Chapter 1: The Mercy of an Executioner
Kai
Fifteen Years Ago — Mortal Realm
The smell of copper and rain was always the first thing to settle after a purge.
The downpour battered the glass window panes of the suburban house sitting on the hill, It was a heavy, relentless drumming that almost muffled the silence settling inside the home. To an executioner of the Celestial Court, silence was simply evidence that a contract had been completed, a thick, lingering vacuum left behind whenever life was extinguished.
I stood still in the narrow second-floor hallway; my trench coat was drenched, water dripped in steady drops from the hem onto the dark hardwood floor. Behind me, my junior enforcer, Ren, wiped his blade against his leather sleeve, his eyes scanning the shadows with hungry hostile eyes. The High Court’s directive had been clear: purge the rogue spirit faction, eliminate the human hosting the core, and erase all traces of contraband celestial energy before it tares through the realm’s veil.
“House is clear,” Ren rasped, his voice rough as he sheathed his weapon. “Both hosts are eliminated. No lingering threads. Let’s burn the house and return.”
“Go outside and prep the cleansing ward,” I said, my voice low and emotionless. “I’ll do the final sweep.”
Ren sneered slightly but bowed his head, his heavy boots retreating down the stairwell and out into the storm.
The moment his presence faded, a stray surge of residual energy, a wild, spark left behind from the slain hosts, snapped from the ceiling and toward my throat. Without turning my head, I lashed out. Dark claws extended from my knuckles, catching the volatile burst. A sudden flare of blue fox-fire erupted across my hand, snuffing out the remnant energy before it could hit the floorboards. I begin walking, doing my final sweep of the house to make sure no one was left alive. I went completely still, listening for anything that would indicate that there was still life inside this house, then I heard it.
A tiny, irregular vibration rippled through the cold empty hallway. A heartbeat. Fast, shallow, fluttering like a trapped bird.
Slowly, I turned, following the faint pulse until I stopped before a small linen closet hidden beneath the slope of the staircase. I reached out and pulled the door open.
Huddled in the deepest darkest corner behind a stack of folded blankets was a little girl, she couldn't have been no older than six years old, her rich brown skin was pale with shock, her small trembling hands clutching a tarnished silver locket tightly against her chest.
I raised my hand, extending my claws as blue energy flickered along my knuckles. "Leave no trace." The Court’s command echoed in my mind.
The girl didn’t scream. She slowly raised her head, her brown eyes landing directly on to mine through the dim light with a quiet stillness.
My hand froze.
As I looked on to her little round face and her big brown eyes, an unsettling flicker of familiarity stirred inside my mind. I couldn’t explain it, my mind came up empty. All i knew was that I could not kill this little girl. For an executioner who operated STRICTLY on emotionless precision, this sudden inability to strike was completely irrational, yet my blade refused to drop, which is very highly unusual. If Ren stepped back inside of this house, he wouldn’t hesitate.
He wouldn't waste a single moment dwelling. He would end her life in a heartbeat. My heart skipped a beat at the thought of this child being harmed. But why? Why was I suddenly so protective of some random child in a house of targets I'm suppose to eliminate?
Outside, Ren’s voice cut through the thunder. “Commander! The ward is set! What’s taking so fucking long?”
My anger flashed at his tone but I was to busy coming up with what to do with this child.
“Searching any hidden spaces for missed targets,” I called back.
I retracted my claws, unclasped my heavy black trench coat, and wrapped the thick fabric around her shivering frame to muffle her thermal pulse. I lifted her into my arms and stepped backward directly into the deepest shadow cast by the hallway.
The darkness swallowed us whole. The suburban house dissolved in an instant, the air warping into a cold, silent void as we shadow-stepped through space, completely bypassing Ren and the perimeter ward.
A split second later, the shadow bled away, and we materialized three miles away under the dry concrete parking lot of a fire station.
I set the little girl down on her feet and struck the heavy night-bell beside the bay doors to alert the workers inside.
I looked down at her small face one last time. “Stay hidden,” I said, my voice low and firm.
Before the heavy doors swung open, the shadows coiled around my boots, snapping upward like black smoke. In the blink of an eye, I vanished into thin air.
The Six-year-olds wide eyes fixed in stunned silence on the empty patch of concrete where the tall stranger with long white hair had just been standing. She didn’t have time to process the empty air before the heavy red bay doors unlatched and swung open, paramedic and firemen rushed out into the rain, scooping her small body, that was swallowed up in the large black trench coat and placed into the safety of the human world.
A breath later, the darkness folded open back inside the house. I looked down realizing I forgot to take my trench coat back. "Dammit, that was my favorite coat." I stepped out on to the muddy lawn outside the target's house appearing right beside Ren just as he ignited the cleansing flare.
Ren glanced over, entirely unaware I had ever left the house. ”house clear?”
“Clear,” I replied, my voice as flat as ice as the fire caught the roof line.
“Burn it down.”
