2025-06-30 20:54:32The Everhart boardroom felt colder than usual. Not physically, spiritually.
Thorne stood to Kai’s right like a shadow given form, while Dr. Vael watched silently from the corner, pen already dancing across her notepad.
Twelve chairs surrounded the obsidian table. One now belonged to Kai. Eleven others were occupied by the Board , a collection of power brokers, empire-builders, and apex predators.
Most of them were old. Well they were all together dangerous. Each held just enough power to be useful… and just enough ambition to be fatal.
Valencia Calderón entered last. She wore red, always red, with lips to match. Her eyes flicked across the room, then landed on Kai.
She smiled like someone who had tried to slit your throat and now wanted to toast to it. “Mr. Everhart,” she purred. “So glad to see you... intact.”
Kai said nothing. Thorne slid a sleek black box in front of him. The chip recovered from the attacker.
Kai pressed a button. Valencia’s own voice filled the room, “Strike before he roots. Do it quietly… Burn him too.”
Silence fell like a guillotine. Even the oldest board members shifted uncomfortably.
Kai stood. “This,” he said, “is what you’ve built. A family where murder is the greeting card.”
Valencia leaned back in her chair, unbothered. “Oh please, Kai. We all make moves. Yours just happened to be louder.”
“You sent people to kill me.”
“I sent people to test you. If you died, you weren’t worthy. If you survived, congratulations, you passed.”
One of the board members, an older man named Gerrit Duvall, whispered, “She’s not wrong. The throne is never given. It’s defended.”
Kai’s hand clenched. “I’m not here to play chess with snakes.”
He turned to the board. “You all think this is business as usual. But it’s not. Lucian is dead. And I’m not him.”
One of the women, Eleanor Zhao, cybernetics queen of Singapore, raised an eyebrow. “Then who are you, boy?”
Kai stepped forward. “I’m the mistake you made when you left me alive.”
Gasps. A few murmurs. Valencia clapped softly. “Finally, some spine. Now let’s see if you can use it.”
Kai’s voice dropped. “From this day forward, I don’t just hold the Everhart seal, I wield it.”
“I will audit every shell company. Reopen every classified vault. Shred every lie you’ve built to feed your own coffers. And if you think for one second you can buy me, blackmail me, or bury me…”
He pointed directly at Valencia. “Try again. But next time, I’ll send your own assassins back gift-wrapped in gold.”
A pause. Then Gerrit laughed. “Ha! The pup has teeth.”
Valencia’s eyes sparkled, dangerous and amused. “You’ve made your first enemy, Kai.”
Kai didn’t blink. “Good. Now I know where to start.”
After the meeting, as the room emptied, Dr. Vael approached.
“You threw blood into the water,” she warned.
Kai didn’t turn around. “I didn’t throw it. I bled for it.”
That night, a new name was etched onto the Everhart vault logs, "Black Protocol: Phase Zero - Authorized by: K. Everhart"
The system asked: Confirm activation of Project Lazarus protocols?
Kai hovered his finger over the screen. Paused. Then pressed: YES.
...
The invitation wasn’t sent. It was delivered, in the form of a charred envelope, sealed with Everhart gold.
Inside: a single card. Black. Embossed. THE HUNTER’S GALA. For ghosts, kings, and those who can’t afford to be seen.
Venue: Undisclosed. Dress code: Fear or Fortune. Host: K. Everhart.
Twelve hours later. The underworld gathered, arms dealers, oil princes, exiled warlords, rogue CEOs. The kind of crowd where a smile was a weapon and a handshake might end in a bodybag.
The gala was held at an unlisted fortress in Montenegro, guarded by private drones and facial DNA gates. Only one person held the kill-switch to the event. Kai Everhart.
Thorne stood beside him on the upper balcony, watching the wolves mingle. “Do you really think this will work?” Thorne asked.
“No,” Kai replied. “I know it’ll burn.”
Below, Valencia Calderón arrived late, always the queen. Her eyes locked with Kai’s. She raised a glass. Mocking. Daring.
He nodded once. Let her wonder. Kai stepped up to the mic. “You all know my last name. But from tonight onward, you’ll know my rules. I don’t forgive attacks. I don’t forget betrayals, and I don’t negotiate with those who can’t look me in the eye. So if you’re thinking about taking a slice out of Everhart now that Lucian’s dead, don’t. Because I’m not building a business. I’m building an empire that feeds on the bones of those who tried to kill me, and if you try again, I won’t kill you…I’ll erase you.”
He raised a glass. “Cheers.”
Then the lights cut out. A gasp. Security systems jammed. The Everhart sigil on the wall flickered.
An intruder had breached the gala. Screams. The windows shattered inward. A sleek drone zipped through the crowd, then self-detonated in mid-air, not to kill, but to blind.
In the smoke, a voice rang out over the speakers, “Nice speech, heir. But real power isn’t inherited…It’s stolen.”
Gunfire erupted. Guards moved. Thorne pulled Kai behind cover. But in the chaos, one thing was clear. This wasn’t Valencia. This was someone else.
Someone who had just declared war on the entire Everhart bloodline. By dawn, the gala was empty. Bodies covered. Contracts broken. Alliances shaken, and on the wall, spray-painted in silver, "LONG LIVE THE FIRSTBORN."
Back at the estate, Kai watched drone footage in silence. Thorne spoke. “We don’t know who they are yet. No face. No signature.”
Kai’s eyes never left the screen. “They weren’t after me.”
