The morning after the Blood Moon felt wrong — too bright for a world missing Kylee. Her necklace sat in my palm, still warm from my grip, and grief hit hard enough to break furniture… and me. Outside, Ja’kari stood where she died, silent as stone. I swung on him, screamed at him, blamed him — and he just whispered, “I know.” By nightfall, we weren’t grieving anymore. We were planning. Jess arrived with maps, warnings, and one impossible truth: To kill Star… or free her. Ja’kari looked up, eyes cold again. “We’re going to Brazil.”

No one remembers the night the moon vanished… only the red light that replaced it. The air stilled. Shadows shifted. And a girl with a skull mask stepped from the dark like she’d been waiting centuries. Star didn’t speak of the dead—she carried death with her. One swing of her blade, and Kylee’s life was gone. Now Ja’kari knows the truth: the Blood Moon isn’t a warning. It’s a calling. And Star is the one answering it.

The forest was too still. That kind of silence only meant death was close. By the time I found them, the twins had rifles on my team—Asia’s breath shaking, Jayla’s eyes wide with fear. One heartbeat later, I dropped from the trees. One cut. Two bodies. Silence again. When the blood settled, Jayla looked at me like I was something between a savior and a monster. Maybe I was both. I didn’t kill for glory. I killed to protect what little I had left. But that night, when Asia asked if I ever felt peace— I lied. Because peace wasn’t something I found. It was something I had to fight for.

In the dead quiet of the mansion, Jayla follows Ja’kari into the dark—and uncovers the truth he’s buried beneath scars and silence. A mercenary. Wanted in thirty-two states. Hunted by ghosts he once called family. When strangers in black armor appear at the forest’s edge, their voices cut through the night: “Come out, Ja’kari Vance — or watch them die.” The warmth of laughter vanishes, and Jayla realizes too late—shadows don’t sleep, and neither do the sins that made him.

In the mansion’s shadowed halls, secrets breathe. Ja’kari’s haunted by a past wrapped in blood and silence — a mercenary wanted in thirty-two states, a man molded by pain and loss. When Jayla follows him into the dark, she sees the truth he hides: scars, weapons, and eyes that remember too much. Now she carries his secret — one that could save them… or destroy them all.

In a mansion deep in the woods, Asia learns the truth about Ja’kari — the boy with shadows in his eyes and scars on his soul. Around the fire, Kylee reveals the horror he never speaks of: his first love, executed before him, her screams burned into his memory. But when thunder cracks, Ja’kari snaps — a blackout, a flashback, a monster waking inside. His mark glows black, power surging as the past consumes him. One shot from Kylee’s syringe drops him. Silence follows. His past, it seems… isn’t done with him yet.

First day at Lakeside High — noise, chaos, and a storm waiting to break. Then she appeared. Asia. Grey eyes, calm fire. I hit a self alley-oop, 360 windmill, the gym exploding. She saw it — saw me. Her smile said trouble; her voice, curiosity. “You just out here embarrassing people?” she teased. “Ball slipped,” I said. But it wasn’t the dunk that shook me — it was her. The way her eyes caught mine, like thunder meeting silence. Some storms don’t start with rain… they start with a look.

After making it back to the apartment, Ja’kari stood in front of the mirror, tracing the scars across his chest and arms. His reflection was a reminder of the years he spent trapped inside the military facility — trained, tortured, and molded into something less than human. Closing his eyes, flashes of gunfire and blood filled his mind, then the image of his best friend, Star, smiling faintly before fading away. “I miss you, Star,” he whispered. For the first time in years, Ja’kari was free — but freedom didn’t silence the ghosts that followed him.