🌘 Chapter 13 — Promises of Vengeance
The car sliced through the night like a black arrow, headlights barely cutting the darkness. Ken, still trapped in Ayato's body, gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles went white. His breath came in short, ragged bursts; his mind was a cyclone of images and a slow, burning rage: Ayato's death, Ezekiel's body consumed by flames in the warehouse, Ariel's cold betrayal. Each memory tore at him and fed a ferocity that smoldered beneath his skin.
"Ariel… you'll pay. I will kill you with my own hands… I swear it…"
His fist tightened until the ache of strain ran up his forearm. Every throb of his heart felt like a drum summoning him to war.
Ariel sat beside him, outwardly calm in a way that felt deliberate—an unnerving serenity. His eyes tracked the road with a steady, almost practiced blankness that made Ken want to hate him all the more. It wasn't simply confidence; it was the look of a man accustomed to masks and consequences, and that thought only stoked Ken's fury. In the back seat, Eloïse and Hansi exchanged small, guarded looks; the silence between them seemed to lengthen the moment, like the pause before a storm break. No one spoke. The engine's growl and Ken's ragged inhale were the only sounds.
The drive to the Montclair manor felt interminable. When they finally pulled up to the grand gates, the night air seemed heavier, as if it had been saturated by what had already happened. Artificial light poured from the entryway, gilding the stone pillars and casting long shadows across the gravel. The grandeur of the manor offered no comfort; it only made the weight of the evening more pronounced.
Inside, the hall swallowed them in warmth that contrasted bitterly with the cold reality of the events they brought with them. Bill Montclair received their report with the steady composure of a man who had spent a lifetime hiding fear behind protocol. Ariel spoke with clinical precision, his words exact and unflinching as he laid out what had occurred: Ezekiel was alive, the so-called Black Angel had returned, and every step Ken and his allies had taken had been nudged toward this night by forces they did not yet fully understand.
Bill's face did not move for a long time. His eyes cut across each of them, measuring and calculating. For a single, fleeting heartbeat, a small flash of pride passed over his features as he commended Ariel for protecting Ayato—then it vanished, replaced by a shadow deeper than disappointment.
"The return of Ezekiel Torne," he breathed, more to himself than to anyone else, "will be fatal for us all."
A charge of authority followed as if to break the tension: Bill thrust a new mission forward. "Find Annie," he said. "Find this Annie who knows their history. She might hold the key to Ezekiel's past. Bring her to me."
Ken nodded, hollow acceptance tightening his stomach. But his thoughts were elsewhere: the heat of the warehouse, Ezekiel's bloodstained hand, the way Ariel's smile had folded like a blade. The idea of going on a mission with Ariel felt like a loaded gamble. Part of him imagined that the road with Ariel would end with one clean, final strike—the only strike that would ease the poison in his veins.
Meanwhile, Eloïse and Hansi climbed the stairs to Hana's room. The soft lamplight painted the walls in amber, a fragile warmth that held only the illusion of safety. Hana sat on her bed, small and fragile in the dim glow, and the three women fell into conversation that was more a collection of whispered observations than questions and answers.
"Do you think your brother has changed?" Eloïse asked, careful, gentle.
Hana searched her memories as if sifting through old photographs. "Yes," she said finally. "He's calmer… but stronger."
Hansi's mouth thinned. The sadness in her voice carried a steel that had been tempered by loss. "He reminds me so much of Ken… of how he was at the end."
"Yes," Hana agreed without hesitation, her gaze distant. "I think he looks like Ken sometimes." The admission landed like a pebble in still water. Eloïse felt it ripple through her—an uneasy confirmation of the suspicion that had followed Ayato since those first grim discoveries. Everything had shifted. Nothing would be the same.
Far from the manor, in a house whose windows were mostly boarded, Yuri moved with cold efficiency. Plans were spread across a battered table, maps and notes pinned and circled in his precise, careful handwriting. John Grigor's layouts and old correspondences lay open—decades of alliances, betrayals, and ledger lines of favors owed and debts called in. Yuri's hands were steady as he traced the routes, marked the guard patterns, calculated angles of approach. The raid he was preparing was not a single act of revenge; it was a chess move in a larger campaign. Each cut made now would widen a path for what was to come.
Back on the road, Ken kept his jaw tight against his own voice. Part of him wished to rage openly, to force Ariel to acknowledge the ruin he had caused. Another part forced restraint, a colder calculation: blind fury would be the fastest way to ruin everything. Strategy required patience. Killing Ariel without the right threads pulled could cost lives—Hana's included.
The name "Annie" echoed in his mind as if it were a talisman, a thread that might lead to Ezekiel. Finding her would be both a step closer to the truth and another test of who he must become to survive. The night's endless ribbon unfurled before them, each mile a quiet promise of blood drawn and debts not yet settled.
They reached the edge of the city and rolled into the long sweep of country road that led back to the estate. Ken kept his eyes on the road, palms tight on the wheel, but he was elsewhere—flashes of memory, the taste of smoke in his throat, the memory of a brother's laugh caught for a heartbeat like a porcelain shard.
At the manor, Bill's mission would mean moving quickly, sliding pieces into place with the efficiency of a man used to directing operations. Ken suspected Ariel's mind, too, was already in motion: always three steps ahead, always careful to turn his calm into an instrument for control. That thought curdled in Ken's stomach.
Later, when Ken finally allowed himself to breathe—alone for the first time that night—he let the anger cool into a purpose. It dulled, not into peace, but into a blade honed for a single aim: truth. He would seek Annie, pry the past loose, and use what he learned to build a map of those responsible. If Ariel's throat lay along the road he drew, so be it.
By then, Yuri was already executing the first phase of his plan. Unseen hands moved across the city, closing, probing, testing. The war was no longer a rumor; it had teeth. Ken could feel the teeth in his jaw when he clenched it.
In the quiet of Hana's room, the three women listened as if the night itself might answer. They spoke of small things—the trivial comforts that made the darkness bearable: a favorite tea, a memory of Ayato humming, the way he used to braid Hana's hair before bed. Each small memory was a shard of humanity that kept the grim, hungry world at bay for a moment.
But the danger waited beyond the window, patient and relentless.
Ken slept little that night. When he did, it was a dreamless half-sleep, a rest that did not promise reprieve. He wrung his hands and replayed details: the angle of the bullets, the pattern of the arson's ignition, the name Enzo murmured in the dark. Each revelation was a key he turned in the lock of a mystery he had only begun to understand.
At dawn, the road would open, and they would move. The mission to find Annie would test alliances, split loyalties, and perhaps claim more names on a ledger already etched in blood. But for now, each heartbeat in the Montclair house was a reminder: revenge was no longer a private whisper. It was an oath spoken aloud, and everything would bend to its weight.
Ken set his jaw and made the promise again, quietly, like a vow offered to the rain-slicked earth itself. "I will be the blade," he thought. "I will be the shield. I will end this."
And as the car carried them through the black ribbon of night, the promise sat between them—an ember that would grow into a conflagration.