The sirens were still echoing when he stumbled into the safehouse.
A rusted door slammed behind him, shutting out the flashing blue-red glow that had threatened to corner him in the alley. The room inside was narrow, stale with damp concrete and old smoke. A single fluorescent bulb hung from the ceiling, buzzing faintly, its light stuttering in uneven pulses. Every flicker made the shadows on the wall crawl like insects.
Arkellin braced his back against the door. His chest heaved. Breath came ragged, not steady yet—lungs learning again how to obey. The air tasted of rust and mold, but it was air. It filled him, burned him, reminded him he was still here.
He peeled himself off the door and moved deeper into the safehouse. The space was bare—table overturned, chairs broken, bottles scattered on the floor. But at the far end, a cracked bathroom mirror waited, jagged down the middle like a scar.
His boots squelched across the wet floor. The sound of each step echoed sharp, too loud in the small space. He reached the mirror, set both hands on the chipped porcelain sink, and leaned forward.
The reflection that looked back was not Kindrake Dofflow.
The man in the mirror was younger, face sharper, eyes darker, a white streak cutting through his messy black hair like lightning frozen in strands. His jaw carried the shadow of stubble, his lips pale but pressed into a hard line. Rainwater still clung to him, dripping down to the collar of his jacket.
He dragged a hand across his chest. The fabric of his shirt was torn, plastered to his skin with blood both fresh and dried. With a sharp tug, he ripped it open.
The mirror showed him everything.
Bullet holes—some sealed into angry welts, others raw but no longer bleeding. The wounds hadn't closed cleanly. They looked burned shut, flesh fused in ways that defied medicine. Beneath them, scars layered old over new, a history carved into skin.
And then he saw the mark.
On the left side of his chest, just above the heart, ink glistened through the blood. A tattoo—black lines swirling into the sigil of the gang he had once led. Faded, but unmistakable.
His fingertips brushed it. The skin there felt tougher, rougher, like callus hardened over years of violence. The moment he touched it, a wave of memory hit him.
Smoke-filled rooms. Cheers of drunken loyalty. A woman's voice calling his name, softer than he deserved. Then blood on her lips, her body in his arms.
He staggered back from the mirror, chest tight, the memory crashing over him like the rain outside. He gripped the edge of the sink until it cracked faintly under his hands.
The face in the mirror stared back, not blinking, not kind. Two sets of eyes overlapped for an instant—Kindrake's cold gaze from the tower, Arkellin's burning glare from the streets—reflected in one man.
He let out a slow breath, steam fogging the broken glass. His lips moved, but no sound came, only the weight of realization.
This body was his now. And it carried more than flesh. It carried scars. It carried debts.
And every scar was a ledger waiting to be balanced.
The fluorescent bulb buzzed overhead, sputtering again.
Arkellin slid down the bathroom wall until he was sitting on the damp concrete, back against the peeling paint. His chest rose and fell unevenly, the burned-shut wounds tugging at every breath. He tilted his head back, the cracked mirror still in sight above him, reflecting only fragments of his face.
The room tilted.
Not from the light, not from the storm outside—from inside him.
A sudden wave of dizziness hit, sharp and disorienting. His hand shot to the floor, fingers splaying against the cold, slick concrete to steady himself. His vision split—one eye seeing the grimy bathroom, the other flashing with a high tower of glass, polished marble floors, holograms dancing above a black table.
"Board dismissed," a voice echoed—his voice, but not his.
The tower vanished.
Instead, an alley filled with rain. A woman's scream. Blood on his hands. His own voice again, but hoarse with grief: "Stay with me—don't you dare—"
The images overlapped, slamming into each other like colliding trains.
Kindrake's empire of steel.
Arkellin's streets of blood.
Wine cracking in a glass.
Gunfire in the night.
Two lives. Two deaths. One vessel.
He gritted his teeth, palms pressed against his temples as if he could hold the flood back. His head shook once, twice, sweat mixing with rain on his skin.
The dizziness grew teeth—sharp, grinding—until it wasn't just memory but voice.
A whisper, guttural and raw, curled up from the marrow of this body.
"…You carry me now."
Arkellin froze. The whisper wasn't in the room—it was in him.
"My blood. My scars. My fight. Don't waste them."
The voice swelled, layered, carrying grief like fire. He could see her again—Arkellin's woman, rose-colored dress ruined by red, her final breath against his chest. The pain surged, so raw he had to clench his fists until his knuckles blanched.
"They took her. They took everything. You owe me vengeance."
Kindrake's instinct recoiled—he had never bowed to vengeance, only to logic, to strategy. But the fire of Arkellin's demand burned into him, wrapping around his own emptiness, filling it with something fierce.
His head throbbed. His ears roared with the sound of a single heartbeat—loud, relentless, pulsing like a war drum. His throat worked, and he heard himself whisper into the damp silence:
"…I'll settle your debt. Ours."
The dizziness broke like glass, leaving only the echo of the vow hanging in the stale air.
He sat still for a moment, drenched in sweat, chest heaving, feeling the weight of two souls that were now inseparable.
The safehouse smelled of rust and rain. The storm outside pressed against the windows. But inside, the silence was no longer hollow. It had purpose.
The storm had thinned to a steady drizzle by the time Arkellin's breath steadied. The fluorescent bulb above him flickered once more, then gave up, leaving the safehouse washed only in the dim gray light that bled through the broken window.
He pushed himself off the wall. Muscles protested, his wounds throbbed, but there was a strength now—raw, borrowed, burning—that drove him upright. The mirror caught him again in fragments: half his face in shadow, half lit by the neon that seeped in from the street.
That was when he heard it.
A faint vibration against the floorboards. Rhythmic, mechanical. Out of place in the silence.
He looked down.
A phone.
It had slipped from his jacket during the fight, screen cracked, edges dented, but still alive. The light from its display pulsed faintly in the dark, each flash syncing with the buzz that rattled the wood.
Arkellin bent and picked it up. His fingers left damp smears of blood across the glass as he wiped the water away. The screen glowed.
1 New Message.
He swiped it open.
The text filled the screen in harsh white letters:
"You were supposed to die."
The words burned brighter than the neon outside. His grip on the phone tightened until the cracks on the screen spread with a faint, brittle creak.
For a moment, his reflection ghosted against the glass—a stranger, a killer, a man dragged back from two deaths. His lips curved, not into a smile, not quite into a snarl, but into something caught between them.
"…But I didn't." The whisper left his throat like the edge of a blade.
The phone buzzed again.
Another message appeared, this one colder, more deliberate:
"We'll finish it soon. Location sent."
The screen flickered, a map pin blooming across it. A red dot blinking just blocks away.
Arkellin's eyes hardened. The dizziness was gone. The confusion was gone. What remained was purpose—steel wrapped in blood and scars.
Outside, thunder rumbled one more time. The city wasn't waiting. Neither was he.