On a desolately distant shore, Kenzii lay face down and unresponsive against the seashore. For nearly the entire night, he had remained unconscious upon the sand, washed up like a battered fish abandoned by the tide.
Consciousness only came back to life when a sharp, physical sensation pierced his ear.
"Hmm..." a low groan escaped Kenzii's throat as the fog in his mind slowly began to fall back.
When his heavy eyelids parted, the first image to greet his vision was a solitary heron. Startled by his sudden movement, the bird instantly took flight, disappearing into the sky.
"Fuck, my head hurts," he growled under his breath, forcing his uncooperative muscles to move as he began the tiring process of pushing himself off the ground.
Managing to struggle into a sitting position, Kenzii immediately cast a sharp, scanning gaze over his unfamiliar surroundings. There were no signs of civilization—no houses, no structures. His vision met nothing but a bunch of coconut trees and wild, dense bushes. It was the deepest dark of early dawn; the sun had not yet even risen in the east.
Lowering his gaze to inspect his own body, he found he was still in his cloak. It had somehow resisted the violent pull of the ocean currents, a stroke of luck he likely owed to the heavy leather bag strapped securely to his back.
A sudden, sharp throb radiated through his skull, forcing him to clutch his head in pain. When he pulled his hand away and looked at his palm, it was stained with a smear of dark blood. The bleeding had either stopped while he was still drifting out at sea, or he had simply run out of blood to shed during his hours of floating aimlessly in the saltwater.
"Where the hell am I?" Kenzii muttered, turning his gaze toward the ocean.
Out in the distance, cutting through the ocean mist, lay the place he had just escaped: Elias's island. Even now, the ruined fortress was bleeding thick plumes of smoke into the sky, its distant shores still visibly ablaze.
In an instant, the dam broke. The horrific event last night rushed back into Kenzii's mind with the force of a tidal wave. His chest tightened, his heart hammering violently against his ribs as the memory of his father's painting flashed vividly behind his eyes. His poor, tragic father.
Kenzii dragged both hands down his face, desperately trying to suppress the raw wave of emotion swelling within his chest. He took a long, stabilizing breath, tilted his head back toward the heavens, and slowly released the pent-up air.
As his head dropped back down, his gaze fell upon his left hand, and reality struck again. The mission. A sudden, cold panic snapped his entire being. Hurriedly open his system window.
[System Notification:
Mission Not Yet Complete.
Remaining Time: 4 Hours.]
"Shit." Kenzii bolted to his feet and almost stumbled, his eyes pierce across the landscape.
Using the burning silhouette of Elias's island as a compass rose, he rapidly calculated the distance and direction of the small village where he had stayed. Once he locked onto the direction, Kenzii took off into a sprint, pushing his battered body along the uneven curve of the shoreline. In exhaustion he couldn't even fully use the 20 percent movement speed the system gave him.
He completely lost track of time as he ran, his bare feet hammering against the wet sand, scrambling over steep, rough forms of rock, and tearing through the dense undergrowth of the coastal woods. By the time the small village finally came into sight through the trees, the gentle sun had fully broken over the horizon, and the morning air made his damp cloak dry a bit.
He deliberately slipped through the narrowest, most unused alleyways, to avoid any prying eyes that might spot him. Reaching his lodging, he swiftly slid open the bedroom window he had intentionally left unlocked for this exact time.
Wasting no time, he ripped the leather bag from his shoulders and dragged a heavy suitcase out from beneath the bed. He popped the lock to reveal the ancient, cursed book. Despite the passage of unholy centuries, the book remained terrifyingly intact, its weathered cover page still bearing the perfectly sculpted, anatomical mold of a human heart.
Kenzii summoned his window system one more time, his eyes scanning the digital countdown down to the exact hour and minute.
A massive wave of relief washed over him, causing his shoulders to drop. "Thank fuck. That means they're still alive... those idiots."
A faint, tired smirk tugged at the corner of his lips at the thought of his two cousins. Dropping heavily onto the edge of the mattress, he unzipped the leather bag and carefully extracted Elias's heart. It remained remarkably fresh, preserved by its prolonged stay in the icy seawater.
However, a sharp pang of annoyance hit him as he pulled out Elias's laptop. It was completely waterlogged. He had known it would happen, but seeing the ruined tech still stung.
"Doesn't matter," Kenzii muttered, setting it aside. "I'm sure Sota can find a way to extract the data."
Lifting Elias's heart once more, Kenzii carefully aligned it with the grim illustration on the book's cover. The moment the flesh met the page, the room grew cold. The book violently erupted with a brilliant, sickening aura of abyssal black and violet light. The unholy light crawled upward like living shadows, slowly consuming Elias's heart until the flesh vanished entirely into the book.
As the light died down, the book returned to its original appearance. Kenzii picked it up and put it safely back inside the suitcase.
He turned, intending to head straight for the bathroom to scrub the salt, dried blood and paint from his skin, but a sudden vibration caught his eye. Right next to the suitcase, his phone lit up. It was displaying the familiar, unregistered numbers that constantly hunted his line.
Silently, Kenzii flipped the phone open and pressed it to his ear.
"What the fuck took you so long?!" an old man's voice roared through the receiver. His grandfather's tone was thick with a terrifying, venomous rage. "Weren't you supposed to report the results of your mission yesterday?! What happened, Kenzii, answer me?!"
"Everything has been taken care of, Don Hidalgo," Kenzii replied, his voice expressionless and icy. The old man's legendary wrath didn't spark a single ounce of fear in his chest; instead, it only fuelled the embers of the fury that had reawakened when he thought of his father.
