Page 29 of The Madness Within

Or being led.

Chapter Ten

??Blood Beneath the Skin

Dorian

I couldn’t stop seeing her. The woman in the alley. Blood dripping down her temple. Fury in her eyes. Death in her grip.

She screamed. Didn’t crumble. Just screamed and ran.

She was afraid. Not of the bullet. Not of the body beside her. Of something else.

And that… That’s what kept me up.

I reviewed the security footage for the ninth time, watching it frame by frame. The moment the man beside her lips curled in a thin frown, the way they moved, his nervous gestures.

Then his head snapped back, skull cracked open like a dropped melon. Crimson sprayed the alley wall behind her.

A single shot.

Precise. Surgical.

I paused the footage. Zoomed in on the rooftop.

There he was.

Kreed Elias.

Rifle balanced. Eye steady. A shadow, once my client. Now my mistake.

I let him walk after his last kill. Helped him get off without any jail time. Planned to rid the world of him a week later, but he vanished.

I’d been hunting him, but now it seemed like he’s hunting her.

I dug deeper.

The people Kreed killed, they weren’t random. They were connected. All scholars. Historians. Linguists. Anthropologists. But not just any kind.

They were Seekers.

Men and women who studied forgotten tongues, cryptic texts, relics older than time. People who knew the truth behind the Gate.

I found journal entries. Interviews. Restricted files buried in academic databases. Each Seeker had reached the same dead-end, a name.

The Carr Line.

A bloodline tied to the Watchers. To Veilwalkers. To the Gate itself.

That’s why he killed them.

They knew too much about the Gate, who got too close to something meant to stay buried.

And that’s why he butchered the last one.

Dr. Kira Carr.

Expert in Pre-Abyssal Lore, found gutted open in her own home, throat slit ear to ear, sigils carved into her flesh with precision only madness or prophecy could deliver.

---