[Ethan’s POV]

The Black Sea Investment Bank was a fortress of pale stone and reinforced glass, sitting in the center of a wide, cobblestone plaza in Odesa’s historic district.

Claire and I were crouched on the flat roof of a neo-classical apartment building across the street, hidden behind a stone parapet. The wind whipping off the sea was bitter, carrying the scent of salt and impending snow.

I lowered my binoculars, my jaw tight. "It’s a hard target. I count twelve PMCs on the perimeter alone. They’ve got overlapping fields of fire, thermal cameras on the roof, and reinforced steel barricades over the ground-floor windows."

"Isabella isn’t taking any chances after the warehouse," Claire said, her teeth chattering slightly as she pulled her scarf tighter. She was looking at a physical tourist map of the city she had bought from a kiosk earlier that afternoon.

"If Jake tries to walk across that plaza, they’ll cut him to pieces before he gets within fifty yards of the front door," I said, scanning the shadows. "He has to know that. The Oracle would calculate the probability of a frontal assault as zero."

"He’s not going to walk across the plaza," Claire said softly, her finger tracing a web of dotted lines on the tourist map.

I looked over at her. "What do you mean?"

"Odesa isn’t like other cities, Ethan," Claire explained, tapping the map. "It was built on a massive bed of limestone. In the 1800s, they mined the stone to build the city above. It left behind a network of tunnels. The Odesa Catacombs. There are over fifteen hundred miles of them right beneath our feet."

I stared at the bank, the realization hitting me like a physical blow. "He’s not going through the doors. He’s going under them."

"During the Cold War, the Soviets expanded the tunnels to build nuclear bunkers," Claire continued, her eyes wide. "Smugglers have used them for decades. If Jake got his hands on a subterranean map, he could navigate right under the bank’s foundation."

Before I could respond, the streetlights in the plaza flickered.

A low, deep hum vibrated through the soles of my boots, resonating from deep within the earth.

Then, the entire historic district went black.

The streetlights, the neon signs, the floodlights illuminating the bank—everything died in an instant. The sudden darkness was absolute, broken only by the pale moonlight filtering through the clouds.

Down in the plaza, the PMCs began shouting in French and Russian. Flashlight beams sliced frantically through the dark as they formed a tight defensive perimeter around the bank’s entrance.

"He cut the main power grid for the whole block," I whispered, pulling my Glock from its holster.

A second later, a muffled, concussive THUMP shook the ground. It wasn’t an explosion on the street. It came from directly beneath the bank. A faint plume of gray smoke began to drift out of the brass ventilation grates set into the plaza’s cobblestones.

"He breached the vault," Claire breathed.

"Stay close," I ordered, moving toward the fire escape at the back of the roof. "We’re going in."

We scrambled down the rusted iron stairs, hitting the dark alleyway at a dead sprint. The PMCs were entirely focused on the front of the building, their radios hissing with static as they tried to figure out what had just happened.

We circled around to the rear loading dock. Two PMCs were stationed there, their night-vision goggles glowing green in the dark. They were nervous, their rifles sweeping the shadows erratically.

Strike the biggest threat. Strike to break them. Darius’s voice echoed in my mind.

I didn’t slow down. I emerged from the alley at a full sprint, closing the distance before they even registered my footsteps.

The PMC on the left turned, raising his rifle. I dropped into a slide on the wet pavement, kicking his legs out from under him. As he hit the ground, I drove the heavy steel pommel of my Glock into the side of his helmet, knocking him out cold.

The second PMC yelled, swinging his weapon toward me.

I didn’t have time to aim. I lunged forward, grabbing the hot barrel of his rifle and shoving it upward just as he pulled the trigger. The suppressed shots chewed into the brick wall above my head. I pivoted, driving my elbow into his throat, and followed it with a brutal knee to his solar plexus. He collapsed, gasping for air, and I hit him with a right cross that put him to sleep.

"Clear!" I hissed, grabbing a keycard from the unconscious guard’s tactical vest.

