Chapter 1: The Road to Duskwatch.

  The mountain twisted like a serpent, slithering through the dark. Patches of mist floated across the cracked asphalt, glowing under the gaze of the moon.

  Far beneath the road, the restless ocean crashed against the sturdy rocks, as if wanting to tell something, but its voice muffled by the night wind.

  In the distance, Duskwatch glistened to life. Towering skyscrapers piercing the skies, its lights glowing like ember that refused to die out. A crown of smog clinging to the city edge, tainted orange by the restless hum of the industries. But despite all the light it gave out, it was but a city built on shadows, and for its residents’ darkness was home itself.

  A distant growl echoed through the night.

  Blackthorn roared through the mountain pass, splitting embers as it’s majestic matte black frame glistening under the moonlight devoured the road. Remnants of crimson paint clawed through the rust. The sound of its engine echoing through the green hills covered in darkness.

  The rider, a shadow of his machine. A black leather jacket, weather and torn. Dark hair lashed against his face, untouched by the helmet that dangled carelessly from the bike’s side. He didn’t care. Fear had no place here.

  His hands gripped the handlebars, steady despite the biting cold. The mountain wind clawed at him, the rush of the ride drowned it away. The world blurred to him, an endless stream of shadows and headlights.

  But something felt off.

  The headlights of an approaching truck flared, illuminating the asphalt which laid ahead. Its horn howled, the biker tensed. He shifted, preparing to swerve back.

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  But then, right when he thought danger was gone, another truck in the other lane.

  Blinding white light approached, the two behemoths came crashing down like a calamity, the space between the biker and the light shrinking by each heartbeat.

  Stuck.

  The biker’s chest tightened. Every instinct screamed, brake, turn, anything. But the white light had no mercy, the behemoths thundered forward. Time slowed. The world twisted. His eyes shut.

  And then, nothing.

  Sound disappeared, the horns, the roars of the trucks, Blackthorn’s engine. Even the ocean’s cries. The biker blinked. The darkness hung to the sky, still yet darker than ever.

  Everything had stopped. Yet the weight of the moment, the trembling echo of death, remained within him.

  He got off his bike, his body still on the bike, frozen in time, but he himself stood away.

  A shadow creeped through the dark. The biker turned.

  The air thickened. Black smoke emerged from within the asphalt’s cracks, tendrils twisting like a serpent’s tail. The temperature fell. And then from within the dark.

  A shadow, a figure, towering from the dark, cloaked with it. No not a person, not human in any way. More like a suggestion of limbs and dread.

  The biker couldn’t breathe, nor could he scream.

  A massive hand, a claw, made of darkness itself. Slowly extending to the frozen biker.

  Not rushed. Not violent. The biker wanted to move. But it moved with a certainty, one of inevitability.

  Its fingers grazing through the biker’s shoulder, lowering it’s head next to the biker’s.

  And then a low whisper, “The deal has been made.”

  The darkness pulsed, and the world shattered to nothing.

  And he was back.

  Blackthorn’s engine roared once again. The trucks not there any longer. The road ahead, empty like a desert. Everything returned, as if nothing had ever happened.

  But the biker’s trembling hands spoke a different tale.

  “What the hell was that?” he whispered in his ragged breath, the words lost beneath the the engine’s hum.

  Nothing could answer him.

  But one thing he knew for sure,

  Whatever the devil gave, it was sure to take it back.