Liam's hands did not shake.
The warehouse was cold, smelling of damp concrete and stale fear. His target—a man named Richard Greer, according to the dossier—was sobbing against the duct tape binding him to the steel support beam. Liam ignored the tears. He'd learned long ago that monsters cried prettiest when caught.
"Please," Greer choked out around the gag. "Money… I have money…"
Liam didn't answer. He laid his tools on the plastic sheet: pliers, a boning knife, wire cutters. Each placed with ritual precision. In his previous life—the one before the killing began—he'd been an accountant. Order. Precision. These were his virtues. He applied them now to a different kind of ledger.
He'd found Greer's ledger first. The real one, hidden behind a false panel in his study. Not the financial records, but the inventory. Names. Ages. Shipping routes. Liam had stared at the list of forty-seven children, his stomach cold and still. Then he'd begun his own audit.
Seventeen entries in his personal ledger now. Seventeen monsters erased. Greer would be eighteen. The police would find the body, the evidence, and the anonymous tip leading to Greer's offshore accounts. They'd call it a vigilante killing. The newspapers would debate morality. Liam didn't care about debates. He cared about balance.
The first cut was always clinical. No rage. No pleasure. Just the application of pressure, the parting of tissue, the controlled spill of crimson. A butcher's work, really. Removing corruption from the world's meat.
Greer screamed, a muffled, wet sound.
Liam worked in silence, his movements economical. He was removing the little finger of Greer's right hand—a symbol, for those who knew how to read it. A message to the others in the network: I know how you signal each other. Your code is broken.
That's when the warehouse doors exploded inward.
"POLICE! FREEZE!"
Blue and red lights strobed through the dusty air. Liam didn't freeze. He finished the cut, placing the severed digit in a small evidence bag. He'd meant to mail it to Greer's partner in the trafficking ring.
"DROP THE WEAPON! ON THE GROUND!"
He looked at his knife. The steel was clean, reflecting the fractured light. He looked at Greer, still alive, still a threat. The math was simple: if arrested, Greer's lawyers would have him out in months. More children would vanish. The ledger would remain unbalanced.
Liam made his decision.
He moved.
Not toward the police, but toward Greer. Two steps, a pivot, the knife rising in a short, efficient arc. It wasn't the kill he'd planned—too quick, too merciful—but it would balance the books.
The gunshot was louder than he expected.
It didn't hurt, not at first. A tremendous impact in his chest, like being hit with a sledgehammer. He stumbled, looking down at the dark flower blooming on his shirt. His accountant's mind noted the location: left ventricle. Fatal within minutes.
He fell to his knees beside Greer's body. Two corpses for the price of one. Poor efficiency.
As the world bled away to gray, Liam felt… nothing. No fear. No regret. Only a faint disappointment that the ledger would remain incomplete. So many entries left uncrossed.
At least, he thought, the darkness closing in, I balanced this one.
---
The next sensation was pressure. Terrible, crushing pressure on all sides. A wet, tight tunnel squeezing him, pushing him forward. Then blinding light and a shocking, icy cold.
Sound exploded—shouting, a woman's cry, a slap.
His lungs burned, and he sucked in air with a ragged, screaming breath. A sound he didn't control. A tiny, infantile wail.
Hands—huge, gentle hands—lifted him. His vision was a blur of shapes and colors. A face swam into focus above him: a woman, pale, sweating, strands of dark hair stuck to her forehead. Her eyes were the color of a summer forest, and they were filled with tears of exhausted joy.
"My son," she whispered, her voice a trembling melody. "Oh, my beautiful boy."
Something cracked inside Liam's chest. Not a physical break, but the shattering of a wall he hadn't known he'd built. He'd heard love in voices before—parents searching for missing children in news reports, spouses begging for mercy for their partners. He'd recognized it academically. But this… this was aimed at him. This raw, overwhelming warmth was for him.
He tried to speak, to say anything, but only a gurgle emerged. His body was tiny, useless. His mind—Liam's mind, with its ledgers and cuts and cold calculations—was trapped in a fragile infant's skull.
The woman—his mother—pressed him to her chest. He felt her heartbeat, rapid and strong, against his cheek. He smelled blood, sweat, and something sweet and clean. Her scent.
A man's face appeared beside hers. Broad, bearded, with eyes that were tired but blazing with fierce pride. "Elara," he said, his voice a deep rumble. "He's perfect."
"He has your nose, Gareth," the woman—Elara—laughed wetly.
Liam stared. He took in the stone walls of the room, the fire in a hearth, the midwife in simple woolen clothes. No warehouse. No concrete. No police sirens.
Reincarnation.
The word floated through his stunned mind. A concept from fantasy novels and religious texts. Not real. Couldn't be real.
But the cold certainty of the bullet was gone. The weight of his thirty-two years was gone. He was here. In a new body. In a new world.
The midwife cleaned him, wrapped him in a soft linen cloth. His new father, Gareth, took him, holding him with a clumsy, terrifying gentleness. "Welcome to House Vance, little warrior," the man murmured. "To the kingdom of Veridia. You are Kaelan. Kaelan Vance."
Kaelan.
He tested the name in his mind. It felt foreign. A label for this new flesh.
As Gareth handed him back to Elara, Kaelan's new eyes scanned the room. The tools by the hearth: iron, not steel. The window: thick, imperfect glass. The clothes: rough-spun fabrics. Medieval-level technology.
His old mind began to work, pushing past the shock and the unfamiliar emotions. He assessed. He cataloged.
New world. New family. New body. Weak. Helpless.
The last two words sent a jolt of pure, primal terror through him. He had not felt fear when the bullet hit. He felt it now. This vulnerability was a cage. He was prey again, as he had been long before he became the hunter.
Elara hummed a lullaby, her fingers stroking his cheek. The touch was so tender it was almost painful.
In that moment, surrounded by unfamiliar love and drowning in helplessness, a vow formed in the deepest part of his soul. It was not a shouted promise, but a cold, hard seed, planted in the fertile soil of his old resolve and new fear.
Never again.
He would never be this weak. He would never be this helpless. He would never let anything threaten this… this fragile, terrifying warmth he was being offered.
He would learn this world's rules. He would find its levers of power. And he would protect this new ledger—this family—with the same ruthless, precise efficiency he had once used to balance the old one.
The infant Kaelan closed his eyes, letting the lullaby wash over him. Inside, the seed of his vow took root, fed by the memory of a boning knife and the feel of a mother's heartbeat.
Never again.
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End of Chapter 1
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