Page 7 of The Madness Within

I needed them to know. Not the public. Not the press. Not the fools in robes.

The guilty.

I needed the monsters to feel me coming before they ever heard my name.

And so I found it, smooth, dark, and sharp as the truth they kept buried. Obsidian. A single, carved scale. Left behind like a whisper. Like a curse. Never meant for mortal eyes.

My signature.

Not a calling card. A warning. Judgment had a face now.

And it was mine.

Because the system had failed me before, it would fail me again.

I couldn’t fight the rage that simmered beneath the surface, the gnawing hunger that demanded more.

The more I learned about the system, the more I saw its flaws. The more I understood that money and power would always win in the end, no matter how hard you fought.

And I hated it.

I hated how they let monsters like Varun walk free because they could afford to.

So I did what I had to.

I used the system.

I played its rules to my advantage. I used my legal knowledge to get criminals acquitted, knowing full well what would happen after they thought they’d won… I would be the one waiting for them in the shadows.

I had become the very thing I had despised.

The very thing I had sworn to destroy.

A monster harboring the madness within.

Who would've guessed the monster in a tailored suit would spend a over a century quietly gutting the nightmares humanity never even knew were hunting them?

Chapter Two

??Spilled Blood of the Guilty

Dorian

Present

Peter Langston — The Predator with a Whistle

The courtroom was a performance. A stage for liars.

I stood, hands clasped behind my back, watching the jury nod along as my client, Peter Langston, a middle school gym teacher and predator, smirked beside me, that vile grin spreading across his face like a sickness.

His charm, thinly veiled behind that smile, was the mask of every monster who believed their lies would be believed.

I’d get him off.

Justice ended at the verdict.

But mine began after it.

---