Chapter 1
It had been raining for two days, and I had been watching the rain constantly, sitting beside my window. I hadn’t eaten or taken a shower because those never occurred to me. My mind was detached from reality. I stopped struggling against the tide and just let myself drown.
Only then, I stepped outside. In the pouring rain.
I watched the lock on my apartment door for the last time before fixing on a singular, dangerous intent.
Ending it.
..
The storm turned the lower districts into a blurred smear of greyscale and gloom. Neon lights flickered, casting erratic, sickly colors that crawled over the flooded gutters like bruising on skin. It was a place that never found peace, yet the downpour drove even the most desperate off the streets, leaving a heavy, suffocating silence in the shadows.
I never belonged here. And yet, I kept walking, drawn into the dark maw of the graveyard. As I was walking, lowering my head, I thought about the rumors—about the violence loving monster… who lurked in these dark alleys of lower district.
I noticed a man, half-hidden between shadows and rain. My steps slowed as I took in the tall, massive frame.
Water slid over skin stretched tight across muscle, with dark fractures winding across his body like cracks through marble. He wore rugged, dark cargo trousers tucked into heavy combat boots, stained by the grime of the lower districts. Black hair clung to his forehead, obscuring his eyes, but the sheer weight of his presence hit me like a hand around my throat.
The monster everyone whispered about.
Blood dripped steadily from his knuckles onto the pavement, pooling beside three unmoving bodies. The rain washed the crimson into the gutters.
I had come for this. To provoke him.
His chest rose slowly with each breath, his head tilted downward as if he were trapped somewhere deep within his own thoughts. The city’s neon lights caught on the black markings across his skin, making them seem to pulse beneath the storm. My feet remained rooted as I watched him.
Beneath the terrifying build and the violence, he looked exhausted. Not physically, but something worse—the kind of exhaustion that settles into the bones after years of carrying something unbearable alone.
Then, slowly, his head lifted. His dark eyes met mine beneath his soaked hair. Cold. Sharp. Predatory. And yet, strangely empty.
The alley seemed to still around that gaze.
Most people would have reacted with immediate panic or disgust. They would have flinched, recognizing the predator.
I didn’t. I didn’t cower. I didn’t flinch.
Because I needed him to come closer to me.
He didn’t blink. He just stood there, his focus narrowing down to me. The blood on his knuckles forgotten now as he froze me in place with his cold, dead stare. The rain continued its relentless drumming against the pavement, a steady rhythm that seemed to amplify the silence between him and me standing under the downpour. The space between us felt tight, vibrating with the rhythm of the rain.
I waited for the usual sign of violence—the tightening of a fist, the shift in his stance. But none of it came.
Instead, he moved in slow, deliberate steps across the wet pavement. Toward me.
I was drenched from the pouring rain. I should be running. But I was frozen to the spot. It wasn’t fear. I feared nothing. There wasn’t anything that I was afraid of anymore. What more could go wrong that I already hadn’t faced? Rape? Imprisonment? Broken bones? Isolation? Starvation? I had gone through all of that and yet, I was standing here looking at a monster approaching me.
I couldn’t move my feet.
And it was still storming full on.
The rain continued its relentless assault, turning the alley into a mirror of his scarred skin. Each drop that hit his pale skin seemed to draw attention to the dark cracks spreading across his chest and arms.
He stopped just out of arm’s reach, close enough that I could see the slow rise and fall of his massive chest, the way his black hair clung to his forehead in wet strands. Water dripped steadily from the ends of his hair onto the bloodstained pavement.
His dark eyes never left my face. They were unreadable, like deep wells filled with years of violence and isolation. There was no anger in them, no threat—just an intense, predatory focus that felt more dangerous than any shout.
“You should run,” he said finally, his voice a low rumble that barely carried over the sound of the rain. It was the first time he’d spoken since I entered the alley.
And I didn’t know from where the word came out of my mouth. But they left before I could understand I was talking to the infamous monster. “Why should I?” I countered quietly.
His jaw tightened. A single drop of rain traced the line of his cheek, passing through the dark fracture near his temple. He didn’t answer immediately, his gaze searching mine with a heavy, unsettling intensity.
I held his gaze steadily even though the rain was making it difficult to look unblinkingly.
