Kael did not remember kindness.
His earliest memory was the sound of his father's belt buckle clinking as it slid free from its loops, the hiss of leather cutting air before it split his skin. The scent of cheap whiskey and sweat clung to the man like a second skin, his breath ragged with something that wasn't quite anger, it was worse. It was boredom. The kind that made a man hurt things just to feel something.
He was four.
By six, he had learned to bite through the pain, his small teeth sinking into the inside of his cheek until copper flooded his tongue. The taste was better than the sounds he might have made otherwise. Sounds only made it last longer.
By eight, he had learned to bite back.
The first time, it was a rusted nail hidden in his palm, driven into his father's thigh when the man bent to grab him. The howl that followed was sweeter than anything Kael had ever heard. The beating after was worth it.
The night he killed his father, it wasn't rage that drove the knife between the man's ribs, it was curiosity.
Would the blade sink as easily as it did into the stray dogs he practiced on? (Their whimpers had been soft, fading things. Their ribs brittle. Their eyes too trusting.)
Would the old man's blood smell the same?
(It did. And it didn't. It was warmer. Thicker. It made Kael's fingers sticky in a way that lingered long after he wiped them clean. The man didn't scream. He gasped, wet and surprised, his hands fluttering at the wound like confused birds. His knees hit the floor before his face did. Kael watched, head tilted, as the life drained out of him in slow, shuddering waves.)
He left the body where it fell, took the gun from the nightstand, and walked out into the world with nothing but the clothes on his back and the quiet, unshakable knowledge that violence was the only language that mattered.
The night air was cold. The stars were bright. Somewhere, a dog barked, high and lonely.
Kael smiled.
And kept walking.
---
Fate was a funny thing.
Kael didn't believe in it. Not until the day he walked into First National Trust with a .45 tucked into his waistband and a plan to leave with enough cash to vanish for good.
The bank was a relic of old money, polished marble floors, gilded teller cages, the sour scent of lemon disinfectant barely masking the copper undertone of human sweat. The fluorescents hummed like dying insects, casting everything in a sickly, flickering glow. Kael had scouted the place for weeks. Knew the guards' rotations, the manager's cigarette breaks, the blind spots in the security cameras.
He didn't expect the bank to already be under siege.
He didn't expect her.
Ainar moved like liquid fire, smooth, relentless, leaving scorch marks in her wake. She wasn't just robbing the place; she was playing with it. Guards lay slumped at her feet, their throats slit with a precision that bordered on artistry. Blood seeped into the grooves between the tiles, dark and glistening. One man was still twitching, fingers spasming against the stock of his dropped shotgun.
And when she turned toward Kael, her lips curled into a grin that didn't belong on a woman who'd just painted the walls red.
"You're not supposed to be here," she mused, tilting her head. Her voice was honey over broken glass.
Kael shot at her.
She laughed.
Not a nervous giggle, not a hysterical shriek, a full, throaty laugh, like he'd just told the funniest joke she'd ever heard. The sound bounced off the vaulted ceilings, too alive for a room full of corpses.
Most people looked at Kael and saw death. They pissed themselves. They begged. They tried to run.
Ainar looked at him like he was entertaining.
It should have pissed him off.
It didn't.
The fight that followed was less a battle and more a dance, one where every step could end in a bullet or a blade. She was faster than him, her movements unpredictable, her strikes landing just shy of lethal. A knife grazed his ribs; he felt the heat before the pain, the fabric of his shirt splitting like it had been kissed by a razor. He caught her wrist on the backswing, twisted until her bones creaked in protest. The blade clattered to the floor between them, and Kael pressed his gun to her forehead.
For a heartbeat, they stood there, breathing hard, her pulse thrumming against the barrel.
Then Kael shifted his aim and shot the guard behind her.
Ainar blinked. Then she grinned.
"Well," she said, "that's new."
Kael didn't answer. He holstered his gun, turned his back on her, and walked toward the vault.
She followed.
The vault door yawned open, its steel teeth gleaming. Inside, the air was cool and stale, the scent of ink and paper thick. Ainar whistled low as she ran her fingers over the stacks of bills, her nails, chipped red, like old blood, tapping against the bands.
"You're not greedy," she observed, watching as Kael stuffed his bag with methodical precision.
"I'm practical," he corrected.
She smirked, tossing a bundle of hundreds into her own sack like it was candy. "Same thing."
By the time they left, the bank was silent. No witnesses. No loose ends. Just the two of them, weighed down with cash and something neither of them had words for.
Outside, the street was eerily still, the kind of quiet that came before a storm. Ainar wiped a smear of blood from her cheek with the back of her hand, smudging it instead of cleaning it.
"Ainar," she said as they stepped over the bodies.
He hesitated. Then: "Kael."
She smirked.
The wind picked up, carrying the distant wail of sirens. Kael adjusted the weight of the bag on his shoulder. Ainar tilted her face toward the sound, eyes half-lidded, like she was savoring it.
"Race you to the next one?" she asked.
Kael didn't smile.
But he didn't say no.
---
They burned through cities like a fever, leaving behind ashes and whispered legends.
Ainar was chaos incarnate, wild, untamed, a storm of laughter and blades. Kael was precision, cold, calculating, a shadow with a sniper's patience. Together, they were unstoppable, a perfect symmetry of destruction.
