2025-11-15 21:21:52Kain didn’t sleep.
He sat on the cold wooden floor of his apartment, back against the wall, the metal card resting on his palm like a living thing. Every so often, it pulsed faintly, as if reacting to him or calling to something inside him.
He didn’t understand it.
He didn’t understand anything anymore.
His father.
The Echoes.
The man in the black coat.
The hunters.
Everything felt unreal, but the fear in his chest was painfully real.
Don’t ignore the next Echo…
He shivered.
The room was silent, except for the low hum of the fridge that never fully closed and the faint whistling from the cracked window. Outside, the city moved on, unaware of the chaos unfolding in one tiny apartment.
Kain’s eyes burned with exhaustion.
When he glanced at the time, it was 3:42 a.m.
He rubbed his face and stood. His body felt heavy as if the new truth pressed down on him with invisible weight.
He stared at his reflection again. The same tired young man looked back… but something in his eyes was different now.
He wasn’t imagining it.
A faint glow amber, soft flashed beneath the surface whenever he focused.
He stepped back sharply.
“What the hell…”
He touched his cheek. His skin felt normal.
It was his eyes.
Something in them was changing.
Before he could examine it further, his phone buzzed again.
This time, it wasn’t the group chat.
It was an unknown number.
UNKNOWN: “They are near.”
Kain’s blood ran cold.
Another message followed instantly.
UNKNOWN: “Whatever you do, don’t go outside.”
His fingers trembled.
“Who is this?” he typed back.
No response.
Kain swallowed hard.
He turned off the lights and stepped toward the window.
Slowly…
Quietly…
He pulled back the curtain just enough to see the street below.
His heart stopped.
Three dark figures stood at the corner of the street.
Not moving.
Not talking.
Just… standing.
As if waiting.
As if listening.
As if smelling the air for him.
The streetlamp cast long shadows behind them, but something was wrong terribly wrong.
Their shadows didn’t move with the wind.
At all.
Kain stepped back from the window, chest tightening.
Don’t ignore the next Echo…
He squeezed his eyes shut.
Then
It hit him.
A sharp pulse of pain.
A ringing in his ears.
The edges of the room becoming distorted.
“No no, not now”
The Echo took him.
He couldn’t stop it.
His vision exploded into darkness.
Then light.
Then a scene he didn’t recognize.
He stood in a stairwell.
A stairwell with peeling paint.
Broken handrails.
A crack down the wall.
But he knew it
it was inside his apartment building.
He looked up.
A figure walked slowly down the stairs toward him.
A woman with no face.
Her outline blurry, her movements jerky, unnatural like something wearing a human shape.
Her head twisted too far to one side.
Her limbs bent wrong.
Her shadow was long too long and it crawled up the walls like black vines.
She whispered something in a voice that sounded like a hundred voices at once.
“Kain…”
He tried to step back, but his body wouldn’t move.
Her shape flickered closer closed
Then darkness shattered.
He snapped back into his apartment with a gasp, clutching the wall.
Sweat drenched his skin.
“Damn… damn it…”
He didn’t have minutes.
Not even seconds.
He heard it.
A sound from the hallway.
Creeeeak.
The stairwell door.
Slowly opening.
Kain froze.
His apartment felt like a trap with no exits. His breathing turned shallow and rapid. Every instinct screamed for him to run but where?
The door to the hallway creaked again.
He reached for his jacket.
Then stopped.
His hand hovered over the metal card on the table.
It pulsed once brightly.
Kain didn’t know how he knew, but he felt it suddenly:
It was warning him.
The creature he saw wasn’t outside.
It was inside the building.
Coming up to his floor.
Kain grabbed the card and shoved it into his pocket.
Then he rushed to the window.
He looked down. Third floor. Not high enough to kill him, but high enough to break something.
A sound.
Soft.
Wet.
Wrong.
A dragging noise outside his apartment door.
Kain’s breath caught.
Dragging.
Not footsteps.
She’s here.
He backed away from the door.
His heartbeat felt like it might tear through his ribs.
A faint whisper seeped under the gap beneath the door.
“Kaaaain…”
He clenched his jaw.
He didn’t know what this thing was.
But it was hunting him.
He had only one choice.
