The sirens outside the compound grew louder, blending into the chaos that still raged inside.
Jayden felt himself slipping — not just from the blood loss, but from the crushing weight pressing down on his soul.
Wendy's voice cut through the haze.
"Jayden! Look at me! Don't you dare close your eyes!"
But he could barely focus.
He had thought killing Lucian would bring peace.
Instead, it felt like standing in a graveyard of his own making, the ghosts whispering promises they never intended to keep.
There were no winners. Only survivors.
---
Jeff and Elias dragged Jayden toward the extraction van, gunfire still cracking in the distance.
"We're burning this place down," Jeff said grimly.
"No traces. No second chances."
Flames began to rise, swallowing the shadows, erasing the blood, the lies, the betrayal.
Everything Jayden had fought for — gone in a funeral pyre.
As the van sped away, Jayden pressed his forehead against the cool window, watching the inferno shrink in the distance.
Lucian's dead eyes still haunted him.
The weight of what he had done was heavier than any chain.
---
Later, at a hidden safehouse on the outskirts of the city, the doctors worked to patch Jayden up.
Stitches, bandages, morphine — they could fix his body.
But not the part that mattered.
Wendy sat by his side through the night, silent, her hand wrapped tightly around his.
Around dawn, she finally spoke.
"You did what you had to do."
Her voice cracked slightly.
"He would have kept coming. You know that."
Jayden didn't respond.
He just stared out the window, at the first gray light of morning, feeling like a stranger in his own skin.
For the first time, he wondered...
Had he become the monster he once feared?
---
While Jayden recovered, a storm was brewing elsewhere.
In a luxurious penthouse high above the glittering city, a woman in a crimson dress sipped her wine, her eyes cold and calculating as she watched the news footage of the compound fire.
At her side stood a younger man, handsome but cruel-looking.
"So Lucian is dead," she said, smiling faintly.
"Finally. Now it's our turn."
She turned to the man.
"Find Jayden. Bring him to me. Alive."
The man nodded, a wicked glint in his eyes.
The hunt had only just begun.
And Jayden was already bleeding.
---