Chapter 4: The Hunter and the Devil
The city was bleeding.
Not the kind of bleeding that stained the sidewalks with crimson rivers, but the kind that drained something deeper—its will, its order, its sanity.
For two weeks straight, Liberty City had awoken to the same headline:
ANOTHER DEAD. ANOTHER SHADOW MISSING.
It was no longer whispered in alleyways or confined to hushed newsroom meetings. The terror had spread to every living room, every screen, every church pulpit. Children were being told not to wander after dark, adults no longer trusted the glow of their own reflections. The fear was no longer of thieves or killers—it was of something nameless. Something that could reach inside a man's very soul and erase it.
And at the center of it all, unseen yet omnipresent, was H.I.M.
---
The Mayor's Breaking Point
Mayor Grimson had always been a proud man. He thrived on speeches, on the illusion of control, on standing tall before the cameras while the city rotted beneath his polished shoes. But this was different.
Now, he looked like a broken puppet.
Inside his chamber, he raged before his council, his hands trembling as he clutched a half-drained bottle of scotch. His voice cracked, a hoarse scream against the silence of his trembling advisors.
"Do you fools understand what we are dealing with?" He slammed the bottle on the desk, shattering glass across the polished wood. "This is no ordinary killer. He doesn't just take lives. He's—he's rewriting reality itself!"
The council members shifted uncomfortably. One cleared his throat. "With respect, sir, we cannot confirm—"
"Shadows!" Grimson roared, his face red and veins throbbing. "They have no shadows! How do you explain that? Tell me! When a man's shadow is carved out of existence—what the hell is he then?"
No one dared answer.
Behind them all stood Edward Scotts, stoic and silent, the weight of the city pressing against his shoulders. He had seen the senator's corpse. He had seen the hollow space where light refused to bend, where a shadow should have been but wasn't.
The image had burned into his mind, deeper than any scar.
Grimson's eyes locked onto him, desperate.
"You told me he was a man, Commissioner. Tell me again. Tell me this isn't some monster out of hell."
Edward's jaw tightened. He wanted to say yes. He wanted to say it was a man, flesh and blood, someone who could be caught, tried, and killed like any other criminal. But the truth gnawed at him like a disease: he wasn't sure anymore.
---
Arrival of the Hunter
That evening, the sound of an approaching engine cut through the storm.
A sleek black car pulled into Liberty under no registration, escorted by silence. When the door opened, a tall figure stepped out, her presence commanding before she even spoke.
Gina Moretti.
Her reputation had arrived before she did. Whispered among mercenaries, cursed among criminals, feared by anyone who had survived her blade. An assassin polished to perfection—not for greed, not for pleasure, but for precision.
She moved with the economy of a predator, her trench coat sweeping just above her boots, her eyes sharp, calculating. No wasted motion, no wasted breath.
Edward greeted her at the safehouse, its walls plastered with crime scene photos, maps, and frantic scribbles of possible patterns.
"He's not random," Edward muttered, almost to himself. "Every target connects. Senators, mob bosses, fixers, bankers—they all fed the same hand. Government money laundering, organized crime networks, black deals. He's… dismantling the system."
Gina's eyes flicked across the board, her expression unreadable. She traced one photo—an industrial magnate, his chest carved with the word "DEBT."
She smiled faintly, the kind of smile that belonged to a hunter who smelled blood.
"So he kills with purpose. That makes him predictable."
Edward hesitated. "No. It makes him dangerous. He's… not just killing them. He's stripping something away. Their shadows—"
Gina cut him off, her voice sharp.
"Commissioner, I don't chase shadows. I chase men. Men bleed. Men die. Show me his trail. I'll carve the rest."
Edward studied her face, searching for any sign of doubt. There was none. He handed her the latest report. "Then pray you're right. Because if he isn't a man anymore, we're unleashing you on something we don't understand."
Her smile widened, colder this time.
"Then I'll understand him by cutting him open."