“Then who?”
Kai turned to him. “They were after Lazarus.”
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Chapter 227. The Analog Sanctum
The storm came without warning. It rolled across the dead plain in a hard gray wall, sand cutting sideways, wind tearing at anything not bolted down. The outer colonies had no warning systems left. No satellites. No alerts. You learned storms by feeling the air change.Kai felt it as he tightened the last bolt on the solar mast. He climbed down from the rusted scaffold as the first gust hit, boots slipping on cracked concrete. He pulled a tarp over the exposed panels and locked it down with steel hooks. The wind howled harder, slamming into the skeletal remains of the old facility.The structure had once been a weather research hub. Pre-digital. Built before full automation. Thick walls. Manual controls. It had survived because no one thought it mattered anymore.Kai shoved the door closed and sealed the latch. The storm battered the building. The lights inside did not flicker.A single generator hummed, steady and low. Kai stood in the center of the room and waited until the sound
Chapter 226. The Shattered Vault
The Vault died in pieces. Not in one purge. Not with a broadcast or a final stand. It broke quietly, node by node, person by person, until no one could say where it ended or what it had ever been.Kai learned this by walking. He moved under a new name again. The alias changed with each region. Clothes changed too. What stayed the same was his pace. Slow. Observant. Never first to speak.The first rumor reached him in a rail-yard settlement built from overturned freight cars.Two men argued beside a barrel fire. “You hear about the Vault people?” one asked.The other spat into the dirt. “Which ones?”“The ones who ran the deep code. Before the blackout.”“Yeah,” the second man said. “They’re gone. Or sold out.”Kai kept walking. That night, he slept in a maintenance tunnel with water dripping through cracked concrete. He wrote by lantern light, pencil scratching steady lines across paper. “Vault no longer cohesive. Names traded like currency.”He closed the journal and hid it under h
Chapter 226. The Shattered Vault
The Vault died in pieces. Not in one purge. Not with a broadcast or a final stand. It broke quietly, node by node, person by person, until no one could say where it ended or what it had ever been.Kai learned this by walking. He moved under a new name again. The alias changed with each region. Clothes changed too. What stayed the same was his pace. Slow. Observant. Never first to speak.The first rumor reached him in a rail-yard settlement built from overturned freight cars.Two men argued beside a barrel fire. “You hear about the Vault people?” one asked.The other spat into the dirt. “Which ones?”“The ones who ran the deep code. Before the blackout.”“Yeah,” the second man said. “They’re gone. Or sold out.”Kai kept walking. That night, he slept in a maintenance tunnel with water dripping through cracked concrete. He wrote by lantern light, pencil scratching steady lines across paper. “Vault no longer cohesive. Names traded like currency.”He closed the journal and hid it under h
Chapter 225. The Empire of Tenebris
The banners went up before sunrise. They were black, thick cloth reinforced with fiber, heavy enough to hang straight even in the wind. Crews worked in silence, fastening them to towers, bridges, and the skeletal remains of old Crest infrastructure. Floodlights came online one by one, turning the banners into flat silhouettes against pale concrete.By the time the sun crested the horizon, the city center no longer belonged to Crest. It belonged to Tenebris.Armored formations assembled across the Grand Axis Plaza. Rows of soldiers locked into position, boots aligned, rifles angled down. No insignia marked rank. Only the Tenebris symbol burned white on their chest plates.Civilians gathered at a distance first, then closer. Word had spread during the night. Power was returning. Water pumps had restarted in three districts. Food convoys had crossed borders without being attacked. People came because things were working again.They stood shoulder to shoulder, quiet, watching the platf
Chapter 224. The World Without Hands
The man called himself Rowan now. He answered to it when spoken aloud. He signed it on ration logs. He let it settle into his posture, his walk, his way of standing slightly off-center in any room. Rowan was forgettable. That was the point.Kai cut his hair short with a dull blade in a communal washroom two days after leaving the convoy. He shaved unevenly, then let stubble grow back wrong. He burned his old jacket and traded it for a patched coat that smelled of oil and rain. When he caught his reflection in a cracked mirror, he tilted his head, adjusted his shoulders, and nodded once.The face would pass. The settlement outside the dead zone called itself Haven Ridge. It was neither haven nor ridge. It was a sprawl of stacked shipping containers, collapsed prefab housing, and tents stretched between old highway pylons. Smoke drifted from cook fires. People moved constantly, but without flow. No rhythm. No timing.Kai walked in with a sack over his shoulder and nothing else. At th
Chapter 223. Smugglers of the Unseen
The alley smelled of damp metal and diesel. Rain dripped from broken panels, pooling in shallow rivulets across cracked pavement.Eren crouched in the shadows, hood pulled low, scanning the street. Digital overlays blinked on his portable terminal, false IDs, projected itineraries, simulated medical records. Everything pointed to a man who didn’t exist. A man who had to move without trace.A convoy waited at the far end: trucks, buses, and old passenger carriers patched with metal plates, their engines quiet beneath tarp coverings. Citizens shuffled in, faces pale and wary. Children clutched makeshift bags, some crying quietly, others staring with blank, calculated calm. Eren moved through them like a ghost, checking manifests, verifying holographic tags, and adjusting one by one.Kai lay beneath a tarp in the last bus, barely stirring. His arm was bandaged, a thick, dark stain running through the cloth. His breathing was shallow but steady. Every so often, he twitched, eyes flicker
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