The Hammer of War, Chapter 51

Name: Amir Azad
Title: War-Summoner
War Points: 0

STR – 42
DEX – 33
VIT – 153

One month.

It had been one whole month since Alexandra and I crossed into South Korea, and in that time we had built for ourselves two lives—one that could be photographed, filed away, and shown to neighbors, and another that could never be spoken of. The first was a high-rise condominium in Seoul, bought outright in cash and with paperwork so clean it would pass even the most suspicious landlord’s inspection. The second was dug beneath an abandoned structure on the outskirts of the city, an underground room with reinforced walls and a door heavy enough to stop a car. I used the [Carnifex] to perform the digging and it was terrifying how quickly it was able to do so. That one held our real valuables: gold bars wrapped in burlap, neat stacks of American dollars bound in plastic, passports under a dozen names, and other items no honest person should own.

Most of it had come from China. The Triads still didn’t know it was us, though I imagined some of their men were sharpening knives for whoever they thought had taken their goods. They could sharpen until their arms fell off; they had no faces to put to their fury, no addresses to aim at, no trail to follow.

Money was no longer an obstacle. We were, by any reasonable metric, millionaires. That kind of freedom was dangerous. People with too much of it either got soft or got careless. I wasn’t planning on being either.

To keep the wrong eyes from finding me, I kept the [Blank] aura at a setting so low it was barely there. Lower than level one. Just enough to cloud the soul’s scent, if you could call it that—the Great-Slayer Granthi had told me that was how the supernaturals tracked their prey. Most mortals wouldn’t notice a thing, but for the creatures who could reach across cities with their senses, I was a ghost. Somewhere out there, in a world of a billion people, there were probably a million other men named Amir Azad. I was just another one of them, and Seoul’s streets didn’t care to remember faces for long.

The city also had more Indians than I expected. Not enough to stand out, but enough that the sight of me didn’t draw stares–not too much, anyway. That suited me just fine, though I still stood out quite a bit in the pedestrian sense, given that my skin color made me stand out in any crowd I was walking through, but that hardly mattered. The South Korean Dialect, Hangugeo, was pretty easy to learn. 

Our nights belonged to the hunt. We went after the things that hunted humans—quietly, without the theatrics of heroics, which was exactly what I was going for now. Stealth. A Vindicare was to be unseen and unheard, unnoticed by their targets. In thirty days, we’d ended three of them, each one dying through a clean headshot before they ever had a chance to notice me. One vampire, two stray devils. That might not sound like much, but every kill counted. The devils in particular had bodies like steel cable, strength layered into every inch of them. When I dragged the last breath from their husks with [Soul Siphon] and devoured their souls, I grew.

The numbers didn’t lie.

STR – 46
DEX – 39
VIT – 160

One month’s work, and I was stronger already. And these were from just three souls.

The fourth would make me stronger still. An Incubus. A predator who didn’t hunt in alleys or shadows but in the open, smiling under streetlamps, wearing a face he’d stolen. In the daylight he was Kim Hyun Tae, a respectable dentist with a clean office in a modest neighborhood, the kind of man parents trusted to treat their children. He had no wife, no parents, no circle of friends—just polite nods from neighbors and a name on the mailbox. The landlord, Alexandra discovered, didn’t even know what unit he lived in. Likely the man’s memory had been brushed clean by a glamour.

The creature didn’t butcher his victims in some alley. He left them breathing, barely, and then set the stage for their deaths. Car accidents. Falls from rooftops. Drownings in shallow rivers. The police saw tragedy, misfortune. Alexandra’s work had tied him to at least fifteen women, each of them young, each of them drained of something unseen before their bodies were broken in ways the human mind could explain.

The real Kim Hyun Tae had been dead for years. This thing had slipped into his life like a hand into a glove.

Now he stood under the sickly orange glow of a streetlight, leaning just close enough to a girl to seem familiar. She was laughing at something he said. Her coat was thin for the weather, arms crossed against the chill. His posture was relaxed, too relaxed for a stranger, and every small movement was measured to close the gap between them.

I had the [Exitus Rifle] leveled on him from across the street, scope steady, crosshairs fixed at center mass. The rifle was loaded with [Hellfire Rounds], each one enough to cook the inside of a supernatural before they hit the ground. The [Tau Rail Rifle] would have punched through him and whatever else stood behind, and I wasn’t interested in explaining a hole in the side of an apartment building or why there was a crater on the ground. It was perfect for killing big targets, but it was little too powerful. 

The reticle rose and fell with his breathing. My finger found the trigger. One shot is all it’s gonna take. One shot and he’d be reduced to ashes, like all the others. [Soul Siphon], thankfully, still worked on such remains. 

From my left came the sound of laughter. Boots scraping asphalt. A group spilled from the mouth of an alley beside him—half a dozen teenagers, faces red from drink, the sharp smell of cheap soju on their breath. They carried their noise with them, stumbling into my line of sight, brushing shoulders with the Incubus as if he were just another man.