His eyes narrowed slightly, studying the way I refused to flinch against his intimidating aura. Perhaps he had expected terror, or at least the instinctual urge to flee, but I couldn’t give him any of it. He would only find a quiet, stubborn, unflinching ghost of a human.
I didn’t know what was going to happen. but I wasn’t afraid.
I was already prepared. I came here expecting the end.
Because I came here to meet the monster as the last person I encounter.
His gaze dropped to take in my attire, then back to my eyes. I wore a thin, black dress that clung to my frame, utterly inadequate for the freezing downpour. I hadn’t bothered with a coat; the rain soaked through the fabric instantly, turning it into a heavy, shivering shroud. I walked in worn, flat shoes, indifferent to the biting cold.
He stood motionless, the blood on his knuckles beginning to dilute into pink streaks in the rainwater. “You’re not running,” he noted, his voice flat.
“I don’t want to,” I responded quietly.
His head tilted, a slow, almost imperceptible movement. The word hung in the rain between us, heavier than the storm itself. Silence ensued between us as we held each other’s gazes unwaveringly.
Then, he took another step forward. The distance between us closed until his shadow completely swallowed mine, his massive frame blocking the distant neon glow of the broken signboards.
Clearly, he was taller than me. In fact, he was massive. But I didn’t cower from his size. I was unable to. He loomed over me, his presence thick and suffocating. Up close, the dark fractures across his skin seemed to pulse with a faint, cold energy. But our eyes stayed locked.
His dark eyes held mine, searching for any sign of fear or hesitation. But he found none. The intensity of my gaze seemed to unnerve him slightly, a flicker of something unreadable passing through his expression before it hardened again. We were standing so close now.
“You’re either very brave or very foolish,” he said, his voice low and rough. “Most people would be screaming by now.”
The rain continued to pour down between us, dripping from his black hair onto my face. His massive frame blocked out everything else—the alley, the neon lights, the three dead bodies lying forgotten behind him.
He didn’t move to touch me, but his proximity was a physical presence all its own. The air between us felt charged with unspoken tension.
“Why aren’t you afraid?” he asked, the question cutting through the sound of the storm. “Everyone else is.”
“I don’t have any reason to be afraid,” I answered him truthfully.
His expression shifted, a flicker of something other than predatory interest crossing his features. It was gone as quickly as it appeared, replaced by his usual unreadable mask. He studied my face intently. Perhaps, searching for the lie he expected to find.
“No reason?” he repeated, his voice laced with skepticism. “Everyone has something to lose. Something they’re afraid of losing.”
His gaze dropped briefly to my bosoms, then back up to my eyes. The rain plastered strands of his black hair to his forehead, making him look even more intimidating in the dim light. “You’ve been through something,” he stated rather than asked, his tone flat but carrying an undertone of dark certainty. “Loss. Pain. The kind that breaks people and leaves them empty.”
He took another slow step forward, closing the last bit of space between you.
I whispered, “It seems you’ve studied people a lot?”
A ghost of a reaction passed over his face—not a smile, but a tightening at the corner of his mouth that might have been one if he were capable of such things. “I don’t study people,” he said, his voice dropping even lower. “I observe them. There’s a difference.”
He leaned down slightly, bringing his face closer to mine. The scent of rain and something metallic—blood, ozone, old smoke—rolled off him in waves. His dark eyes were inches from mine now, sharp and unblinking. “Most people are predictable. They run when they see… blood. They scream when they see me. They look away when they can’t handle what they’re seeing.”
He paused, his gaze tracing the line of my jaw before locking back onto my eyes. “You didn’t do any of that.”
This was my first chance. So, I blurted, “Do you want blood… from… me? Take it then. I’m not yet empty inside, I promise.”
His reaction was immediate. His entire body went rigid, the muscles in his arms and chest tightening like coiled steel. The dark fractures beneath his skin seemed to pulse, a deeper, more violent shade of black.
But—
He didn’t strike. He didn’t react with aggression. In fact, he recoiled—a single, sharp step back that seemed entirely foreign to a man of his size and composure. “Don’t say things like that,” he said, his voice gruff. It wasn’t a command; it was a warning, low and jagged.
His hands, still stained with the blood of the men behind him, clenched into fists at his sides. The rain lashed against his face, but he didn’t blink. His gaze was just fixed on me, burning with an intensity that had nothing to do with violence and everything to do with something far more dangerous: recognition.
“I don’t want your blood. Go away.”
