The 12-month mark to his execution was a week away, signalling the beginning of the end. And yet, the redhead couldn’t bring himself to care anymore.

  He walked past a mirror, a ragged excuse for a battle worn stranger gazed back. Crinkling his brows, lifting a hand, the figure mimicked his movements. Exhaling a breath, he hung his head, swiftly picking himself up and staring at the polished piece. Despite all his scrutiny, he realised the beaten excuse for a person gazing back, kept up with the mimicry.

  He went from assessing his overall appearance to picking at a hole in his shirt. Around the fabric, a red welt peeped out. The wound was stitched together with raw skin, barely held together by twine.

  Another wound garnered his attention, one over his shoulder. He could feel the gunshot piercing through skin, gushing black. A tweezer had to be stabbed in, digging the metal out his flesh. He had winced once or twice but realised the squirming did nothing more than worsen Raen’s chances of pulling out the bullet.

  His arms and legs felt sore. He dared not lift up the fabric and pour over the skin, fearful of what he might see. But compared to a mutilation, he hadn’t sustained anything severe nor permanent. Red welts that paved way for brown crusts, peeling away till silvering scars remained. A memento of his pain. Or rather life as it was for him. Nothing more than silvering scars.

  Exhaling a sigh, he shook his head, clearing up his thoughts. He was short on time, and the day had come.

  Working his way up the stairs, he glanced over the volume of tomes he shuffled past. Guilt-drenched pangs clawed at his heart. Despite the intrigue he had built up the first time he had come across the collection of books, in that moment he hadn’t a slice of energy left for anything but his tasks for the day.

  Turning a corner, his knuckles rapped against a tightly sealed door, awaiting his permission to enter.

  “Come in,” said Lilith, through a comm on the side of the door. A buzzer whistled, automatically sliding to the side, permitting Azrael admittance. Walking into the well-lit office chamber, he found her in a beige leather swivel, separated by a mahogany table from the pair of seats laid out for her visitors. He couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at the desk. His lips curled off his teeth. He couldn’t do much else than take a vacant seat. His fingers dug into the chair’s wooden armrests, his nails biting into the ridges.

  The other seat was occupied by a rather animatedly exasperated assassin in the middle of a heated conversation.

  “Oh, he’s here too.” The occupant of the other seat, rolled his eyes, throwing his arms in the air.

  Azrael narrowed his gaze at the raven-haired male beside him.

  “And what grievances do you come with?” asked Lilith.

  “Wasn’t I summoned here?” shot back the redhead.

  “Oh right,” she continued. “Fuck, your execution is soon, isn’t it? I was discussing the matter with Nakta here, who is quite reluctant to have you onboard for an upcoming mission he was requested for.”

  “Last thing I need is an imbecile tarnishin’ my record.”

  “You have finished five missions so far,” emphasized Lilith. “Besides, you were assigned to teach Azrael everything miasma related. How many lessons have you had with him?”

  “Maybe once a month–”

  “Never!” said the redhead, bluntly. His fingers dug further into the wood, crunching his nails. “Though I can’t blame him for it. With my arduous schedule, juggling all my current lessons, I doubt I’d have been able to take up his teachings too.”

  “That’s not the issue here.” Lilith waved him aside, her attention zeroing in on the raven-haired male. “It’s fine to have ambition, but if you remain at your current level, you’ll never reach where I am at.”

  Nakta clucked his tongue, looking away. “I get it already. I just need to take him along, yeah? But don’t expect me to prioritise his safety over completin’ the mission.”

  Azrael threw him a distasteful glance, propping his elbows up against the mahogany desk. He curled his fists, narrowing his gaze. “If I survive the mission, which I know I will, then I want downtime from my current lessons. And I want someone other than him,” he pointed a shaky, loathing finger at Nakta. “Anyone other than him, to teach me how to use miasma! I know I’m built for it.”

  “Look at you, talkin’ up a big game.” The raven-haired male guffawed, rolling his eyes.

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  “Enough.” Lilith crinkled her brow, pinching the bridge of her nose. “If you survive your mission with him, you can do as you please.”

  “Really?” asked Azrael, enthusiastic.

  “That is if you survive,” emphasized Nakta.

  Riding behind Nakta, was nothing short of debasing. Azrael had never been on a bike before, clambering onto the vehicle and hesitantly wrapping his arms around the raven-haired male’s waist, unsure of what he should do.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doin’?” asked Nakta, brushing off his arms. “Try not to get yourself killed before we even start the mission.”

  Knitting his brows in annoyance, the redhead scrambled for a hold, his fingers grasping the rear end of his seat, right when the engine was revved up. In a half-heartbeat, they tore through the front gates of Lilith’s stronghold, nearly tossing the redhead off the ride.

  Ever since he had been snagged by Lilith from his underground fight, he had spent nearly a year without leaving the place, indulging in nothing but training and aching with soreness. The wind that whistled past, washed away the mustiness he had accumulated. He felt like he was whisked away by liberation from the clutches of a shackleless prison.

