Leonard exhaled sharply as the book in his hands pulsed again, the words shifting unnaturally, bleeding into his vision. [BINDING COMPLETE.]

  The moment the message appeared, a sudden force yanked him from reality. The battlefield, the corpse of the beast, the swirling abyss—they all shattered like fragile glass. His body plummeted into a void of ink-black nothingness.

  Then—

  Heat. Smoke. The coppery scent of blood.

  Leonard's eyes snapped open, but he wasn’t standing in the abyss anymore.

  He was home.

  Not the home of safety and warmth. Not the home of laughter and peace. The home of war. The home of death.

  A burning village stretched out before him, flames licking the sky, thick plumes of smoke swallowing the air. Screams rang out—high, panicked, guttural. Gunfire cracked like a relentless drumbeat.

  His small hands trembled. He wasn’t the battle-hardened warrior here. He wasn’t the nightmare that monsters feared.

  He was a child again. Weak. Defenseless.

  And he knew what came next.

  He turned, heart hammering against his ribs, eyes searching desperately for familiar faces. His mother. His father. His family.

  But they were already on the ground, lifeless, their bodies riddled with bullets. Their blood mixed with the dirt beneath them, forming puddles of crimson mud.

  Leonard couldn’t breathe. The world had collapsed.

  A figure stepped forward through the firelit haze, a shadowed silhouette clad in military gear. The man who led the slaughter. The man whose face Leonard would never forget, burned into his memory as deeply as the wounds carved into his soul.

  The leader of the mercenaries smiled, cold and detached. "Take him."

  Arms grabbed him from behind. Stronger, cruel hands. They dragged him away as he kicked and screamed, as his throat went raw begging for mercy. Begging for something that would never come.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  The nightmare blurred forward in time. Days, weeks, months. The training. The beatings. The torture. They had made him watch. They had broken him over and over until something inside him snapped.

  The nights were the worst.

  The woman.

  She stepped forward from the shadows of his memories, her figure bathed in flickering torchlight. The one who had tormented him most. The one who smiled when he bled.

  Her eyes gleamed with sadistic amusement as she traced the old scars on his young body, scars that she had given him. She liked the way he flinched. She loved the way his breath hitched when she loomed over him in the dark.

  She had whispered to him at night, honeyed words coated in venom. “Hate me. Hate all of us. Let that be the only thing that keeps you breathing.”

  Her hands were never kind. They held knives, ropes, chains—things meant to teach, to break, to mold. Her touch was fire and ice, leaving behind wounds that never healed, only buried themselves deeper into his bones.

  And he had.

  Hated them. Killed for them. Became what they wanted.

  The boy he had been died in that camp. What remained was Leonard Alighieri—the Maestro of Death.

  His innocence was ripped from him as violently as his childhood was stolen. He had no soft memories, no gentle past. There was only pain, blood, and survival.

  He had begged for death once.

  Then he learned to beg for revenge instead.

  The scene shattered.

  Leonard gasped, falling back into himself, collapsing onto his knees in the abyss. His chest heaved, sweat rolling down his skin despite the unnatural cold that surrounded him. His hands shook. Not from fear, but from the rage boiling just beneath his skin.

  The book lay open before him, its pages shifting, waiting.

  A single line formed.

  [NEW RECORD: ORIGIN UNLOCKED.]

  Leonard gritted his teeth. It was toying with him.

  The book wasn’t just a tool. It was a curse.

  He closed his fingers around it, forcing himself to steady his breath. If this was what it took to master it, so be it.

  His past would haunt him no matter where he went.

  But he wasn’t that child anymore.

  And this time, he would be the one in control.

  Alas, fate doesn’t always unfold in the ways we want, does it?

  could say something poetic about romance and fate, but let’s be real—some of you are here for blood, some for heartbreak, and some because you accidentally clicked the next chapter and are now too scared to leave. (???)

  Happy Valentine’s! May your OTPs survive, your heart remain unshattered, and your snacks be plentiful. ??