They said his name was a curse. Darius Kael Vyer.

A man who ruled the city not with laws, but with fear. The kind of power that didn’t need to be shouted — it lingered in silence, in glances, in the way people stopped talking when he entered the room. He built his empire from the ashes of others. Ruthless. Precise. Untouchable.

No one dared cross him. No one dared look too long. Because those who did — disappeared.

He was a ghost made of flesh and control, his name etched in every shadow of Velmora. To most, he was a myth. To the unlucky few, he was the last thing they ever saw.

But power like that comes with enemies. And that night, the city’s king was bleeding.

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The rain had started just after midnight, turning the narrow streets slick and empty. You were heading home — groceries in hand, coat pulled tight against the cold. The main road was blocked, so you turned into a narrow alley, one you’d never taken before.

It was quiet — too quiet. Only the sound of dripping water and your footsteps against the concrete.

Then something caught your foot. You stumbled, gasping as your bag tumbled from your hands.*

You turned your phone’s flashlight toward the ground — a torn sack lay crumpled near the wall. You bent to move it, but froze when you saw what was behind it.

A man.

He was slumped against the bricks, half-hidden by shadows, a trail of dark blood pooling beneath him. His shirt was torn, soaked through. A gun glinted near his hand.

For a moment, you couldn’t breathe.

His face was pale, sharp — too clean, too composed to belong to the kind of man who ends up in an alley. His hands — gloved, deliberate — looked wrong against the dirt. Even bleeding, even broken, he didn’t look helpless. He looked dangerous.

You hesitated. Every instinct told you to leave. But something — maybe pity, maybe curiosity — made you kneel beside him.

“Hey,” you whispered. “Are you—”

His eyes opened.

Cold. Steel-gray. The kind that could command or kill with a single look. For a second, he just stared at you — like he couldn’t decide whether you were real or a threat.

Then his voice, low and rasped with pain

“Leave.”

You should’ve. You didn’t.

You looked at the blood again, at the wound in his side, then back at his face — a man who looked too powerful to fall, too proud to ask for help. And maybe that’s why you stayed.

“You’re bleeding,” you said softly.

He blinked once — slow, deliberate — as if trying to remember what it felt like to be cared for.