The scope filled with bodies that I could not just shoot down. My shot was gone. I eased my finger off the trigger. Watched. Waited. 

Annoying. 

More irritating than the interruption was the fact that the Incubus had decided to move with the crowd. It wasn’t caution—he hadn’t seen me. Just bad luck for me. Or good luck for him, depending on how the night went.

I slid the [Exitus Rifle] back into my [Inventory] and rose from the crouch, boots quiet on the gravel. A short jump carried me to the next building over, and then another, each leap covering half the distance of the street below. The city air was cold and faintly metallic, tinged with fried oil from a diner a block away. From above, the Incubus and his mark were a slow-moving island in a noisy tide, weaving through the narrow lane as if the world around them didn’t exist.

He wasn’t protecting himself with the crowd. Not directly. He was shielding the girl—keeping her face hidden from anyone who might know her. I’d seen it before. Predators with a knack for blending in, letting the herd carry them along until they could peel their prey away without anyone noticing.

His apartment was only four blocks out. Easy walking distance. If he kept this pace, he’d be there in less than ten minutes.

An ambush inside his own home had its advantages. Four walls meant no bystanders. No variables I didn’t control. And he had no reason to believe anyone knew what he was—he’d buried his trail well. Too well. It had taken Alexandra weeks of picking at loose threads to find the pattern beneath his life. Without her, he’d still be out here smiling at strangers.

The Hunters might have stumbled onto him one day. The Sikh Demon Hunters, too. But only if they’d already been looking. In Seoul, Incubi were a dime a dozen. And even among them, this one was small fry. Not worth a faction’s full attention. Just worth mine.

I angled across the rooftops, outpacing the crowd, until the street curved toward his block. The building he called home barely looked lived in from the outside. No signage. No lights on in the windows. Just a narrow door set between a laundromat and a pawn shop with a rusted security grate. The kind of place no one thought about twice.

His apartment sat on the top floor, three stories up, tucked beneath a flat stretch of roof that sloped just enough to keep the rain from pooling. The window was open. It always was. I’d learned why—cool, dry air kept the place comfortable year-round, and the chill was a perfect excuse to coax women beneath his sheets. Warmth as bait. Subtle. Calculated.

Tonight, the open window was a flaw.

I scaled the wall in silence, fingers and boots finding their purchase in brick seams and the thin ledge above the second floor. No one looked up from the street. A short vault carried me onto the narrow sill, and I slipped inside without sound.

The interior smelled faintly of cedar and lemon polish. Two bedrooms. Two bathrooms. Polished wood floors that didn’t so much as creak underfoot. The furniture was expensive—Italian, all sharp lines and muted tones, each piece placed with catalog precision.

It was the kind of space meant to impress at a glance. No clutter. No sign of daily life. A couch without the faint sag of hours spent sitting. A bookshelf lined with hardcovers that had never been read. Even the framed photographs on the wall felt too perfect, as though the people in them had been hired to play a family for the camera.

It was a set. A lure. Every object chosen for effect, for the kind of comfort that stripped strangers of caution. Nothing here spoke of an actual life. 

The first thing I did was kill the power. One quick twist of the breaker in the hallway panel, and the apartment fell silent. The refrigerator’s low hum died. The soft buzz of hidden electronics faded.

Supernaturals saw well enough in the dark, but darkness made shapes harder to read, movement harder to track. The [Stealth Suit] drank in what little light remained. In shadows, I became a ripple in the air.

I took the far corner of the living room—parallel to the front door, low enough that the sightline was clear but my outline wouldn’t silhouette against the window. The [Exitus Pistol] rested steady in my grip, suppressor already fitted, a single [Hellfire Round] chambered. One shot would be enough.

Fifteen minutes passed. The building’s pipes creaked. Then, the soft chime of the elevator.

Two voices, low and careless—male and female. The shuffle of steps in the hall. A ring of keys, the brief rattle of metal against metal.

The door lock clicked. Hinges whispered.

He stepped in first—Kim Hyun Tae to the world, something else entirely to me. The girl from earlier clung to his arm, her laughter still caught in her throat.

He reached for the light switch.

My finger tightened.

The shot was little more than a muted snap in the dark, but the Hellfire Round burned bright in the split-second it existed. It punched into his chest, and his body collapsed into drifting ash before the switch was ever touched. Only the legs remained—blackened, sagging, and then crumbling inward.

The girl froze where she stood, knees giving out. The air caught in her lungs like it had turned to stone.

I closed the distance in two strides. One sharp blow to the side of her head and she went limp, the sound of her fall muffled by the rug.

The legs smoldered faintly. I reached for them, letting [Soul Siphon] draw out the last fragments of the Incubus’s essence.

+1 STR
+1 DEX
+1 VIT

Good enough.

I slung the unconscious girl over my shoulder, stepped to the window, and vaulted out into the cold night air. As I did, I saw a lone black feather floating down from above. 

—

STR – 47
DEX – 40
VIT – 161