It was impossible for the Don to be ignorant of the truth. Not when the old man reigned as one of the most powerful men in the country—and across all of Asia.
"Good," the Don cut, offering no further gratitude before the line went completely dead.
Kenzii slowly lowered the phone, his expression completely vacant, but his green eyes burned with a predatory, suffocating heat. If looks could kill, the plaster wall in front of him would have been reduced to ash.
He would never forgive the people behind his father's death. He would make damn sure that whoever they were, they would taste his wrath. He didn't care if they were members of his own family or powerful, influential figures. He would make sure to kill whoever it was, even if it meant slaughtering hundreds of people to exact his vengeance.
.
The absolute moment Kenzii stepped through the door of his condo, a collision of two bodies slammed into him. The unstapable force of his cousins' embrace nearly sent him crashing back out into the hallway.
"What the f—"
""Shut up! We thought you were dead," Sota's voice cracked. A single tear rolled down his left cheek, but he wiped it away instantly before his two cousins could notice.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" Alas butt in, his eyes full of tears. He didn't even bother wiping them away since a simple swipe of his hand wouldn't do any good anyway; even his nose was starting to run. "You didn't call. You didn't text. Even your goddamn tracker went completely dark the second you hit the coordinates of Elias's island!"
"Sorry," Kenzii said, letting out a long, exhausted breath. "I almost didn't make it. If I hadn't completed the offering in the nick of time, the system would have wiped you all out."
The two cousins suddenly released him, stepping back to glare at him with identical expressions of disapproval.
"Are you out of your goddamn mind? We don't give a shit about that!" Alas barked, sniffing aggressively. "Your life matters more than ours, you moron!"
"If you didn't care about the stakes, we wouldn't have started this bloodbath from the very first target," Kenzii replied dryly, a faint attempt at a joke. "I should've just stayed innocent."
The comment earned him a swift, stinging smack to the back of the head from Sota, making him wince in pain. His wound!
"And let you become an immortal freak?" Sota snapped, crossing his arms. "You can barely manage your sanity right now, let alone over the course of thousands of years. So shut up." Turning on his heel, Sota marched over to the living room and threw himself onto the couch.
Kenzii and Alas followed, taking their spots on the furniture.
"Seriously though... what the hell happened on that island, Kenzii?" Alas urged, leaning forward and planting a heavy hand on Kenzii's shoulder. "Talk to us."
"Nothing much," Kenzii offered smoothly, crossing his legs.
The deflective answer immediately drew matching scowls from both cousins.
"Don't give us that stoic bullshit," Alas scoffed. "You were trapped in the artist's private fortress for days and you're telling us nothing happened? Come on, Kenzii, talk."
Kenzii sighed, rubbing his temples. He knew the dynamic well enough to realize that if he didn't give them a narrative, they would ruthlessly interrogate him for the rest of the week. Slowly, he began to recount the highlights of the infiltration and the subsequent duel.
The moment his story concluded, Sota stood up without saying a single word. Kenzii's tracking gaze followed him, while Alas simply sat in stunned silence, staring at Kenzii with an unreadable expression that hovered dangerously close to pity.
Sota re-entered the living room a moment later, a heavy-duty medical kit tucked under his arm. He stepped behind Kenzii, his fingers carefully parting his hair to inspect the back of his skull—the exact spot where flying debris had struck him during the explosive destruction of Elias's mansion. They hadn't noticed the injury upon his arrival because there was no bandage, meaning the wound had been left entirely raw and untreated.
Working in absolute silence, Sota began to disinfect the wound. Kenzii didn't flinch, remaining perfectly still as he allowed his cousin to work.
Once the bandage was secured, however, Sota didn't step away. Instead, his hands gripped the hem of Kenzii's shirt and violently pulled it upward.
"Hey, what the—"
"Shut up," Sota hissed, his brow furrowing deeply. "I wasn't on that island to back you up, so at least let me treat your wounds." Realizing arguing will not make any sense, Kenzii went limp and allowed the shirt to be removed.
As the fabric cleared Kenzii's torso, Alas immediately flinched, averting his eyes toward the floor.
Kenzii's upper body was a canvas of absolute violence. Deep, mottled bruises from fighting Elias had already turned an ugly, necrotic violet ruined his ribs and chest. Some wounds from his shoulder blade and back, maybe caused by the explosion in the island. Only his left arm down to the fingertips remained pristine—a flawless shield protected by the demonic system he possessed there.
Sota's hands never shook as he quietly applied antiseptic to the cuts, moving to a shallow slice on Kenzii's cheek that had been hidden under a layer of cosmetic concealer.
Alas abruptly stood up and walked into the kitchen, returning a minute later with a heavy ice pack. He extended it toward Kenzii's bruised ribs, still keeping his eyes strictly glued to the carpet.
This was only the second time in their entire lives they had ever seen Kenzii physically broken. The last time it happened had been during their teenage years, after Kenzii had single-handedly dismantled a gang of bullies who had pushed him too far. Throughout every single execution contract he had performed for the system, he had never returned with so much as a scratch. Until today.
Kenzii closed his eyes, unable to bear the heavy, demoralized air hanging over his cousins' faces. If the mere sight of his surface injuries could reduce them to this state, how could they possibly survive the truth of what he had discovered beneath Elias Thorne's kingdom?
Because the true agony Kenzii was carrying back from that island wasn't something that could be cured by a medical kit or a cold compress. It was the gaping, bleeding cavity left in his chest by the revelation of his father's fate.