Claire ran up behind me, her breathing heavy. I swiped the card on the loading dock door. The electronic lock was dead from the blackout, but the magnetic seal had disengaged. I pulled the heavy door open, and we slipped into the pitch-black interior of the bank.

The air inside was thick with the acrid smell of burning thermite and melting steel.

"The vault is in the sub-basement," Claire whispered, clicking on her penlight.

We navigated the dark, marble-floored hallways, moving toward the emergency stairwell. The bank was eerily quiet. The PMCs were still holding the perimeter outside, completely unaware that the fortress had been breached from the bottom up.

We descended two flights of stairs, the smell of smoke growing stronger with every step.

When we reached the sub-basement, the heavy steel door leading to the vault room was already hanging off its hinges, warped and blackened by intense heat.

I stepped through the doorway, my gun raised, sweeping the room.

The main vault door—a massive, two-foot-thick slab of titanium and steel—was still perfectly intact and locked from the outside.

But the floor of the vault room was a different story.

A massive, jagged hole had been blown through the reinforced concrete floor from the catacombs below. The edges of the rebar were glowing cherry-red, dripping molten slag into the dark abyss of the tunnels.

"Ethan," Claire said, her voice trembling. She pointed her penlight through the hole, into the vault itself.

I stepped to the edge of the breach and looked down.

The subterranean vault was massive, lined with hundreds of safe deposit boxes and steel cages. But the cages had been ripped open.

In the center of the vault, a mountain of bearer bonds, gold certificates, and stacks of high-denomination euros was engulfed in a roaring, controlled fire. Millions of dollars of Isabella Vane’s untraceable wealth was turning to ash before our eyes.

And standing on the edge of the fire, illuminated by the dancing orange flames, was a single pair of muddy, blood-stained combat boots.

I dropped to my knees, leaning over the jagged hole. "Jake!"

The boots didn’t move.

I squinted through the smoke, my heart pounding. As the smoke shifted, I realized the boots were empty. They had been left behind, placed deliberately on the edge of the inferno.

"He’s gone," I said, the adrenaline draining from my system. "He set the charge, started the fire, and vanished back into the catacombs. He’s not the same man we knew Claire, i fear that in the end he might even kill us if we get in his way."

Claire knelt beside me, shining her light into the vault. "Why did he leave his boots?"

I looked closer. Stuffed inside the left boot was a thick, leather-bound ledger. It hadn’t been burned. It had been placed there specifically to survive the fire.

I reached down through the hole, the heat blistering the skin on my forearm, and snatched the ledger from the boot.

I pulled it up and flipped it open. It wasn’t a bank record. It was a handwritten logbook, filled with names, dates, and locations.

"It’s a payroll ledger," Claire said, her eyes scanning the pages. "This is how Isabella pays her local lieutenants. The people who run the docks, the smugglers, the corrupt politicians."

I turned to the last page. Jake had used a thick black marker to cross out dozens of names. But one name at the very bottom of the list was circled heavily in red ink.

Viktor Volkov. The Odessa Shipyards.

"He’s not just burning her money," I said, staring at the circled name. "He’s hunting her generals. He’s going to dismantle her entire command structure in the city."

"And Viktor Volkov is next," Claire said, looking up at me.

Heavy footsteps echoed from the stairwell behind us. The PMCs had finally realized the threat wasn’t outside. They were coming down.

"We have the target," I said, shoving the ledger into my jacket. "Let’s move."

We didn’t go back up the stairs. I grabbed Claire’s hand, and together, we dropped through the jagged hole in the floor, plunging into the dark, ancient labyrinth of the Odesa catacombs, following the trail of the Feral King into the abyss.

The air swallowed us whole the moment our feet hit the stone below, cold and damp with the breath of centuries. Shadows stretched across the walls like grasping fingers, and the only sound was our ragged breathing and the faint drip of water somewhere deeper in the dark. Somewhere ahead, the Feral King’s trail waited wild, reckless, and alive.