Kain pushed the window open and climbed onto the sill. Cold night air hit his face, mixing with the faint scent of rain.
The dragging sound grew louder.
Closer.
It stopped right outside his door.
Kain didn’t think anymore.
He jumped.
The fall knocked the air from his lungs. Pain shot up his side as he hit the ground hard, groaning. But he was alive. He scrambled to his feet, adrenaline taking over.
He staggered onto the street.
Then froze again.
The three dark figures at the corner had turned toward him.
Slowly.
In unison.
Their heads tilted slightly, like wolves that found prey.
“Oh God…”
Kain stumbled back.
Behind him, a window on the third floor burst outward shattered
as a pale, distorted shape forced itself through the frame, limbs twisting like liquid bone.
She dropped onto the pavement without a sound.
And she stood up.
Her faceless head turned toward him.
Kain’s entire body shook.
“What do you want from me?” he whispered.
The woman’s shadow stretched toward him like a hand.
“Kain…”
Her voice layered, echoing, wrong.
“Give us the Echo…”
He backed away.
“What Echo? I don’t have anything!”
The three men at the corner began walking toward him slow, deliberate steps.
Kain felt trapped.
Panic surged up his throat.
Then
A voice cut through the street like a blade.
“Move!”
Kain turned right as a motorcycle screeched toward him.
A woman wearing a black helmet stretched out her hand.
“Get on! Now!”
Kain didn’t think.
He grabbed her hand and swung himself onto the bike.
The faceless woman shrieked, a sound that cracked the streetlights and made Kain’s ears ring.
The rider hit the accelerator.
The bike shot forward, tires screaming against asphalt.
Kain looked back.
The three figures were running after them.
Fast.
Inhumanly fast.
The faceless woman crawled on all fours like a twisted spider.
“What are they?!” Kain shouted over the wind.
The rider didn’t answer.
She only yelled:
“HOLD ON!”
The bike swerved sharply, speeding into the night.
Kain clung to her waist as the creatures chased behind them
relentless, silent, unnatural.
This wasn’t a simple warning.
This was a hunt.
And the city had become a battlefield he wasn’t ready for.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 90 : Kain vs His Shadow
The chamber beneath Black-Door Phase 4 felt impossibly vast—an endless dark sphere where gravity bent strangely and every breath echoed like a scream swallowed by the void. Fractured Awakened energy drifted like dying stars, suspended in slow motion. Kain stood alone at the center… until the air folded like wet paper.A figure stepped out of the distortion.His height.His stance.His aura.His eyes—except darker, hollow, hungry.Kain’s Shadow.But this time, it didn’t hover behind him or flicker like a ghost. It had taken full shape—solid, breathing, alive. And it smiled with Kain’s own mouth.“Finally,” the Shadow whispered, voice doubled, as if layered over static. “No more restraints. No more pretending. You and I… we were always meant to merge.”Kain clenched his fists. His pulse hammered in his ears. “I’m done letting you control me.”His Shadow laughed—cold, knowing.“You think you’ve been in control? Kain, I’ve saved you more times than you’ll ever admit. Every moment you hesi
Chapter 89 : Talia’s Final Secret
She reveals Kain’s father foresaw all of this including his son’s darkest moment.The deeper Kain descended into Tower Zero, the heavier the air became.Pipes hissed with boiling steam. The walls vibrated with the heartbeat of the Black-Door machine beneath the earth. Every step pulled him further into a future he had already glimpsed a future drenched in fire, fear, and shadow.He pushed through a security door warped by explosions and entered a narrow, dim passage lined with thick cables pulsing like veins.And at the end of that passage—Talia waited.Bruised. Exhausted. Eyes swollen from tears or smoke—he couldn’t tell which.But she was standing.“Kain…” Her voice cracked. “Orin?”Kain’s expression said everything.Talia pressed a trembling hand to her mouth, looking away as grief tightened her shoulders. For a moment, neither spoke.Then she inhaled sharply. “Kain… before you go any further, you need to hear something.”“We don’t have time“We don’t have time NOT to.”Her sudde
Chapter 88 : Orin’s Redemption
