The journey back from the jagged peaks of Slovenia and the sun-drenched coastlines of Italy was a grueling ordeal that left Kenzii feeling more like a ghost than a man. Kenzii spent the entire trip surrounded by the relentless drone of jet engines and the stale smell of the sea that clung to his skin like a second layer of sweat. His body is still humming from the task of executing a businessman in Italy.
This was the rhythm of his life—a tactical dance of misdirection. He rarely flew directly to his kill zones; instead, he would book a legitimate flight to a neighboring country, then slip across the border via private jet or a nondescript fishing boat. It was a necessary precaution. He knew the patterns investigators looked for; he couldn't afford for a "Soul Collector" victim to appear every time a Monteriel passed through customs.
He had mastered the art of the "ghost traveler." To build his alibi, he frequented popular tourist destinations, snapping high-quality photos of landmarks and espresso cups to post on his private accounts. These digital breadcrumbs served as his insurance policy—a curated reality used to bury the truth of his whereabouts. To the world, he should be just a wealthy tourist.
When he finally reached Makati City, the sensory assault of the Philippine capital hit him hard. The streets were a chaotic symphony of honking jeepneys and the frantic energy of millions. Kenzii watched them through the tinted glass, feeling a hollow ache in his chest. He couldn't remember his own dreams, or if he had ever been allowed the luxury of having them.
He reached his penthouse and swiped his keycard. The electronic lock let out a familiar, sharp chirp before the door clicked open. Kenzii expected the cold, oppressive silence that usually greeted a man living with a thousand ghosts. He expected darkness.
Instead, his senses were invaded by the savory aroma of sizzling garlic and the sharp, acidic tang of vinegar. Beneath the smell of home-cooked food was the aggressive, rhythmic click-clack of mechanical keyboards.
"Oh, look who decided to show up! The international man of mystery has returned," Sota's voice rang out, dripping with his signature snark.
Kenzii froze. His pristine, minimalist sanctuary—a space carefully decorated in somber shades of slate and charcoal—had been violated. It no longer looked like a high-end condo; it looked like a tactical operations center. Three massive, military-grade aluminum suitcases lay open near the sofa. Tangled nests of black ethernet cables snaked across his designer rug like primitive vines, connecting to portable server towers that filled the room with an expensive, high-frequency whir.
In the kitchen, Alas was visible through the open floor plan. He looked absurd, wearing a floral cooking apron over his heavy CIDG tactical vest, casually stirring a pan of Adobo.
"You're late, Kenzii," Alas noted without looking up. "Traffic from NAIA is a nightmare, sure, but you've been on the tarmac for two hours. Did you stop for a secret coffee without us?"
"What is this?" Kenzii's voice was a raspy growl. He kept his left hand shoved deep into his hoodie pocket, his fingers white-knuckled as he tried to pin the restless, twitching limb against his thigh. "Why is your gear here? Why are you guys here?"
Sota didn't bother looking up from his three-monitor setup. His fingers flew across the keys, his eyes reflecting the rapid scroll of code.
"Last month's incident at the mansion was a wake-up call, cuz," Sota said, his voice losing its edge. "Those elders? They're content to let you rot in this curse as long as they're alive and stay rich. The Devil should have bled their wealth dry. Instead, he left them with enough wealth to claw their way back to the top. Greedees." Sota shook his head. "But Alas and I?... Nope, we aren't going to let you carry this debt alone." Sota offered a genuine smile, though it was still tinged with the teasing energy of an older brother.
"You can't stay here," Kenzii said, his voice dropping an octave in warning. Under his skin, the "itch" was beginning to burn. Ever since the incident in the US, the demonic influence had become more aggressive. At night, he had started chaining his left arm to the bedframe, terrified of what the "devil" might do while he slept. "It's not safe. You saw the footage. I don't... I don't control it anymore."
Alas turned off the stove and walked over, his expression uncharacteristically somber. He dropped a heavy tactical duffel bag onto the marble coffee table with a resounding thud.
"That's exactly why we're staying," Alas said firmly. "If you go off the rails, I'm the one with the combat training to pin you down. And Sota is the one who can loop the security cameras if that demon hand starts acting up. We're your cage now, Kenzii. And we're a hell of a lot more reliable than a hotel room."
"I'm serious, Alas. Leave," Kenzii warned again, his pocketed hand twitching so violently it looked like it was trying to punch its way out of the fabric.
"And I'm serious about this Adobo," Alas countered, trying to diffuse the mounting dread. "I used good soy sauce. The expensive stuff. You think I'm letting that go to waste just because you're having a 'dark and broody' moment? Sit. Eat. Then we look at the research."
Reluctantly, Kenzii sat. The scene felt like a fever dream: a professional killer and two high-level accomplices sharing comfort food in a room filled with enough hacking hardware to crash a national bank.
.
Sota spun his chair around, holding a tablet. "I've been digging, Kenzii. I've bypassed standard police records and cracked into the deep-tier archives of the IGCI and some very dark occult forums. If there's a curse contract, I'm certain there's a way to nullify it. I've been digging into the history of demons, and I finally found something."
He swiped the screen to reveal a grainy, haunting photograph of a stone fortress perched precariously on a limestone cliff.
