The assassin didn’t make it far.

Rain swallowed the city, turning streets into veins of black glass. His sedan tore down alleys, tires shrieking against stone, but another shape hunted him. An SUV without lights kept its distance, shadows within shadows, patient as wolves. The assassin checked his mirror once, twice. Nothing. He thought he’d lost them.

He hadn’t.

When he ditched the car near the subway, he moved like a phantom, rifle case clutched tight. He slipped into the station, expecting only silence and the distant moan of trains. Instead, the click of boots echoed behind him. Too late. The shadows closed in.

He tried to draw his pistol. A blade kissed his wrist, steel flashing once, and the gun clattered uselessly onto the tracks. Another man drove a fist into his ribs, folding him in half. He gasped, staggered, and then the bag went over his head. The world disappeared into darkness.

The cellar stank of mold and iron. The walls wept with condensation, and the single bulb overhead buzzed like an insect trapped in glass.

The assassin sat tied to a chair, stripped to his undershirt, blood smearing his mouth. Heavy rope bit into his wrists. His chest rose and fell too fast, a trapped animal learning its cage.

John stood before him, coat off, sleeves rolled. His knuckles were already raw. He didn’t bother with theatrics. Each question landed like a hammer; each silence was punished with the sound of flesh breaking.

Owen watched.

He stood against the wall, arms folded, the dim light catching only the pale angles of his face. His eyes were wide at first—too human, too young for this pit. But the longer it went on, the less he flinched.

The air was thick: muffled screams, the copper tang of blood, rope creaking under desperate thrashing. The assassin’s teeth cracked red when he finally spat words.

“You don’t… you don’t understand who I serve.”

John’s fist silenced him. “We don’t need sermons,” he growled. “We need names.”

The assassin coughed, laughed weakly, a rattle more than a sound. “You Royals think you own this city. But there are older shadows. Deeper ones. The Order moves you like pieces on a board.”

John’s hand tightened in his hair, dragging his face up into the bulb’s light. “Names,” he repeated.

The assassin hesitated, eyes rolling toward Owen as if the boy were the true judge in the room. For a moment, silence stretched long enough to hear the bulb buzzing overhead. Then he whispered:

“Thanos.”

The word hit harder than any fist.

Owen froze, his breath catching sharp in his chest. He stepped forward without meaning to, his voice breaking through the cellar. “What did you say?”

The assassin smirked through split lips. “Your father. The lion without a leash. He ordered it. You were never meant to live.”

Owen’s vision narrowed, the walls closing in until only the chair and that broken man existed. His heart pounded, not like fear, but like a war drum. His throat felt tight, words caught between disbelief and a hatred so raw it burned.

“You’re lying,” Owen whispered.

But the assassin only chuckled, spraying blood onto the stone floor. “Look at you. You already know it’s true.”

John’s jaw tightened. He glanced at Owen, waiting—for command, for denial, for anything. But Owen didn’t speak. His face was unreadable, the still mask of someone whose world had just cracked.

John turned back to the chair. He didn’t waste time. The blade slid quick across the assassin’s throat, ending the laughter in a wet gurgle. The body slumped forward, twitching once, then still. The cellar went silent, save for Owen’s breathing.

The boy stared at the corpse, his hands trembling at his sides. Something inside him split open—not loudly, not visibly, but like glass cracking beneath pressure.

He thought of his brother. Of Allen’s blood. Of the dreams that haunted him, faceless figures reaching out. Now one of those faces had a name. His father’s.

John wiped the blade clean and looked at him. “You heard what he said. What do you believe?”

Owen’s eyes flickered up, blue and burning cold. His voice was low, steady, and terrifying in its calm:

“I believe he’s already dead. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

Across the city, in the Vigilante Council’s chamber, Lesley Royale stood at the head of the obsidian table. Cloaked figures murmured of betrayal, of The Order’s reach, of assassins slipping through cracks. Ben leaned forward, voice smooth but edged like steel.

“They are not testing the clan anymore. They are testing you, Lesley.”

The old man’s gaze was frost, his fingers tapping once on the black oak. “Then they will learn why shadows fear the fire.”

But in the silence after, Ben’s eyes lingered on his nephew’s empty chair. He wondered—not if Owen would survive this storm, but what kind of storm he would become.

That night, Owen sat alone in his room, staring at his reflection in the dark glass of the window. Rain smeared the city beyond, and for the first time, he did not see a boy in the glass.

He saw something colder.

The cellar stank of blood, but its echo followed him here, into his bones. The assassin’s final words gnawed at him.

“Thanos.”

Owen closed his eyes. Inside, a decision sharpened like a blade. His father’s face hovered in the dark, and he didn’t flinch from it.

The boy who would rule had just taken his first step toward patricide.

Chapter 8 End