---
The Devil's Whisper
Far from the city lights, in the ruins of a burned orphanage, H.I.M sat in silence.
Rain pattered through the broken roof, streaking down his face, mixing with the soot and dried blood on his coat. His hands trembled—not from weakness, but from the whispers gnawing inside his skull.
"You've done well. Another senator, another debt collected. Do you feel it? Do you feel their screams feeding me?"
The voice slithered through his mind, black and endless.
He pressed his hands against his temples, shaking. "You promised me vengeance. You said I could kill them all. You said I'd remember my family."
"And you will. So long as you keep paying."
The laughter that followed was not human. It was jagged, broken, like chains rattling in a furnace.
But then the voice shifted, soft and mocking.
"Haven't you noticed, my vessel? Their faces. Your wife. Your child. They fade, don't they? The more you kill, the less you dream of them."
His body froze.
Images flashed in his mind—his wife's smile, once sharp, now blurry. His child's laughter, distant, muffled.
"No." He shook his head violently. "No, I won't forget them. I'll never forget."
"Everything has a price. Even vengeance."
He let out a ragged scream that echoed through the ruins, his voice breaking against the storm.
---
The Blood Market Massacre
The underground Blood Market was supposed to be untouchable. Hidden beneath the city's industrial quarter, guarded by mercenaries and bought-off cops, it was where the worst of humanity traded weapons, drugs, and flesh.
Tonight, it was silent.
When police breached the compound hours later, they found carnage. Bodies littered the floor in grotesque shapes, twisted as if their souls had been ripped out. And worse—every wall was marked with the scorched outlines of shadows. Shadows that no longer had bodies.
One man survived, dragging himself through the blood with his leg shattered. His voice was broken, shaking with terror.
"He didn't… he didn't touch them. They just… screamed. And their shadows—" He vomited, trembling uncontrollably. "God, their shadows…"
The footage leaked online before dawn. By morning, the world watched in horror as Liberty's terror was broadcast globally.
And for the first time, governments outside Liberty began to whisper the same thing:
The Devil walks among us.
---
The Stalking at the Docks
Gina tracked his movements like a wolf reading pawprints.
The Blood Market was only the beginning. His pattern pointed toward the docks, where a shipment of illegal weapons was set to arrive.
She perched on a crane above the port, the wind whipping through her hair, her breath steady. Below, men moved crates, laughing, smoking. They thought themselves untouchable.
Then the air changed.
The laughter died. One man dropped his flashlight. The beam swung wildly before settling on something unnatural.
Shadows stretched. Longer, wider, snaking across the floor like living things. The men froze as their own silhouettes betrayed them, tightening around their throats, snapping bones with invisible force.
Gunfire erupted, but bullets pierced only darkness. Screams echoed, then silence swallowed the dock.
When the smoke cleared, only one figure stood in the rain.
H.I.M.
His coat hung heavy, his body radiating unnatural stillness. His eyes glowed faintly, piercing the storm. His presence was suffocating—less like a man, more like an executioner summoned from the abyss.
Gina stepped forward, boots tapping against metal. Her blade glinted under the floodlights.
"They say you're a devil," she said calmly. "Let's find out."
H.I.M turned his head, his gaze meeting hers. For a long moment, neither moved. The rain seemed to freeze midair.
For the first time, the hunter had come face to face with the Devil.
---
The Devil's Price
But even as the moment stretched, H.I.M staggered. His vision blurred. His chest burned with invisible fire.
"Careful, vessel. Power always costs. Use me too much… and you'll lose what little of yourself remains."
His wife's face flickered again—blurred, distorted, almost unrecognizable.
Panic clawed at his chest. His rage had carried him this far, but now, for the first time, fear whispered back.
Not fear of Gina. Not fear of death.
Fear of forgetting.
He clenched his fists, the storm around him howling as the shadows began to twist again.
The hunter raised her blade. The devil's vessel steadied himself.
And the war for Liberty truly began.