"This is Houska Castle in the CzechRepublic," Sota explained. "It was built over a supposed bottomless pit that the 13th-century locals called the 'Gateway to Hell.' Legend says the castle was a seal—a stone lid designed to keep things from crawling out."
Kenzii leaned in, his fear momentarily eclipsed by a morbid curiosity.
"There's a record from 1639 about a man named Oronto who tried to trade everything for immortality. He failed, but his story is a mirror of yours. The difference is, you were forced into this bargain, while he begged for it."
"That's just a ghost story," Kenzii dismissed, though his voice lacked conviction.
"You have a literal devil for a hand, Kenzii," Sota deadpanned. "If I told people that, they wouldn't believe me either, but here we are. It's real."
Kenzii rolled his eyes, a brief flash of his old self. "Fine. So what's the plan?"
Alas slammed his hand on the table, grinning. "The plan is we're going. I've already filed for leave with the CIDG. Sota has spoofed our passports and cleared our flight paths. We leave for Prague in forty-eight hours."
"We?" Kenzii's voice cracked. "You'd risk your lives to go there with... with a monster like me?"
Alas's grin didn't reach his eyes this time. "Cuz, we're Monteriels. We were born into this blood. If we're going to hell anyway, we might as well go as a team. Besides," he patted the massive suitcases, "I packed the heavy-duty gear. Silver-plated restraints, high-frequency disruptors... and enough instant noodles to survive a siege."
Sota's laughter died instantly. His face went ghostly pale as he stared at Kenzii's lap. "Kenzii... your hand."
Kenzii looked down and gasped. His left hand had completely shredded through the pocket of his hoodie. It was no longer the hand of a man. It had transformed into a gnarled, obsidian limb, the skin textured like cooled, jagged lava. Long, black claws were extended, digging deep into the expensive fabric of the couch. A faint, violet mist began to curl around the cushions, smelling of ozone and rot.
The temperature in the condo plummeted. The low hum of the servers spiked into a piercing, metallic whine, and the overhead lights began to flicker in a rhythmic, heartbeat-like pattern.
"Kenzii, fight it!" Alas shouted, his hand moving toward the industrial zip-ties on his belt.
"I can't," Kenzii gasped, his vision blurring as a milky, white film began to cloud his pupils. He could feel a surge of power that wasn't human—it was ancient and violent.
Without warning, the demon hand lashed out. It didn't strike his cousins; it went for the source of the noise—the laptop on the table. With a sickening crunch, the claws crushed the chassis, sparks flying as the battery was pierced and short-circuited.
"My equipment!" Sota yelled, diving backward.
Kenzii threw himself off the couch, pinning his left hand against the cold marble floor to keep it from striking again. "Get back! Both of you!"
Inside his skull, the voices returned—the chorus of the four unknown voices. They weren't whispering anymore; they were screaming. The hand began to drag Kenzii across the floor toward Sota, the muscles in his arm bulging with a supernatural strength that defied physics.
We are Monteriels, Kenzii thought desperately. This hand... it knows it can't kill my kin. Is it trying to drown me in even more debt?
Alas lunged, throwing his entire body weight onto Kenzii's back to pin him down. "Sota! The sedative! Now!"
Sota scrambled to a suitcase, fumbling for a pressurized pneumatic injector. He rushed back, narrowly dodging a swiping claw, and slammed the injector into the side of Kenzii's neck. The sharp hiss of the sedative was the last thing Kenzii heard before the world dissolved into black.
.
Hours later, the sun began to rise, casting a bruised orange light over the Makati skyline. Kenzii woke up on the floor, his limbs feeling like lead. He realized he was bound—not with standard cuffs, but with heavy-duty steel cables that secured his left arm to a structural concrete pillar in the center of the room.
Alas was asleep on the floor nearby, still clutching a sedative even in his exhaustion. Sota was at a different, smaller workstation, his face bathed in the blue light of a backup monitor. He looked like he had aged ten years overnight.
"You're awake," Sota said quietly, his voice devoid of humor.
"Did I... did I hurt any of you?" Kenzii's voice was barely a whisper.
"No. You just trashed four thousand dollars' worth of custom tech," Sota replied, turning his chair around. He held up a charred circuit board. "But you didn't get the hard drive. The coordinates for the Czech site are safe."
Kenzii went silent as his internal "system" flickered to life, projecting a new target profile directly in front of his face.
Target Profile:
Name: Anastaliya Petronva Novikova.
Age: 31 Years Old.
Occupation: CEO.
Ethnicity: Russian.
Transgressions: Fraud, Embezzlement, Money Laundering, Murder, Serial Rape.
Kenzii's brow furrowed as he read the final line of the profile. "What the hell is this?"
"What is it, Kenzii?" Sota asked, concerned.
"I have a new target."
"That fast? Oh, right, it's been days since the last one," Sota remarked, standing up to begin the tedious process of unbinding the steel cables from Kenzii's arm. "Anyway, why the shock? There's no difference between this one and the others, right? If they aren't murderers, they're thieves. If they aren't thieves, they're rapists. Usually, they're all three at once."
"You're right," Kenzii said, his voice flat. "All of that is listed here."
"Then why the face?"
"It's just weird to see," Kenzii replied, staring at the system target profile of a woman he had to kill. "A serial rapist... who is a woman."
She was one of the 92 remaining souls he needed to collect to pay off his blood debt. And she was about to discover that the Monteriel debt always gets paid.