Dreadwolf, Lord of Runes

Synapses fired in Kane’s brain.

Adrenaline pumped through his body.

Electrical impulses shot into his muscles.

His head jerked to the side.

Thud.

A muffled sound echoed less than half an inch from his ear when the knife buried itself into the pillow his head was lying on.

With adrenaline raging through his system, any remaining sleepiness was completely purged from his body as rage filled his heart instead.

Yet he didn’t jump up to fight his attacker. He didn’t even clench his fists to express his anger. He refused to give that man the satisfaction of seeing him embarrass himself.

After all, he had already seen who dropped the knife.

In fact, there was no one else who could or would have dropped it.

Even if an assassin had somehow made their way into his apartment, past the guards, and past Luna, they wouldn’t simply drop a knife from a meter's height to watch him squirm. They would slit his throat and be done with it.

And if they wanted information before killing him, they wouldn’t risk dropping the knife at all.

No, there was only one person who both could and would have done it. Unfortunately, there was no way for him to fight this man. Not yet.

As a mid-level boss in the Mecha Cartel and leader of the Cyberkins, Father was using TG3 (Tier 3, Grade 3) cybernetics, allowing him the approximate power of a Mystic's Core Linking stage—a stage two ranks above Kane’s current Core Awakening stage.

In fact, TG3 Meant he was only a single step away from fourth stage mystics.

“Hehehe,” came the calm yet malevolent chuckle of the man he hated most of all. “Good morning, Kane. I guess you get to keep your flawed eyes for a little while longer.”

Shaking off the last remnants of the strange dream he just had, Kane decided to focus on the more immediate problems. He sat up slowly and greeted his father as if he hadn’t just almost lost an eye. “Good morning, Father. Still up to your fun little games, I see.”

‘At least I didn’t wake up in a pit with two amped up Cybers this time,’ Kane scoffed inwardly. Anger burned inside, but he didn't let it show. 'His intentions aren't hard to guess this time, though,' he realized as he remembered their conversation a few days ago.

Kane stretched, his eyes scanning the room as he tried to calm the rage boiling inside him. Morning light mixed with the ever-present neon lighting of Riftshade and streamed in from the single, wide window that dominated one of the walls.

His bed was in the middle of the room and pleasant enough. There was a nightstand next to his bed, a wardrobe in the wall, some colour on the walls, a sliding door leading to a bathroom, and another sliding door leading to the rest of the apartment.

He lived with Luna in an apartment that was technically his own, but the entire building was home base for the Cyberkins, so Father could naturally walk in whenever he liked. Some might have expected his living conditions to be far worse, considering the relationship between the two, but Father wouldn’t accept that.

After all, that might give the rest of the Cyberkins the idea that they could mess with Kane, too. But that was Father’s right, and no one else’s. Still, the obvious friction between them meant Kane was relatively isolated from the rest of the gang.

He also noticed the door to his room was open, and sounds of fighting drifted in from the living room.

“I’ll kill you, bitch! Let me pass!” one female voice cried out. “If that metal shit hurts Master, I’ll carve him up and make armour from his parts!”

“Hahaha,” a second female voice laughed. There was a hint of insanity in this one's tone, the desire to see blood practically dripping from her words. “That would be a sight. Why don’t you play with me for a little first, you mongrel!”

The second voice’s taunts were followed by the clashing of blades, and a guttural snarl that was easily recognizable as belonging to Luna. A mishmash of fighting sounds echoed through the apartment—metal hitting metal, grunts of physical effort, the thudding of something hard hitting something soft.

Kane couldn’t actually see the fight, but he could guess what was happening.

He ignored this, though. ‘Luna will be fine,’ he thought to himself. ‘If Father had ordered Ira to be serious, the fight would be over already. Which means that the fight won’t end until Father leaves.’

After sitting up, Kane focused his attention on the man known as Father rather than the fight going on in the other room.

Kane always felt a little ridiculous calling this man Father, yet that was the only name he—or anyone else—knew him by, despite the fact that Kane was actually his one and only biological son.

At first sight, Father looked almost like a carbon copy of Kane, if slightly older. Even his hair was the same length and shade of black. His eyes, too, were amber like his son's, but the difference was that Kane’s were natural, while Father’s were not.

His artificial gaze lacked warmth, glinting with the cold precision of cybernetic lenses.

In the past, Kane had attempted several times to adopt a new look, but Father had steadfastly imitated him, as if to remind Kane where he came from. Eventually, Kane had simply given up and stuck with his natural colours and a hair length he enjoyed.

When taking a second look at Father, however, one might notice the many hair-thin lines that ran across the exposed parts of his body.

Lines that Kane was missing. They were proof of Father's cybernetics.

The man wore an open, tailored, dark, synthetic leather jacket, with a plain yet stylish shirt. His reinforced trousers matched the jacket, and on his feet were high-quality combat boots.

Father always said that clothes made the man, and he firmly believed in toeing the line between looking like a common street thug with barely two brain cells to tie together and looking like a man pretending to be someone he was not.

Style was important, but not important enough to alienate the people under you.

“You wound me, Kane,” Father said calmly with that same infuriatingly confident smile that Kane had come to hate. “What you call games is merely me trying to get you ready for the future. You are my son after all. I might want you to succeed me one day.”

‘Yeah, right,’ Kane snorted inwardly. ‘With allies like you, who needs enemies? I’m nothing more than a fun little experiment for you to poke and prod.’

Kane knew his worth to Father, and while he was certainly a productive member of the Cyberkins, that was not what his father valued most about him. No, it was the games he could play with this person he had created back when he still had the organic parts to do so.

Sure, if Kane was accidentally molded into a proper successor along the way, then great. But if he ever lost his value as a player in Father’s games, that would be his last day on Earth.

Unfortunately, finding a way to get away from Father had, so far, proven difficult. The sad fact was, no one wanted Kane bad enough to disturb the fragile balance of power in the city, no one powerful enough to do something cared about him, and Kane currently had nothing to trade for his life either.

Unbeknownst to him, however, his life had already been set on a course for drastic change.