Page 7 of Sage Haven

Something real.

Something that was supposed to matter.

And I had never looked back.

The ENA’s web was deeper than I had ever known.

Once you were inside it, you didn’t get out.

Not in one piece. Not alive.

So, I stayed.

Adapted.

I became the thing they needed me to be.

A weapon.

And Parrish? He was easy.

Cocky. Greedy. A predator who’d stepped too far over the line.

The ENA had finally decided to collect his debt.

And that’s why he was here in the Pit.

From an outsider’s perspective, the Pit was nothing. Just a slab of reinforced concrete buried beneath my house. Twenty-four feet by twenty-four feet of cold indifference. Flickering warehouse lights above and solid clear coated cement floors beneath.

But as an insider and its owner…it was a church, and I was the priest.

The tools lined the walls, neat rows of metal and wood, all polished to a dull gleam. Pliers. Wrenches. Blades. Hammers.

Nothing special. Nothing dangerous in the hands of someone soft.

But in my hands…

They were scripture.

My sermon and an offering to the gods of vengeance and justice.

Behind me, Parrish choked, hacking up blood and bile, the wet sounds echoing to fill the space between us. I ignored it. My fingers drifted over the tools, slow and thoughtful, like a sommelier selecting a vintage bottle of fine wine.

I was in no rush.

The best things took time.

His coughing grew louder. More insistent and desperate. Until finally— “I know who you’re after…” he rasped, voice raw and shaking.

I laughed. A low and dark, humorless sound.

“Doesn’t everybody?” I asked.

He twisted in his bonds, wire scraping bone. His panic was a living thing now, breathing in the air between us, and taking residence in the emptiness.

I circled behind him, my boots heavy against the floor. Every step was deliberate. Then I grabbed a fistful of his filthy, blood-clotted hair and yanked his head back hard. His neck cracked against the tension of the wire as his face turned up to mine, eyes wide and rimmed in red. His mouth curled into a sneer, but there was no defiance left. Just hate and fear.

“You’ll never catch him,” he spat. “He’s too clever for you.”