[Present Day – Rain]
Blood has a scent. People don't talk about it, but it's there — sharp, metallic, full of meaning.
It clings to your skin, to your lungs, to your soul. It doesn't wash off easily.
Kael stood in the alleyway, soaked in rain.
Not from the sky — it hadn't rained in days — but from a memory so vivid it had soaked through time and space.
His gloved hand trembled as it hovered over the corpse at his feet.
The man's eyes were wide, still holding the last flicker of disbelief. His lips had stopped quivering two seconds ago. A clean cut across the jugular. Kael's signature. Surgical. Personal.
Kael didn't kill to eat. He didn't kill for money or for pleasure. He killed because it was the only thing that made the screaming in his head stop.
"You said this would be the last one."
The voice again.
Soft. Female. Not his.
Not real.
Kael looked up sharply. Nothing but shadows. Rats. The hum of neon lights.
"Liar," the voice whispered.
[Flashback – Age 10]
The first time Kael killed, he was ten.
His hands were smaller then, weaker — but they had just enough strength to hold the knife tight.
His father never saw it coming.
How could he? Monsters don't expect their victims to become monsters too.
The house had smelled like whiskey, like sweat, like tears. Kael's mother had stopped crying days ago. The bruises on her skin had turned from purple to yellow — healing, the way the world heals: by hiding everything.
He had watched it happen for years — the fists, the slurs, the broken plates, the silent dinners.
Then one night, he walked into the kitchen and saw his mother lying on the floor, not moving. Not breathing.
Kael didn't scream.
He didn't cry.
He picked up the butcher's knife from the counter, walked down the hallway, and slit his father's throat while the man snored on the couch.
He watched the life drain from his eyes like ink in water.
And he felt alive.
Not safe.
Not good.
But seen.
For the first time in his life, the silence inside him began to speak.
[Years Later – The Voice Returns]
He named the voice Eris. She had grown with him. At first, she whispered things he wanted to hear:
"They deserved it."
"You're special."
"They were filth."
But now, she had turned cruel.
Mocking.
Honest.
"You didn't kill for justice," she hissed. "You killed because you liked it."
Kael ignored her.
He always tried. But sometimes, she was louder than the real world.
He crouched beside the corpse and wiped the blood from his blade. The man's ID had already been tossed — no identity, no history. Just another soul swallowed by the night.
Kael had a rule: never kill the innocent.
But his definition of innocence had twisted over the years. A pedophile counts as guilty. A corrupt priest? Guilty. A liar who destroys lives for fun? Still guilty.
But tonight… this man… something about the kill had felt wrong.
His hands weren't shaking from adrenaline.
They were shaking from doubt.
[Dream Sequence – Elira's First Appearance]
That night, Kael dreamed.
He stood in a forest of dead trees, where the moon bled red and every footstep echoed with a scream.
A woman stood barefoot in the distance, her back to him.
She wore a white dress stained with ink, or was it blood? Her hair flowed like black smoke.
"Who are you?" Kael called.
The woman turned slowly.
Her face was blurred, shifting, ungraspable — but her eyes… her eyes were sharp enough to pierce his mind. Blue. Not just blue — deep, ancient blue.
They burned.
"Elira…" the name escaped his lips, though he'd never spoken it before.
She smiled.
A tear fell from her eye. It sizzled when it hit the ground.
"You can't run from yourself, Kael."
"You know why you kill."
"You're not the monster you think you are… You're something worse."
He screamed — but woke up in silence.
[Reality – Morning]
Kael sat upright in bed, breath ragged, body drenched in sweat.
Elira.
The name still clung to his tongue like the taste of ash.
He had never met her — and yet she knew him. Intimately.
No woman had ever touched Kael's heart. Most never got close enough.
But this woman… she wasn't real.
She couldn't be.
Yet when he touched his cheek, he felt the trail of a tear.
"Why are you crying?" Eris mocked.
"Falling for a ghost now, Kael?"
He stood and punched the mirror.
Shards fell like raindrops, his reflection shattered into a thousand versions of himself — all of them broken, all of them screaming silently.
[Back to the Past – The Killing High]
After his first kill, Kael had tried to feel guilt.
He had waited for nightmares, for shame, for something.
But none came.
Instead, he felt clarity.
Like standing underwater your whole life and finally breathing air.
He began studying people.
Abusers. Liars. Cheats. Monsters in suits.
He became a shadow — a righteous force in a cruel city.
Some called it vengeance. Some justice.
But Kael knew the truth.
He killed because he had to.
Not for the victims.
Not for the world.
But because if he didn't… the darkness inside him would eat him alive.
[Hunted by the Past]
Now, years later, Kael was starting to doubt everything.
The face of the man he'd killed last night kept flashing in his mind.
There was something off — something wrong about the kill.
He hadn't researched him like the others.
He had acted on impulse.
Worse:
The man had whispered something before he died.
"You're not the only one."
What did that mean?
Was there someone else like him?
Or… was he being watched?
[Dream – The Feather]
Kael drifted again, unwilling and uninvited.
He was back in that forest — dead trees stretching into an endless black sky. The moon above was cracked like a bleeding eye. Each step he took made the ground scream.
She was there again.
Still facing away.
Still barefoot.
Still in that white, stained dress.
"Elira…" he whispered, afraid of the name but needing it like breath.
This time, she turned fully.
Her face was still blurred — almost too bright to see clearly — but her voice…
It struck him like a blade made of silk and sorrow.
"I'm coming, Kael."
"You won't be able to run forever."
He reached for her.
The world split apart.
[Reality – Early Morning]
Kael awoke choking on air. His bedsheets were tangled around his limbs like vines.
His room was silent.
No footsteps. No voices. No alarms.
But something felt off.
He swung his legs over the bed, ran a hand through his damp hair.
Then he saw it.
Lying on the floor beside the bed — small, white, and impossible.
A feather.
He picked it up.
It was soft. Real.
Warm.
He looked out the window.
No birds.
No wind.
Just the city breathing in silence.
And Kael, for the first time in years, felt fear that didn't come from guilt, or rage, or blood.
This was something else.
She was coming.
Whoever — or whatever — Elira was…
She wasn't just a dream anymore.