The dusk was settling over Los Angeles. From the upper floors of an office building, Detective Ethan stood by his window, staring out at the city. The light bled red and gold across the skyline, stretching shadows over the streets below.
He looked like a man half-swallowed by thought, weighed down by a day that refused to let go of him.
A knock interrupted the silence.
Without turning, Ethan muttered,
"Come in."
The door creaked open. Detective Crystalline stepped inside, her heels clicking softly against the polished floor.
Her brows were furrowed, a file clutched tightly in her hands. Without a word, she crossed the room, placed the documents on his desk, and stood waiting.
Ethan turned, scanned the papers for only a few moments, then tossed them aside with a sharp flick. Crystalline winced at the motion.
*Sigh~*
Ethan sighed as he rubbed his temples trying to release some tension.
"Are you okay, sir?"
Crystalline asked quietly, worry softening her voice.
"I'm fine, But the world isn't."
Ethan replied. He leaned back in his chair, exhaling.
His mind wandered back to the talk with Carla Myron, the lone witness from the alley murder. Her words still clung to him.
She had been trembling when she told him: how the victim had turned predator, how terror froze her body in place,until he appeared. A man who stepped out of the shadows like a comet in the night.
Carla described him as impossibly handsome, with short black hair and eyes that burned a deep, unnatural crimson.
A hood, simple street clothes, and over his shoulder a scythe taller than himself. She said he crushed the rapist's ankles with that monstrous blade, then shattered his skull with a bare fist.
Afterward, smoke had enveloped him, and he rose into the sky, dissolving into the night.
He had called himself a god. A reaper.
Ethan had spoken to the families of the other victims too, spouses blindsided by betrayal they hadn't even suspected. Most were devastated, some too disgusted to even speak.
He had forced their words out with fake papers and fabricated authority. And every answer came up the same: no strange activity, no warning signs. Nothing but ordinary lives ruptured by extraordinary violence.
"These supernatural motherfuckers,"
Ethan muttered under his breath.
"Hard to get, aren't they?"
Crystalline's voice broke the silence, trembling but curious.
"Sir, if I dare to ask… what are these superhumans, actually? I know you told me not to ask, but I can't help it. What are they, what do they do, and why do they hide?
What would happen if people knew? And… how can we ever bring justice to someone who can crush a skull like a watermelon?"
The tremor in her tone betrayed her fear. Her imagination alone left her skin crawling, the thought of beings who walked among them but moved like monsters.
Ethan rose slowly from his chair and walked back to the wide glass window, the dying light painting his silhouette in orange glow.
"They're called exorcists,They hunt mythical monsters. I've never seen one work with my own eyes, but I've heard enough. They've been around longer than we'll ever know.
I only stumbled onto them by accident and luck, if you want to call it that. The deeper I dug, the harder it became, until I found connections… and then the truth. Every government knows. Not just ours. They cover for them, keep them close. And I was made to sign a contract never to disclose it."
Ethan said.
Crystalline's voice tightened.
"Why keep quiet, sir?"
Ethan didn't turn. His reflection in the glass was hollow-eyed, grim.
"What do you think would happen if people knew the man sitting next to them on a bus could spit fire, or fly, or crush them with his bare hands? Panic. Fear. Injustice and god knows what. That's why, Governments keep the secret because they have to. And as for your question, how do we bring them to justice?"
He glanced at her over his shoulder, his voice low.
"We can't. We're just mortals. Some of them can dodge bullets."
Crystalline stood silent, pale. Ethan continued, his tone weary:
"There are others like me who knows, but they stay silent. Either forced to, or smart enough to realize the consequences of spreading that kind of information.
Our job is just to report what we see. Then the governments pass it to the Council of Exorcism. That council enforces the law. Powerful people, dealing with their own kind when one of them steps out of line. But of course they have their own full setup for security but like our normal government, the can't be everywhere. "
"Sir…"
Crystalline's voice cracked slightly.
"When you said they live among us… do you mean—"
Ethan cut her off, turning sharply.
"What did you expect? Another plane of existence? Of course they live among us."
The weight of that sank in. Crystalline steadied herself and asked,
"So we just report any unnatural activity to the government?"
Ethan returned to his desk, ignoring her question, his eyes falling on the discarded file. He lifted it again and read the detailed report of the seven corpses. His jaw tightened.
"There are two exorcists in the city right now, throwing balance into chaos. One's a brute who calls himself a god.
The other a shadow calling himself justice. Judging by how the victims died, they used some kind of exorcism art to kill them."
He set the file down.
"Crystalline, prepare a flight to Washington. We'll need to meet the President."
Her eyes widened, but she nodded and left without protest.
Alone again, Ethan slumped back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. This wasn't the first murder he'd tied to exorcists.
But these two hadn't even tried to hide their work. No careful cover-ups, no misdirection. Just raw, open power left for the world to stumble upon.
And it wasn't just Los Angeles. Similar cases were rising everywhere. Something was shifting. The balance was breaking. Ordinary people were starting to notice. Deaths piling higher, explanations running thinner.
Ethan rubbed his face, feeling suddenly older. There was tension in the air, a pressure building day by day. The world was on the edge of change.
He just didn't know which way it would fall.
For now, he closed his eyes and let exhaustion take him.
===
The culprit behind all this and Ethan's worry, is causing way bigger chaos in Japan.
Few hours before Morvathos landed on Japan. Inside the plane.
Morvathos gazed at the scene infront of him with peculiar expression and contemplating what to do.
'Hijack? At this day and age? How did they even get their guns in here? Is the security that lax? Bruh~. People nowadays can do almost anything with money, eh?. Now I kinda feel like they are the Gods, not me.'
Morvathos was crouching with his scythe slung over shoulder observed the hijack unfold.