Prologue
Prologue
The sky over Greyhaven Valley was blindingly bright, a pristine, piercing blue that seemed utterly indifferent to the world below, casting its cruel, unbothered light over the abandoned warehouse in the northern reaches of Neplines City. The abandoned warehouse north of Neplines stood like the picked-clean skeleton of a dead era, its iron pillars groaning against the wind. Dust spiraled in the damp air, ghosts forgetting the way home.
Anthony couldn’t trace the steps that brought him to the rusted iron doors. Only one thing burned through the static in his brain: Vivian, limp in the passenger seat, her blood drying tacky against his fingertips while the rest of the world forgot how to breathe.
His hands shook. Not from fear. From a rage too massive for his own skin, clawing to get out.
He shoved the iron doors with his shoulder. The rusted hinges shrieked, a long, broken sound. Inside, cheap neon lights flickered, casting a sickly pallor over the stench of copper, stale alcohol, and something distinctly feral. Anthony swallowed down the bile rising in his throat. His heart hammered a frantic, irregular rhythm against his ribs, bruising him from the inside out.
In the center of the room, the three of them sat in a circle. Laughing. Drinking. Still wearing the same jackets they’d worn when they put bullets into Vivian.
Anthony felt himself split in two. One half stood paralyzed; the other dragged his feet forward.
One of the guys looked up first, surprise cracking his drunken smirk. The other two followed, their expressions mirroring the same stupid shock.
Anthony tilted his head, studying them like a biologist examining a diseased specimen. His hand rose, the cold weight of the gun settling into his grip.
Before the first shot deafened the room, Anthony caught his reflection in the shattered windowpane. A face devoid of a soul. Eyes stripped of humanity.
Then, the explosion. The guy’s chest bloomed into a violent red flower, the force throwing him backward. Blood painted the concrete.
The second man scrambled to his feet. “Bro, chill—”
The second bullet tore through his throat. Blood arced in a beautiful, almost artistic spray. He dropped, twitching like a gutted fish, before going entirely still.
The only girl stood last. Her knees knocked together, her whole frame vibrating. “I swear I didn’t... I just...”
Anthony stared at her. Not as a human. As an object. He wasn’t Anthony De Valeris anymore. He wasn’t a Clementine student. He wasn’t the heir to a corporate empire. He was just the final, inevitable product of a world that demanded his silence for too long.
She backed away, her breath hitching. “Please. I didn’t... I swear...”
Anthony pulled the trigger. No hesitation. No rage. Just the casual mechanics of drawing a breath.
She screamed, then folded. Her movements weakened, then ceased.
Silence. Absolute and suffocating. A high-pitched ring pierced Anthony’s eardrums, the sound of the world holding its breath. He stared at the three bodies. Still.
He lowered the gun.
For the first time in his life, he trembled not from fear, but from the hollow ache of losing something he could never get back. His legs gave out. He hit the floor, the freezing concrete pulling him down into the earth.
“Sorry... Vivian...” he whispered. His voice fractured, sounding like bone splintering from the inside out.
Nothing answered. Only the rhythmic 'drip, drip' of a leaking pipe somewhere above, counting down the seconds of the universe Anthony had just destroyed.
***