He didn't love her, Kael wasn't capable of that. But he wanted her, in the same way he wanted the adrenaline of a kill, the weight of a gun in his hand, the sharp clarity of a decision made in blood. She was violence wrapped in silk, all sharp edges and dark promises, and when she touched him, it didn't feel like affection.
It felt like recognition. Like looking into a mirror and seeing not a reflection, but an answer.
The night he found out she was pregnant, they were in the middle of torturing a man who'd tried to double-cross them. The air smelled of sweat and iron, the dim light flickering over the concrete floor as Ainar knelt over their victim, her dark hair falling in loose waves around her face. She had her knee on his chest, a knife at his throat, when she suddenly went still.
Then she laughed, bright, unhinged, the sound echoing off the damp walls.
"Huh," she said, pressing a hand to her stomach, her fingers smeared with the man's blood. "That explains the nausea."
Kael stared at her, his expression unreadable, his gloved fingers pausing over the pliers in his grip.
He didn't feel joy. He didn't feel fear.
He felt… interest.
(What would their child be like? Would it have her fire, her reckless hunger for the fight? His stillness, his patience before the strike? Would it flinch at the sound of gunfire, or would it reach for the weapon like it was a toy, tiny fingers curling around the grip with instinctual ease?)
Ainar wiped her blade clean on the dying man's shirt, her movements languid, almost careless. The fabric darkened with the stain, spreading like ink. "Don't look so constipated, Kael," she murmured, tilting her head. "It's just a baby."
Then she slit the man's throat, the cut swift and deep, her smile never fading.
The body sagged, the last breath escaping in a wet gasp. Kael watched, silent, as she stood, stretching like a cat, her free hand still resting lightly on her stomach.
Somewhere in the distance, sirens wailed.
Neither of them moved.
They never did.
---
Ainar bled out on a motel bed, her fingers twitching around a curse instead of a plea. The sheets were cheap, scratchy, the kind that left red marks on skin if you slept wrong. The air smelled of antiseptic and iron, the flickering neon sign outside casting a sickly glow through the thin curtains. She had never been soft, never been gentle, but in that moment, her defiance was a quiet thing, a last act of rebellion against a world that had never loved her back.
Kael held his son in one hand and the doctor's severed tongue in the other. The child was small, too small, wrapped in a bloodstained towel, his cries weak and rasping. The doctor had said something stupid, something merciful, before Kael silenced him. Mercy was a luxury they couldn't afford. Not when the shadows at the edges of the room whispered of hunters, of debts unpaid, of a life that would never be safe.
He didn't know how to be a father.
(He had never had one himself.)
So he became something else instead.
He taught the boy to fight before he could read. To shoot before he could write. To kill before he understood what death was. The lessons were brutal, efficient. A child's hands were small, but they could learn to hold a knife just as easily as a toy. Doom's first steps were unsteady, but his first lunge with a blade was perfect. Kael made sure of it.
The boy didn't cry when he broke his fingers during training. (Kael had set them himself, his grip unyielding, his voice colder than the winter wind.)
He didn't flinch when Kael backhanded him for missing a shot. (The bruise had bloomed purple across his cheek, but his stance never wavered.)
(Good. Weakness got you killed.)
But sometimes, sometimes, when the boy moved a certain way, when his strikes carried a fluidity that wasn't Kael's, the old man would pause. There was a grace to it, an almost musical rhythm, like Ainar dancing barefoot in the rain, her laughter sharp and bright. Doom didn't know where it came from. Kael did.
And for the first time in years, he would remember the sound of Ainar's laughter.
(It was worse than forgetting.)
---
But something had changed with the boy, it made something flicker in Kael's hollowed chest, something he couldn't name.
Because Doom moved like her.
Like Ainar.
That shouldn't have been possible. The boy had never known her. She had bled out on the motel bed. And yet there it was. The way he pivoted, weight shifting like a dancer's. The way his fingers curled around a blade, delicate before the kill, as if savoring the anticipation.
Kael had watched Ainar do the same a hundred times.
So why did the boy move like her?
It didn't make sense.
(Should it make him happy ? Should it make him furious ? Should it make him grieve ?)
He felt nothing.
(He felt something.)
No matter.
Ruin ran in the family.
And Doom was beautiful when he killed.
Not like Kael, no, Kael was a sculptor, deliberate, exact. Doom was a force of nature, wildfire given flesh. Every movement was raw, unrestrained, a dance of destruction that left the air humming in his wake. When Doom fought, it wasn't just death, it was art in motion, a hurricane of limbs and blades and teeth.
Yet even though Doom moved with Ainar's grace and Kael's precision…
He was something more.
Ainar had been grace. Kael had been control.
But Doom was hunger.
Not the slow, savoring kind. Not the calculated bite of a predator who knew the hunt would end in blood. No, Doom was the moment after the kill, when the beast forgets to chew, when the frenzy takes over and all that's left is the wet, ragged sound of tearing.
He didn't just fight.
He Consumed.
Every strike was a devouring. Every step forward made the earth itself recoil. When he moved, it wasn't just his body, it was the air, the light, the idea of space bending around him, as if the world had no choice but to yield.
Kael watched, something dark and possessive coiling in his gut.
This wasn't just Ainar's ghost in the boy's limbs.
This wasn't just Kael's own ruthlessness sharpened to a finer edge.
This was something new.
Something worse.
Something perfect.
And when Doom turned to him, eyes alight with the aftermath of slaughter, Kael did the only thing he could.
He smiled.
The boy would learn.
And the world would burn.