CHAPTER 106: A Threat Carved into Blood.

CHAPTER 106: A Threat Carved into Blood.
Adrian’s POV

The compound’s medical wing has always carried the faint scent of antiseptic and steel, but tonight the smell is sharper, as if the walls themselves are bracing for war.
I walk down the hallway with Luca beside me, the sound of our footsteps swallowed by the low hum of emergency lighting. The east gate breach has been contained for now, but the Prophet’s Disciples left something behind, something Luca refuses to describe until we reach the examination room.
Serena follows close behind, her pace steady and her expression composed, but I can see the tension gathering at the corners of her mouth. She has not spoken since we left the command center. Her silence is not coldness; it is purpose. She moves like someone preparing herself for the next wound before it arrives.
When we reach the door, Luca pauses. His jaw is tight, his hands clenched.
“There’s something you need to see,” he says quietly. I push past him, open the door, and step inside. The first thing I see is blood. Not pooled, not splattered and painted.
A smear across the metal table forms a deliberate symbol: the Prophet's old tactical mark, the one he used in covert missions from a lifetime ago. He had once carved it into the dust of ruined buildings to tell me he had cleared the path ahead. Now it sits in fresh blood, mocking every memory of loyalty I ever gave him.
My men recovered the body of one of our guards from the perimeter. His throat was slit with surgical precision, and his chest carries carved lettering so precise it looks like a message etched into stone rather than human flesh.
The Prophet wanted me to see it.
Serena moves beside me, her expression tightening when her gaze lands on the carved wound. She steps closer to the table, her posture calm but her fingers subtly curling, the only sign that the brutality affects her.
Luca hands me a photograph that was found tucked into the guard’s pocket, a photograph printed on cheap thermal paper, the kind used for fast and disposable messages.
It shows Serena leaving the strategy room earlier tonight.
My chest tightens with a cold, controlled rage. “That means he has someone inside the perimeter still,” Serena says softly. “Someone who can get close without detection.”
Her voice remains steady, but I hear the deeper undercurrent beneath it: this is not just an attack against me. It is an attack against her as well.
I look at the carved words on the guard’s chest. BRING HER TO ME, OR MORE WILL BLEED.
The Prophet is escalating. No more distant threats. No more symbolic warnings. He wants Serena alive and he wants me to bring her.
Serena reads the message, and instead of stepping back, she moves even closer to the body, studying the angle of the cuts with a measured, almost scientific eye.
“He didn’t rush,” she murmurs. “He took his time. He wanted this exact message carved cleanly. Which means he was calm when he did it.”
Her gaze shifts to mine. “That’s the part that worries me.”
I tell her that fear is exactly what the Prophet wants her to feel.
She shakes her head slowly. “No. This isn’t about fear. This is about control. He believes he understands us well enough to predict how we’ll respond.”
I move closer until the tension between us thickens into something dark and charged, the air pulling tight as a wire. She meets my stare without flinching. For a moment, I forget where we are, forget the bleeding corpse, forget the escalating war. The room narrows to just the two of us and the heat that always burns under her restraint.
But she is the one who breaks the moment.
“We need to look at this differently,” she says. “He’s not just threatening your men. He’s proving a point.” I ask her what point.
“That he can cut through your defenses easily. That he can come this close to me. And that next time, he won’t leave a message, he’ll leave a body.”
I hate how right she is. Luca clears his throat, pulling us back to the present. “We also found this,” he says, holding out a small thumb drive sealed in an evidence bag. “It was taped under the guard’s boot. Hidden too carefully to be accidental.”
I take it, feeling the weight of it settle into my palm. A thumb drive from the Prophet is never just information. It is always a strategy.
Serena steps to my side, close enough that her shoulder brushes mine. The contact is brief, but it sets off a surge of heat that coils somewhere deep in my spine.
“We open it in the secure room,” she says. “Not here.”
I lead her out of the medical wing. Luca walks ahead, clearing the hallways. The compound feels colder now, as if the Prophet’s presence lingers in the walls. When we reach the secure strategy room, I lock the door manually.
Serena takes her seat at the central terminal. The glow from the monitor illuminates the elegant line of her jaw, the determined set of her mouth. She inserts the drive and begins to decrypt the files.
The screen floods with data, architectural layouts, personnel dossiers, coded maps of old missions the Prophet and I conducted years ago. He is reminding me of everything we built, everything he intends to take from me.
Then a video file loads.
Serena straightens.
The screen shows the Prophet sitting in what looks like an abandoned factory office. He wears the same black tactical jacket he wore during operations we ran together, as if he is rewinding time to the days before betrayal.
His calm voice fills the room. “You trained me to eliminate threats without hesitation. Now you have become one.”
His gaze shifts straight through the lens, straight through the screen, straight into the room with us. “And she,” he continues, “is the reason you’re losing your edge.”
Serena’s posture freezes.
I feel the heat of anger surge through me, not explosive, not reckless, but cold and controlled. The Prophet smiles. “You think you can protect her. But she is the weakness I will carve out of you.”
Serena exhales, slow and measured. Her fingers curl around the edge of the desk, gripping hard enough that her knuckles turn pale.
I step behind her, placing my hands on the desk on either side of her body, boxing her in. My breath touches the back of her neck.
“He’s wrong,” I say quietly.
Her head tilts slightly, just enough that I know she feels me, feels the restraint I am barely holding on to, feels the heat rising between us like a magnetic pull neither of us can break.
“No,” she says softly. “He thinks he’s right. That’s the problem.”
The video continues. “You want a war?” the Prophet says. “I will bleed you dry until you understand that you cannot build power on love. It makes you soft. It makes you blind.”
Serena stiffens, her breath quickening. My hands shift closer to hers on the desk. “And he wants you to believe that,” I whisper.
She turns her head slightly, her lips dangerously close to mine. “But I don’t,” she answers, her voice low and fierce.
The video cuts to black. Silence fills the room, heavy and intimate.
Serena stands abruptly, her chair sliding back.
“He wants me to be afraid. He wants me to run. He wants me to become the weakness he imagines.” I step toward her.
“And what are you instead?” Her eyes lift to mine, burning with the same defiant fire I felt the first night I met her.
“His mistake,” she says. Before I can respond, the intercom sparks to life.
“Adrian,” Luca’s voice cracks through the speakers, tight and strained. “You need to come downstairs.”
“What happened?” I ask. His answer is immediate and grim. “We found another message. Carved into the hood of one of your cars. And this time… it has her mother’s name on it.”
Serena’s breath freezes. I feel the world narrow to a pinpoint.
Luca continues. “And there’s more. He left something on the windshield. A box. It’s addressed to Serena.” Serena steps closer to me.
I take her hand deliberately, firmly, knowing exactly what the gesture means and exactly what the Prophet will interpret it as.
Together, we walk toward the next threat waiting in the dark.