2025-11-19 08:01:46The sun beat hard against the half-finished construction site, turning steel beams into scorching metal and the air into a wavering haze. Ethan Ward wiped sweat from his brow with the back of a dusty hand, forcing himself to stay focused as he inspected a crooked support frame. He could see the mistake instantly, something any competent foreman should have caught.
But Ethan wasn’t a foreman anymore.
He wasn’t anything.
Not after the last few months.
“Hey, Ward!” a young supervisor barked from across the concrete slab, waving hastily scribbled blueprints. “You’re doing the grunt work today, remember? Leave the thinking to people who still have reputations.”
The men around him snickered.
Ethan didn’t answer. He just tightened the loose bolt and stepped back to check the alignment. He used to be the one giving orders, designing structures, coordinating multimillion naira projects. Now he hauled bags of cement and tightened bolts like a day laborer barely trusted with tools.
One signature destroyed everything.
Well… it wasn’t just a signature. It was the name attached to it.
Malcolm Drake.
The moment Ethan’s mind brushed over that name, something cold, sharp, and familiar scraped down his spine. His jaw tightened. He forced himself to breathe evenly.
Malcolm Drake, his father-in-law. The man who had smiled in his face for years, pretending to support him. The man who had stepped in, “out of concern,” when Ethan’s business hit a rough patch. The man who had made sure the world believed Ethan was a fraud, an embezzler, a liar.
And the man who had made sure Ethan had nothing left.
Not a job.
Not a home.
Not a marriage.
Not a future.
“Ward!” The supervisor stomped toward him, red-faced. “Are you deaf? I said...”
“I heard you,” Ethan replied calmly, though his pulse was starting to hammer.
He had learned to swallow pride. Pride didn’t feed him. Pride didn’t get him work. Pride didn’t erase the headlines branding him a thief.
He turned away to pick up a toolbox, but a sudden burn seared across his right shoulder sharp, quick, deep like someone pressed a heated blade into his skin.
Ethan sucked in a breath.
Not again.
The pain pulsed once… twice… then settled into a simmering ache.
He tugged his shirt collar lower, checking the mark he had hidden his entire life. A dragon-shaped symbol, sharper than any tattoo, almost carved into the skin itself. He never remembered getting it. His adoptive parents claimed it appeared when he was three months old. Doctors couldn’t explain it. As he grew older, it grew with him almost alive. And sometimes, like now, it burned without warning.
“Ward? You good?” a coworker asked skeptically, watching him straighten up.
“Yeah,” Ethan lied. “Just a muscle pull.”
The man shrugged and walked off. No one cared enough to ask further. No one ever did.
Ethan exhaled slowly, rolling his shoulder to shake off the lingering sting. He couldn’t afford to draw attention not after everything that had happened.
But as he lifted the toolbox, a shadow fell over him.
A shadow he recognized instantly.
“No wonder this site is behind schedule,” a cold voice said. “They’ve hired criminals now.”
Ethan froze.
Malcolm Drake stood a few feet away, polished shoes untouched by dust, designer suit crisp and immaculate, as if the world bent itself to avoid staining him. Two of his assistants flanked him, both of them sneering in quiet amusement.
Ethan didn’t turn. Didn’t speak. Didn’t move.
“Look at you,” Malcolm said, stepping closer, voice dripping satisfaction. “Used to sign contracts worth tens of millions. Now you tighten bolts with day workers.”
Ethan felt the heat in his shoulder spike. The dragon mark throbbed sharp, angry.
He clenched his fists to steady himself.
Malcolm circled him slowly, like inspecting a broken piece of equipment.
“Your fall was spectacular, Ethan,” he mused. “You lost your company, your home… your freedom. And you still haven’t figured it out, have you?”
Ethan turned his head slightly. “Figured what out?”
Malcolm smiled, cold, razor thin.
“That I was the one who buried you.”
The words punched the air out of Ethan’s lungs.
Not a guess.
Not an implication.
A statement.
A confession disguised as mockery.
Malcolm leaned close enough that only Ethan could hear the next sentence.
“And I’m not done.”
Ethan finally met his eyes, the mark on his shoulder flaring hotter and hotter almost reacting to Malcolm’s presence.
Malcolm’s smile widened, pleased by the reaction.
“Whatever you think you have left,” Malcolm whispered, “I will take. Until there’s nothing. Until you understand you were never..."
A violent jolt of heat surged through Ethan’s shoulder, cutting Malcolm off. Ethan winced, hand darting instinctively to the burning mark.
Malcolm’s eyes flicked downward.
And for the first time ever, Ethan saw something in the man’s expression.
Not arrogance.
Not disgust.
But fear.
A flash quick, buried instantly but real.
Malcolm straightened abruptly.
“We’re done here,” he said to his assistants, voice tighter than before. “Let’s go.”
He turned and walked off quickly, leaving Ethan standing in the dust, breathing hard, the burn searing deeper beneath his skin.
The mark pulsed again hotter this time, almost alive.
Ethan stumbled back against a beam, gripping his shoulder.
What was happening to him?
Why had Malcolm looked afraid?
And, what exactly was this mark reacting to?
The question echoed in his skull.
And for the first time, Ethan wondered:
What if the downfall of his life wasn’t the end… but the beginning of something far more dangerous?
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Kael walked through the dim hallway of the executive wing with slow, deliberate steps, his mind still replaying the anonymous warning on his phone. The message hadn’t unsettled him, it had sharpened the edges inside him, as though fear and determination were blending into one dangerous alloy. The sigil beneath his skin pulsed once, reminding him that he wasn’t moving blindly into the dark, he was being watched.He entered his private office and locked the door, a habit that had become instinct in only a few weeks inside the Aurelian empire. The room was silent except for the faint hum of the city beyond the glass windows. Kael took out his phone again, reading the last message: “Quiet power is still power and someone always notices.”He placed the phone on the desk and exhaled slowly, letting his thoughts sharpen. The warning implied surveillance deeper than internal corporate politics. It suggested an observer with long reach
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