  Medieval horses and bullock carts were nowhere in sight, neither were muddy roadways. Asphalt lined the roads where cars and bikes zipped past in a realm that had left the human world behind, in every aspect of advancement.

  Towering buildings littered the horizon, sharper than precarious spires off a mountain, scraping heaven’s hull. Not a speck of the rural countryside could be sighted. He would have compared the sprawling cityscape from his current reality with the cities close to his orphanage, but he hadn’t had a chance to explore much else, beyond the craigs of his village’s backwater wilderness. A different lifetime, bound by different shackles.

  He wondered how things would have been, if his life hadn’t been turned upside down by Mol’okh.

  Perhaps there was no way to know, apart from travelling through time, and back to the past. Or perhaps, there’s no more meaning in such idle thinking, when he was severed from the binds of anything resembling an inkling of his life from back then.

  “So, this is the Abyzz.” He viewed his present reality with a sense of awe. His younger self would have thought of all this as nothing more than a pipedream.

  Smirking, he felt his body lurch forward, springing off the ride. Instinctively, he tightened his grip around the hold, barely latching on than being flung past the horizon, like a shot out a cannon.

  “Give a heads up!” Gritting his teeth, the redhead realised the bike had come to an abrupt halt in front of a pair of wrecked gates.

  “Tsk, still clingin’ on like a sloth!? Damn imbecile!” Nakta had added an extra layer of seething to his seasoned contempt, clucking his tongue. “We got here quick enough.”

  Azrael bit back a curse, jumping off the bike. Shifting the belt around his waist, he adjusted the three blades hanging from his flanks. He carried two flashbangs and a grenade, foregoing guns.

  “Carryin’ the whole house on your arse?” asked Nakta, glowering at him.

  “I have an arsenal compared to the paltry blades hanging off your waist.” He scoffed at the raven-haired male’s underprepared, aloof nonchalance. “You must be one hell of an assassin if two swords are all you need.”

  “It doesn’t matter if I’m takin’ out the head of a gang or fightin’ an army. With my blades by my side, I could forgo the deadweight holdin’ me back. And of course, I have somethin’ called,” Nakta leaned in close, cupping a hand over his mouth, “M-I-A-S-M-A.”

  “My ass.” Azrael retorted, gritting his teeth. He held down his hand, wrapping around his blade’s hilt.

  “No need to be rattled. You have your ways, I have mine. All you have to do is survive today.” Nakta loosened a snicker, strolling through the wrecked gates, as though he owned the place.

  Pride in tatters, the redhead loosened the grip on his weapon, as he followed suit. He shook his head, scrambling to piece together the shattered fragments of his fervour. No way I’m letting him ruin my first mission.

  The duo cut through a tiled path leading to a five-storey mansion looming in the midst of acres of verdure, strewn with gutted demons alongside burnt and wrecked weapons. Vultures and crows helped themselves to a buffet of carcasses, the stench of death, pungent. Azrael took note of the birds of prey, pecking and tearing up the rotten riot, a notable upgrade compared to the powerless prisoners pillaged from the human world. Perhaps he didn’t have it in him, to forgive those that had brought him into the Abyzz. He wondered if he ever would. Even if it had pried him free of the grey life he had lamented about.

  At the end of the carnage riddled fields, stood a pair of knockers, mounted on twenty-foot-tall doors. Instead of the invitation in front of him, Nakta went in for a rope dangling from the ceiling attached to a bell. “Quite old fashioned, aren’t they?” Flicking his wrist, the bell resounded throughout the mansion, perturbing the birds feeding off the strewn carcasses.

  A colossal hand threw open the doors in response to the tolling bell. He ducked underneath the wooden frame of the entrance, while scratching his head in confusion. The lone eye nestled above the bridge of his nose peered out ahead, spanning the horizon. He scratched his head, as he slid his eye downwards, rocking back and forth between the pair of assassins, who were lesser than ants from his perspective.

  “Which one of ye fools, decided ta walk in ‘ere?” he asked, in a half-roar.

  “What happened to the folks livin’ here?” said Nakta in turn. “Their lawns’ a shabby mess.”

  Uttering a guttural roar of displeasure, the cyclops hunched over and narrowed his focus on Nakta. “We killed ‘em all a week back. What’s it ta ye, runt?”

  “Thank you for your confirmation.” The raven-haired male turned to the redhead, splaying a lopsided grin. “We’re at the right place. We could’ve sneaked in, but I decided a frontal approach would be more educative. You should thank me later for thinkin’ of teachin’ you the right stuff.”

  “What are we killing him with?” asked Azrael, his eyes flitting between the sheathed sword at his side and his ally’s set of katanas.

  “That’s why you need miasma,” he replied.

  Out the corner of his eye, the redhead noticed a flicker of movement and instinctively leapt back three strides, while a cloud of dust settled over the spot Nakta was standing at.

  When the dirt cleared, a mace lay on the cracked porch, the other end wielded by the cyclops. “Looks like I sent ye friend far, far away,” the cyclops said, watching the skyline.

  The redhead swallowed hard against a parched throat, sliding a hand over the hilt of his katana.