Cities were no longer safe. Not since humanity ceased to be the dominant species. At the edges of the civilized world, beyond the artificial lights and the lies of order, Kael found something more real than any promise: death lurking in every shadow.
And in the midst of that chaos, he also found them.
They called them The Hunters of the Abyss. They had no real names, only nicknames earned in battle. Raven, Broken, Claws, Wraith... Half-human creatures, half-ghosts of what they once were. Each with a tragic history, with scars that were unseen, but screamed silently.
Kael met them by chance...or by fate. A creature had broken free from the tunnels beneath the city: an old Devourer, mutated by ancient rituals. It attacked children. It left only bones.
Kael did not flee. He couldn't. Something inside him felt that this was his hunt.
And just as the monster was about to kill him, they arrived.
Cuervo was the first to shoot. His weapon was not conventional. It was a rifle carved with ancient symbols, fueled by blood and fire. The shot not only pierced the Devourer... it disintegrated him from the inside. Kael, wounded, just watched. Amazed. Fascinated.
-You're lucky to be alive," said Claws, a tall woman with eyes marked by sleepless nights.
-Or maybe unlucky," added Rota, half her face covered by a bone mask.
But it was Espectro who recognized him. Not with words, but with his silence. He knelt down in front of Kael, touched his chest, and then looked him straight in the eyes.
-This boy... is not normal," he murmured. He has the Mark.
Kael didn't understand, but he didn't ask. He just nodded. Something inside him told him that this was the way. That he should follow them.
So, without ceremony, without promise, he became part of the group.
It was not easy.
The days were brutal training. The nights, suicide missions. He learned to move silently, to use blessed weapons, to read the ancient symbols that repel creatures. He learned that not all monsters have claws... some wear uniforms, others speak like gods.
But most of all, he learned how to kill.
And he liked it.
Not for pleasure. But because every time he stabbed a being of darkness, he felt he regained something he had lost: its power, its purpose, its memory.
Because in the blood of those creatures... Kael was beginning to see fragments.
Visions.
Of another world. Of a sunken temple. Of a war that has not yet ended.
The Abyss Hunters thought he was just another lucky survivor.
They didn't know they were training someone who had killed gods.