Camilla stared at him. “You’re not seriously going to meet one of them, are you?”
Victor groaned. “Tell me that wasn’t who I think it was.”
Jeffrey’s silence said it all, Camilla leaned in. “The Syndicate?”
“The High Circle,” Victor said grimly. “The ones who even the underworld fears.”
Camilla looked between them. “And you’re just going to walk into that meeting alone?”
Jeffrey stood. “No. I’m going to walk in like I already own them.”
Zane Goodman stood in front of a mirror, adjusting his tie with trembling fingers, He could still feel the ghost of Jeffrey’s grip on his wrist from the funeral.
He hated it, Hated the way his knees had buckled. Hated the fear in his own reflection. “You need to get your head together,” Eleanor said behind him, her voice cold and perfect.
Zane turned. “He’s back. We thought he was dead, and now he’s burning vaults and leaking ledgers!”
“Calm down,” she said, sipping tea like she was lounging in a Versailles salon.
“Do you even understand what’s happening?! If that drive gets out, we go down too.”
Eleanor didn’t blink. “We planned for this. Henry is already cleaning up the mess.”
“He’s failing!” Zane shouted. “Your private army just got outsmarted by one man with a thumb drive!”
Eleanor’s eyes narrowed. “Jeffrey isn’t a man. He’s a legacy in armor. The only mistake your father ever made was teaching him how to survive.”
Zane slumped into a chair. “I’m not ready for this.”
“No,” she said. “But you will be. Or I’ll find someone who is.”
He looked up, startled, She set the teacup down with a soft click. “I won’t let a ghost take what I’ve spent my life building. Not even one with the Goodman name.”
Fog rolled over the water like smoke from some unseen war. Shipping containers towered in silent stacks, shadowy monoliths under the pale orange glow of security lights. Everything about this place whispered danger.
Jeffrey arrived alone, dressed in black, hands empty. The flash drive was hidden deep within his boot, beneath a lining of lead and steel. Even scanners wouldn’t find it. He waited.
At exactly 12:01 a.m., three black cars pulled into the clearing near the dock, From the center car, a woman stepped out, She wore a crimson coat that fell like blood to her ankles. Platinum blonde hair. Eyes like razors.
Jeffrey stiffened. “I thought it would be him,” he said.
The woman smiled. “He’s dead. I replaced him.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You killed your own father?”
She didn’t answer, Only gestured for him to walk, They moved down the dock alone, the waves slapping gently against the pylons. “I know why you’re here,” she said. “Revenant. You want to burn it all.”
“No,” Jeffrey replied. “I want to control it.”
She laughed a cold, elegant sound. “You’re bolder than the rumors said.”
“I’m worse than the rumors,” he said.
She stopped walking. “You’ve got one chance, Goodman. Join us. Sit at the table your father rejected. Use Revenant the way it was meant to be used not for revenge, but for control.”
Jeffrey met her eyes. “And what would that make me?”
“A god,” she said. He didn’t speak, Then handed her a decoy flash drive, She plugged it into her phone, scanned it.
Her eyes lit up. “My offer stands.”
Jeffrey stepped closer. “Then consider this a preview.”
She looked confused, until her phone exploded in her hand, She screamed, stumbling backward. Jeffrey was already running, Gunfire erupted behind him. Bullets pinged off metal containers.
Victor’s voice crackled in his ear. “I see you! Go left, shipping container B9!”
Jeffrey dove through a narrow gap between crates as a sniper round missed his head by inches, Victor’s van skidded into the clearing, Camilla threw open the door. “MOVE!”
Jeffrey leapt inside as bullets shredded the air behind him, They peeled away into the fog, tires screaming. Inside the van, Camilla stared at him. “Please tell me you didn’t just start a war with the High Circle.”
Jeffrey held up the real flash drive, His eyes were cold fire. “No,” he said. “I just let them know I’m not afraid to burn everything down.”
Then his phone buzzed again, Another unknown number, This time, a video attachment. Jeffrey opened it. And froze. It was his father, Alive, In a hospital bed. Breathing through tubes. Voice raspy.
“Jeffrey… if you’re watching this… they failed to kill me, but they will come again… and the truth… the truth is not what you think.”
The screen cut to black, Jeffrey’s blood ran cold, Camilla whispered, “That was recorded today.”
Victor stared at him. “Your father’s alive?”
Jeffrey gripped the drive tighter, rage and shock surging like wildfire. “No,” he said softly. “He’s being kept alive.”
