Third-Person POV
The warehouse in the industrial district of Cinber City had been condemned for two years. Structural damage, asbestos contamination, scheduled for controlled demolition in the spring. Nobody came here. The chain-link fence around the perimeter was rusted and bent. The windows were boarded.
Perfect.
Riyan had prepared the room on the third floor—concrete, bare walls, a single steel chair bolted to the floor. He'd run an electrical line for light and brought in the tools he'd purchased months ago through legitimate channels. Nothing traced. Nothing suspicious.
The killer sat unconscious in the chair when Riyan descended the stairs, arms bound by rusted chains that bit deep into the skin.
Riyan waited.
When the man's eyes finally opened—shocked back to consciousness by the cold metal of the chair and the weight of the chains—they darted around the space in confusion.
"Where—"
Riyan was holding the pliers.
He clamped them over the target's index fingernail before the man could form another word. The reaction was immediate—body jolting upright, lungs seizing, the scream tearing free before his brain could catch up.
Riyan pulled. The nail came free with a wet sound.
Blood pooled in the nail bed.
"I said you'd need to be awake," Riyan said. His voice was empty of inflection.
He moved to the next finger without waiting for a response.
The man screamed. Begged. Thrashed against the chains hard enough that blood ran down his wrists where the metal bit in.
Riyan worked methodically. Fingernails first. Ten of them. He extracted each one with clinical precision—the same precision he'd use to catalog library books or solve a math problem. His hands didn't shake. His breathing stayed even.
By the time he finished the fingers, the man was barely conscious, pain having dragged him so far into shock that his body was starting to shut down.
Riyan set the pliers down and grabbed the knife.
"Stay with me," he said.
He worked in silence after that.
The knife was sharp. Surgical. He'd tested it on meat bought from the butcher three weeks ago. The angle of the cuts, the depth needed to cause maximum damage without accidental lethality, the places where blood loss would be slow enough to stretch out the process.
He'd learned all of it.
The man screamed himself hoarse. Then quiet. His voice just gone, worn out by agony.
Riyan kept working.
Time passed. Hours maybe. The light from the single bulb stayed constant. The warehouse sounds—dripping water, settling metal, the wind against boarded windows—continued indifferently.
Eventually, the man's body went limp.
Riyan checked his pulse. Still there but fading. Good. He'd timed it right.
He stepped back and looked at what he'd created.
The man was still breathing. Barely. His body was a map of cuts and wounds, each one placed with deliberate intention. His fingers were mangled stumps. His breathing came in wet, labored gasps.
This was justice.
This was what nine years had built toward.
Riyan felt nothing.
That was the worst part. Not rage or satisfaction or even guilt. Just... nothing. A hollow space where emotion should have been.
He was still standing there, staring at the dying man, when Furia materialized.
Her shadowy form took shape slowly, coalescing in the corner. She moved toward him without sound, her arms wrapping around him from behind.
Riyan didn't turn. Couldn't.
"It's done," he said.
"Yes," Furia replied. Her voice was soft. Almost tender.
"I've become what I hated."
She held him tighter. "You've done what needed doing."
He turned to face her—this reflection of himself made of shadows, this thing born from his trauma and desperation. He pulled her close, needing the solidity of her, needing proof that at least one thing in his existence was real.
"Will I ever be normal again?" The question sounded stupid even as he asked it.
"No," she said. "You won't."
Then she was gone.
Not gradually. Not fading. Just absent. Her presence—which had been constant in his mind for nine years—simply ceased to exist.
The room suddenly felt too large, too empty, too real.
Riyan stood alone with the dying man and understood that he'd just become something permanent. That there was no going back from this moment, no redemption, no return to whatever he'd been before.
The man on the chair took his last breath around 4 AM.
Riyan cleaned up methodically. The body went into a contractor's waste bin he'd rented days ago under a false identity. The tools went into a furnace at a scrapyard. The chair he dumped in the harbor, weighted with concrete.
By dawn, the room was empty.
By week's end, he was back at his apartment.
By month's end, he'd bought textbooks. Enrolled in prep courses. Built a new identity around becoming someone who went to university, who had a future, who wasn't defined by the past.
The University of Triads accepted him on academic merit. Merit earned through sheer, obsessive focus.
He made plans. Found an apartment near campus. Started his first semester.
For three months, he almost believed he could be normal.
Then came the day he was crossing an intersection in downtown Cinber City, walking to a coffee shop, thinking about nothing in particular.
The truck ran the red light.
He saw it—the moment before impact, the angle wrong, the driver's face pale with shock at the failed brakes. He had time to think this is it, this is how it ends before the bumper hit him at forty miles per hour.
His body flew backward. The world inverted, spun, became abstract pain.
Then darkness.
Then something else entirely.
Light. Burning. A voice calling his name.
A resurrection in a body that wasn't his, a world that read like a webnovel he'd once consumed cover to cover, where he was the villain protagonist destined for dark conquest.
Where his past trauma and his careful preparation and his hollow, predatory nature became exactly what this new world needed him to be.
The truck had killed Riyan of Earth.
But Nemora? Nemora had simply found a new playground.
STORY TRANSITION - PAST TO PRESENT
When Riyan's consciousness returned to the hotel corridor at exactly 3:47 AM, his fingers still bloodied from the traitors he'd killed, the memories of his past life didn't fade.
They integrated.
Two timelines. Two identities. Two versions of vengeance finally made whole.
The boy who'd become Nemora was now the young man walking through Hotel BlackMoon, systematically eliminating everyone who stood between him and rewriting the tragic script of the original novel.
Eight traitors remained.
And he had eight hours until sunrise.
📢 MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT 📢
Arc Complete: Riyan's Past Life
This novel will soon transition to premium/paid chapters. Thank you for your support through the backstory arc—it's been a dark journey, and we're only getting started.
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Special Question: How do you feel about Riyan's past? Does it justify his current personality, or has he become irredeemable? Comment your thoughts!
Riyan's flashback ends. We return to the Hotel BlackMoon infiltration, where his darkness has been fully unleashed...
— Lone Raut