Chapter One – “The Man in the Quiet”
The cabin sat a mile off the gravel road, hidden by tall pines and time. It didn’t look like much — rusted metal roof, smoke curling from a crooked chimney, the stink of old wood and coffee. But it was perfect.
Micah Harrow stirred the coals with a stick and crouched beside the iron stove. He liked the silence out here. No phones. No electricity. No past. Just wind in the trees and the scrape of his boots on plank flooring.
He reached for his mug — enamel chipped, handle scorched — and sipped bitter coffee. A scar traced the back of his hand like a memory refusing to fade. Ten years ago, he was the Ghostblade. An assassin so precise he could slit a throat in a crowded room without raising a whisper. Then he vanished. Faked his death in a fire that burned away more than fingerprints.
Now he was just Michael. The old man in the woods who hunted deer in winter and fed the strays in spring. No headlines. No bodies.
He’d built a life out of nothing — but it wasn’t peace. It was exile.
There were no pictures on the walls. Nothing to mark who he’d once been. Just a worn leather satchel beside the bed. Inside were names. Old names. The Pact. Ten men and women bound by blood and secrets, buried so deep they were supposed to stay dead.
But lately… something had changed.
Last week, Micah found a letter nailed to the tree outside. No stamp. No footprints. Just one word scrawled in red ink:
Resurface.
He burned it. But it didn’t matter. He’d felt the shift. The kind that comes before the ground opens up beneath you.
Micah drained his mug and stood. The morning light cut through the mist like a blade. He checked the lock on the gun safe. Loaded the Glock. Just in case.
Because you can take the killer out of the war.
But not the war out of the killer.
The axe split through the birch log with a hollow crack.
Micah exhaled, shoulders rolling with the motion, the breath ghosting in the cold morning air. He split another, then another, the rhythm steady, almost meditative. The woods behind him were silent except for the crunch of frost and the occasional call of a crow overhead. He liked it that way — stillness that didn’t ask questions.
Stacking the pieces into a tidy heap, he paused and looked up at the grey sky. Snow was coming. He could feel it in the back of his knees — the old injuries that never fully healed, the ghosts of every fall he’d taken while running, dodging, killing.
He picked up the last log and held it in his hands for a moment. Then, slowly, he walked to the fire pit and tossed it onto the coals. Flames snapped and spat up a quick protest before settling again into a soft hiss. Micah crouched, warming his hands. He stared into the fire, as if waiting for it to tell him something.
It never did.
The truth was, he’d built this life with intention. Chosen exile. Chosen silence. Ten years ago, he had burned every trace of Micah Harrow. Passport, bank accounts, every record that could connect him to who he’d been. The world believed he’d died in an explosion — a job gone sideways in Prague. It had been cleaner than he deserved.
But the real reason he left was simpler.
Her name was Elise.
She was the one contract he hadn’t completed. A young mother, wrongly accused of turning traitor. Micah had stalked her for a week, planned the hit, watched her play in the snow with her daughter. Then something cracked. He couldn’t do it. Not after he saw the drawing the little girl made — a stick figure of a woman with angel wings and the words “My Mum” in shaky crayon.
He made it look like a botched burglary. Let Elise live. Walked away that night and never looked back.
Except, he always looked back. Every time he woke up drenched in sweat, every time he heard a child’s laughter, every time he smelled cordite and burning metal in his dreams.
He wasn’t a man anymore. He was a haunted echo of one.
He stood and stretched, wincing at the stiffness in his joints. Forty-nine and worn to the bone. He hadn’t aged gracefully — too many broken ribs, too many late nights in basements and back alleys, too much guilt fed into his bloodstream like slow poison.
Inside the cabin, he poured another cup of coffee and let it sit beside the window. The frost had crept in from the edges, painting delicate spiderwebs across the glass. He watched the trees sway and wondered who had found him — someone must have. That note didn’t arrive by accident.
Resurface.
He could still hear the sound of the paper tearing in the fire. But the word stayed etched in his mind. Not a threat. Not a plea. A command.
And there weren’t many people left who would dare to command him.
His eyes drifted to the satchel near the door — battered leather, cracked from age and damp. It held memories like bones. A small pistol. A notebook with only one page intact. A silver coin etched with a falcon — a token from the Pact, passed hand to hand when a job was finished clean.
Ten assassins. One oath. Never turn on one another.
They had lived by that rule. Then slowly, one by one, they’d vanished. Some killed. Some disappeared. Micah hadn’t spoken to any of them in years.
But if someone was calling in the Pact… something had broken.
He ran a hand down his face, felt the roughness of unshaven stubble. He hadn't seen his reflection in days — maybe longer. Mirrors didn’t matter out here. Not when you were trying to forget the face you wore the day you became a killer.
A creak from the porch brought his thoughts to a halt.
Micah stilled, coffee cooling in his hand. Slowly, silently, he reached for the revolver under the counter — the one he kept for visitors who didn’t knock.
Footsteps. One. Two. A weight he didn’t recognise.
He waited.
A knock.
Not a loud one. Not timid, either. Just two short taps.
He crossed the room and peered through the narrow slit in the wall he’d carved years ago. No one there. Just snowflakes beginning to fall.
Another knock. Lower now. Beneath the window?
Micah moved to the side, careful with his footfalls, and opened the hidden panel beside the stove. It creaked, just a little — enough to make him curse under his breath.
He stepped outside, revolver loose in his grip.
And saw it.
Not a person. Not a threat.
Just a photograph. Clipped to the porch rail with a rusted clothespin.
Micah walked over and took it with shaking hands. It was a surveillance photo. Grainy. Tilted. But unmistakable.
It showed a body slumped in an alley, neck broken, arms twisted behind them.
And the tattoo on the wrist — half-covered by blood — told him everything.
The Bishop. One of the Pact. Dead.
On the back, scribbled in pen:
One by one they fall. Until only you remain.
Micah didn’t speak. Didn’t breathe.
The past wasn’t knocking.
It had already walked in.