Prologue — Sin

Trigger Warning

⚠ This story contains mature themes including violence, coercion, psychological manipulation, and obsessive relationships. Reader discretion advised.

⟅━━━━━⟆ ⚜ ⟅━━━━━⟆

For the one I would have burned the city to find.

⟅━━━━━⟆ ⚜ ⟅━━━━━⟆

“Control is a kind of worship. The moment I touched her, I believed in God.”

⟅━━━━━⟆ ⚜ ⟅━━━━━⟆

Rain clawed the glass tower when the feed cut to static.

From the rooftop helipad, the city looked like an open circuit—gold lights pulsing through veins of stormwater, skyscrapers humming with invisible fear. Domenik Laev stood at the edge, coat rippling in the wind, as the voice in his earpiece stuttered: Target extraction failed.

Below him, explosions flared, brief as breath. He should have turned away. Instead, he watched the fire eat the street, watched the shadows scatter like ash.

“Erase it,” he said. His voice was calm, reverent.

In the surveillance control room, his men obeyed—deleting faces, logs, coordinates. Every witness, every frame of existence. Until the camera froze on one image: a woman standing in the rain, looking up.

Her eyes met the lens.

For an instant, the storm fell silent.

“Delete her,” the tech whispered.

Domenik leaned closer to the screen. He didn’t blink.

“No,” he said. “Leave her.”

Lightning split the sky. Behind his reflection in the glass, another face flickered—the dead brother who never stopped watching.

Lucianus’s voice, memory or ghost, murmured: You’re breaking the law.

Domenik touched the lion ring on his hand. “So let them burn me for it.”

He turned from the window. “Find her.”

The elevator carried him down into the tower’s heart—the data vault beneath Laev Industries. Servers hummed like a cathedral choir. The Covenant of Silence glowed on the walls in etched gold: The Tongue Is Treason. The King Owns All Names.

He began the purge himself. One by one, he wiped every survivor’s record from the system. Faces vanished. Names bled into nothing. But when he reached hers—Eirwen Cayde—his hand hesitated.

She shouldn’t exist. Yet her file glowed stubbornly silver, uncorrupted.

“Who is she?” he whispered.

No answer came but the static hum of the machines.

He closed his eyes, listening to the rain pounding the roof far above. The sound became a pulse—his pulse.

Lucianus whispered again, closer this time. You spared her. You chose the sin.

He deleted the voice.

But he couldn’t delete her.

In the penthouse, mirrors lined the walls—each one showing him what he used to be. A ruler. A believer. A man untouched.

Now he saw the fracture. Her reflection shimmered beside his.

“You told me silence was purity,” he said to the ghost.

Lucianus smiled in the glass. And yet you listen for her voice.

Domenik’s fist shattered the mirror. Blood dripped across the lion sigil, tracing the shape of a crown.

Outside, thunder rolled like judgment.

He looked down at the red on his hand, then at the storm beyond the window.

“She saw me,” he whispered.

He smiled once—sharp, sacrilegious.

“Now she’s mine.”

⟅━━━━━⟆ ⚜ ⟅━━━━━⟆

If you felt the storm, wait until you meet her. 🌙