The Pact

The apartment was dead silent.

Kain Drayce stood motionless in the center of the room, his hands trembling at his sides. The air was thick with the metallic scent of blood, mingling with the soft trace of her perfume—already fading. His breath came slow, uneven.

Elyse lay where they left her, her body limp, lifeless. A pool of crimson spread across the wooden floor, staining the scattered medical journals she always left lying around.

They hadn't just killed her.

They made sure he saw the aftermath.

A message.

Kain lowered himself to his knees, his fingers ghosting over her cheek. Still warm. His vision blurred, but no tears came. He had no right to grieve like a normal man. This was his world, his sins reaching out and taking everything.

The assassins were already gone. They didn't even stay to finish him off.

Because this was never about the kill.

They wanted him to break. To suffer.

The High Council feared what he would become.

Now, he would give them a reason.

The city outside felt distant, unreal. Kain wandered without direction, blind to the rain soaking through his coat, blind to the blood still staining his hands.

Then, the whispers began.

A voice, ancient and endless, slithered through his thoughts.

It didn't come from the streets.

It came from within.

"You are broken, yet you still breathe. Why?"

Kain froze. The world around him distorted, as if the shadows stretched unnaturally. The rain fell slower. The air turned thick.

Something was watching.

He pressed a hand to his head, but the voice only grew louder.

"Do you wish for power, assassin?"

"No… you wish for vengeance."

Kain's heart pounded. His surroundings dissolved into black sand, an endless void stretching before him.

And in the distance, it stirred.

A colossal serpent coiled through the abyss, its obsidian scales reflecting no light, only consuming it. Twin golden eyes stared down at him, filled with something beyond mortal comprehension.

Kain knew its name before it spoke.

Apep.

The serpent of chaos.

"The gods fear me."

"Men curse my name."

"But you?"

"You were forsaken before you even fell."

Kain said nothing. His fists clenched at his sides, his body rigid. The void pulsed around him, suffocating. He should have been afraid.

But there was only rage.

Apep's massive form coiled closer, its fanged maw stretching into something resembling amusement.

"Swear yourself to me, assassin. And I will give you the abyss."

Kain inhaled slowly. The pain, the grief, the anger—none of it mattered anymore.

There was no one left to save.

Only those who needed to die.

He raised his head, eyes locked with the god of chaos, and whispered a single word.

"Yes."

The void shattered.

Pain erupted through his body.

Shadows clawed up his skin, sinking into his flesh like venom. He felt his bones shift, twist, crack. The darkness was not merely surrounding him—it was becoming him.

His katana, The Black Maw, pulsed violently at his hip, as if the steel itself was awakening. Its blade reflected nothing but an endless, yawning blackness.

His vision blurred. His breath came ragged.

Then, the pain stopped.

He opened his eyes.

The abyss looked back.

Twin slits of gold flickered within the black void of his irises—a mark of Apep's will.

Kain Drayce was gone.

There was only Abyss.

And the hunt had begun.