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Latest Chapter
Chapter 57 – The Man Who Returned Was Not the Same
The night split open. Camilla staggered back as fire swallowed the skyline, a column of molten light roaring upward from the ruins below Goodman Tower.It wasn’t just destruction, it was proclamation. The city itself seemed to bow beneath the force of it. Windows shattered for miles. Car alarms wailed. Every living soul felt it in their bones.And then, through the smoke and fire, he rose. Jeffrey Goodman. But not the Jeffrey she remembered. His body was wreathed in fire that did not consume him but crowned him.His eyes glowed gold, so bright they were blinding, and strange sigils crawled across his skin like living scars. His every step melted stone; the ground trembled beneath his feet.Martin fell to his knees, choking on the smoke, whispering like a man in prayer. “It’s him. He survived. God help us… he survived.”Camilla clutched the balcony rail, her breath caught in her throat. Her heart screamed recognition, this was the man who had once held her, once bled for her, once whis
Chapter 56 – Baptism of Fire
Jeffrey Goodman was burning. But the fire did not kill him. It remade him. The abyss was endless, a storm of black and crimson flames that hissed and shrieked like living things.Chains twisted in the inferno, lashing around him, piercing his skin, threading through his veins like molten wire. Every heartbeat was an explosion, every breath a scream, every nerve a battlefield between destruction and rebirth.He tried to fight. He tried to claw upward, but the fire dragged him deeper, devouring. It tore memories from him, the sound of his mother’s laughter, the warmth of Camilla’s touch, the echo of his father’s cold eyes, and burned them to ash. In their place, it whispered.“You are not man. You are fire. Fire consumes. Fire rules. Fire bows to no one.”Jeffrey’s body convulsed, flames boiling out of his mouth, his eyes, his wounds. His flesh split, only to seal again in burning threads of gold and black. His scream became a roar that shook the abyss itself.And in that roar, he reali
Chapter 55 – The Crucible of Chains
The world was gone. There was no sky, no ground, only chains. They swarmed like serpents in the dark, rattling with a sound that sank into bone.They dragged Jeffrey down through fire, through smoke, through the black pulse of the abyss until he no longer knew if he was falling or being devoured.His chest seared where the molten tears had burned him. His sword was gone, torn from his hands, his flames smothered by the coils around his arms.Every breath was ash, every heartbeat a hammer against the cage of chains. And then, sudden stillness.He hit ground that wasn’t ground at all but a shifting surface of steel links, stretching endlessly into black. The Crucible. “Here, the heir will be tested.”The Third Shadow’s voices rolled through the dark, three mouths speaking from nowhere and everywhere.Chains slithered, forming walls, a dome, a prison. Within it, shapes stirred. Figures. Shadows coalescing into forms Jeffrey knew too well. The first to step forward made his blood run cold
Chapter 54 – The Third Shadow
The sky was breaking. Every soul in the city looked up, frozen beneath the rain of chains that screamed like falling blades.The rift above gaped wider, tearing the heavens apart. Fire bled into blackness, and blackness pulsed like a living heart.Jeffrey’s knees buckled beneath him. He was slick with blood, barely standing, his sword trembling in his hand. His vision was ash and fire, but his instincts screamed what his mind refused to accept.This wasn’t over. It had never been about the Doppelgänger or the Beast. They were gatekeepers. And the true horror was still behind the door.“The heir has awakened. The seals are broken.”The voice rolled through the city like an earthquake, rattling windows, shaking steel, making children scream and soldiers drop their guns.Camilla stopped mid-run, clutching her ears as blood streamed from her nose. Her body crumpled, but still her lips formed his name.Jeffrey staggered toward her, each step tearing his muscles raw. He reached her in time t
Chapter 53 – The Ashen Veil
The world was fire. Jeffrey’s lungs burned, his skin flayed by molten air. Darkness pressed in from all sides, pierced only by violent flashes of red and white.He tried to move. His body didn’t respond. Then, voices. Whispers, endless, writhing. They slithered through the inferno, caressing his skull like smoke.Child of flame. Son of ash. You are not broken. You are becoming. Jeffrey’s eyes snapped open. He wasn’t in the courtyard anymore. He wasn’t anywhere human.The ground beneath him was charred bone. The sky above was a ceiling of fire, cracking, bleeding light. Chains hung down from nothing, rattling with no wind, stretching into infinity.And between them, two shadows. The Doppelgänger. The Beast. Alive. Waiting. The Doppelgänger loomed, his molten form reduced but no less menacing, heat dripping from his limbs. His eyes burned, twin suns locked on Jeffrey.The Beast crouched opposite, its body darker than void, its eyes two smoldering embers. Chains slithered from its skin,
Chapter 52 – Chains of the Abyss
The giant’s grip was closing. Jeffrey’s ribs buckled, vision tunneling, blood rising in his throat. The Doppelgänger’s molten fist was a coffin, searing, suffocating, inevitable. And then came the chains.They tore up from the fractured earth, red-hot and clanging, each link thick as a carriage wheel. They coiled around the titan’s arms, burning into molten flesh, dragging him backward toward the yawning abyss below.The Doppelgänger howled, his colossal body thrashing as though hooked by the hands of hell itself. And then, from that abyss, eyes ignited. Twin infernos, vast and hungry. The beast.The same abomination Jeffrey had chained in the underworld, the same monster he had bled and broken to prove his dominion, alive, reborn, hungrier than ever. Its roar split the heavens.The Doppelgänger reeled, momentarily distracted, and his grip slackened just enough for Jeffrey to gasp a ragged breath.Pain lanced through every bone in his chest, but he forced his arm to move, his blade to
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