Blackwood. Even the name leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. He was a loose end, a complication we didn't need. The audacity of the man, a two-bit journalist sniffing around the Eye of Zeus like a hound after a scrap. He thought he could unravel centuries of careful planning, expose the Ebon Order. He was a fool.
We'd been watching him for months. His initial inquiries were clumsy, easily dismissed. But he was persistent, digging deeper than we anticipated. And then he stumbled upon it – the truth about the Eye, its true power, its connection to forces beyond mortal comprehension. That's when Walter Hawkthorn was born. A convenient fiction, a phantom leader to draw attention away from the real workings of the Order, and a perfect scapegoat when Blackwood inevitably crossed the line.
Framing him was almost too easy. His own ambition, his fascination with the occult, provided all the necessary threads. A few planted documents, a whisper in the right ear, and the world believed Robert Blackwood had become the very thing he claimed to despise.
But even as Hawkthorn, he remained a threat. He knew too much. He had seen too much. The Eye demanded discretion, absolute secrecy. So, the order came down: eliminate him. Make it look like an internal power struggle. A messy end for a messy player.
I was the one who handled it. I always did the dirty work. Blackwood wasn't a fighter. He was all talk, all frantic energy. Cornered, he was pathetic. He pleaded, he bargained, he even tried to appeal to some non-existent sense of morality. I just watched the light drain from his eyes as the life left him. Another loose end neatly tied.
We thought that was the end of it. Blackwood was gone, Hawkthorn was a convenient memory, and the Eye remained secure. But then his brother showed up. Marcus. A nobody, an accountant. We dismissed him as a grieving relative, someone who would eventually accept the official narrative and fade away.
We were wrong.
He was like a persistent insect, buzzing around the edges of our operation. Asking questions, digging into old records. Annoying, but not yet a threat. We underestimated the bond between brothers, the stubborn refusal to let go.
Then he started getting closer. He found some of Blackwood's old contacts, the fringe elements his brother had used for information. We tightened our security, tried to cover our tracks, but Marcus was relentless. He had a meticulousness that was almost unnerving, a quiet determination that belied his unassuming appearance.
The encrypted emails were a slip-up, a ghost in the machine we hadn't fully erased. And he found them. The observatory. Blackwood's last scheduled meeting. It was a trap, of course, set to silence him permanently. But Marcus walked right into it.
I was there with Volkov and Kael. We expected a broken man, a naive fool seeking answers he couldn't handle. What we got was something else entirely. Grief had sharpened him, twisted him in a way we hadn't anticipated.
He held up Blackwood's journal, his eyes burning with a quiet fury. "You murdered my brother," he said, his voice surprisingly steady.
Volkov laughed. "Your brother was ambitious. He got in over his head."
"He was uncovering your secrets," Marcus retorted.
"Secrets that are best left buried," I growled, reaching for my weapon. This was taking too long.
The confrontation was messier than I would have liked. Marcus was clumsy, untrained, but he was fueled by something primal. He got lucky. Kael went down first, a surprised look on his face. Then Volkov, always arrogant, underestimated the accountant's desperation.
I lunged, aiming to end it quickly, but Marcus was surprisingly strong. We wrestled, the dust swirling around us like a shroud. He disarmed me, the cold steel of my own gun pressed against my chest. I stared into his eyes, and for the first time, I saw something beyond grief. I saw a cold, calculating rage.
The shot was deafening in the stillness of the observatory.
Now I'm the loose end. Another body to be disposed of. Another ghost haunting the Ebon Order. And all because of Robert Blackwood and his persistent, unassuming brother. We underestimated them both. A mistake we won't get the chance to repeat. The Eye… I hope they don't realize the true extent of its power. If they do… then all our efforts, all the sacrifices, will have been for nothing. And it will be Blackwood's final, bitter victory.
BLACKWOOD