The alarms in Tower Zero wailed like dying machines—shrill, broken, desperate.Red emergency lights flashed through the cracked corridors, turning every shadow into a blade. Smoke drifted upward in thin, frantic lines as Dominion soldiers scrambled to contain the chaos flooding their headquarters.And at the center of it allKain ran.His legs shook from the battle with his own shadow. His chest still burned from the internal war he had barely won. But none of that mattered.He had one mission left:Stop Black-Door before it rewrote the entire city’s free will.The hallway ahead split into a cross-section of collapsing walls and sparking cables. Kain leapt over debris, shadows trailing behind him like dark fire.He could feel the core pulsing beneath the tower—each heartbeat deeper, heavier, more ominous.“PHASE 4 INITIALIZATION: 52%.”Too fast.Far too fast.He sprinted around a corner—and nearly collided with a figure staggering toward him.Orin.The man who once hunted him.The man
Chapter 87 : Kain’s Shadow Betrayal
.The climb toward Black-Door’s core felt like scaling the spine of a living beast.Metal rings spun around Kain in blurs of silver light, each rotation sending ripples of Echo energy across the chamber. The magnetic lift beneath his feet groaned, carrying him upward inch by inch as the core’s brilliance grew brighter—too bright, too alive.But the closer he got, the colder he became.Not physically.Inside.The shadows crawling along his arms twitched with agitation, rising like frantic serpents trying to escape his skin. Kain clenched his fists to steady himself, but the darkness only reacted more violently.“Not now,” he muttered. “Stay with me.”But the shadow answered with a whisper in his mind—one that wasn’t a voice, yet carried intent.LET ME IN.A chill raced down his spine.He had heard the shadow speak before—not in words, but in sensations, instincts, violent urges. But this… this was different. The voice was clearer. Sharper.More dangerous.The lift halted with a heavy c
Chapter 86 : The True Purpose Of Black Door
The machine meant to amplify Awakened energy and rewrite free will.The air inside the Dominion’s inner sanctum tasted like cold metal and old electricity sharp, sterile, wrong. Kain had felt Echoes here before, fragments that tugged at his mind like whispers behind a locked door. But now, as he stepped deeper into the forbidden chamber Orin had led him to, the Echo didn’t whisper.It screamed.A pulse of invisible energy rolled outward from the center of the massive hall, rattling the metal grates beneath their feet. Kain flinched, instantly seeing something in his mind black fire, spiraling light, a city being swallowed whole. He gasped and dropped to one knee.“Kain,” Orin said sharply. “Stay with me. The machine reacts to awakened minds.”Kain forced his breathing steady, but his vision shimmered. The Echo still clung to the edges of his awareness like fingers made of static. “What… what is that thing?”Suspended above the center of the room was a massive, spherical engine layered
Chapter 85 : The Final Door
Black-Door Phase 4 Begins The CatastropheThe alarms in Tower Zero began to scream.Not the sharp, metallic beeps that warned of intruders.Not the shuddering sirens that signaled structural collapse.No this one was deeper.Older.The kind of alarm built into the foundation of the Dominion from the very beginning.A single, low, resonant tone that vibrated the bones.BLACK-DOOR PHASE 4 ACTIVATED.CITY-WIDE PROTOCOL INITIATED.Kain felt the sound rip through his chest as the Dominion Leader raised his hand and the shadows coiled behind him like wings.“This is the moment your father feared,” the leader said, voice calm while the whole tower trembled. “The moment when everything he hid… opens.”A massive screen illuminated behind him.On it, an enormous circular chamber appeared—deep underground beneath the city. A vault with a door made of black, unknown metal. Dozens of cables ran into it, pulsing with energy like veins.In red letters at the top:BLACK-DOOR CORE — SEAL BREACH 2%Ka
You may also like
THE FUTURE IS BEHIND.
Jaydee15.5K viewsSoul Avatar
Japhel15.1K viewsPaths of Extinction
TheCrow34.4K viewsThe Invincible Ron Benedict
Olivia C. Onoh14.6K viewsWAR GOD'S CRIMSON AWAKENING
Ore1.8K viewsRise of the Zillionaire Star
Johnny 1.2K viewsIncarnation Of The Overlord
Jajajuba85 viewsRising From The Death
Sazu2.0K views