Opening
In the storm-soaked alley, Paedyn Gray stands over the body of King Edric and finally claims Revenge and Justice. A Sighted child witnesses the kill as Paedyn flees—straight into Kai Azer, blood-drenched and undone. One recovered memory detonates their bond: years ago, on his father’s orders, Kai kills her father.
What Happens
Chapter 66: My pretty Pae, what have you done to me?
Rain hammers the alley as Paedyn leaves her father’s dagger in the king’s throat. Relief, not regret, floods her—her vengeance is complete. A small girl with the power of Sight watches, then sprints away, likely having recorded the assassination. Footsteps close in. Paedyn runs, forced to abandon the dagger that carried her father’s legacy.
A knife slices past her arm—deliberately wide. She turns and meets Kai, slick with rain and his father’s blood. The sight triggers a buried memory: it is not the king who delivers her father’s deathblow, but a young, terrified Kai, obeying orders. The two lock eyes: he sees his father’s murderer; she sees her own. He recognizes her dagger in Edric’s neck, yet he does not strike. Voice breaking, he repeats the line that once sounded like a vow of devotion: “My pretty Pae, what have you done to me?”
Duty traps him; love unmans him. He calls himself a coward and a fool, admitting he should kill her but cannot. The theme of Duty vs. Morality peaks as he gives her a head start and promises the mercy ends now—he will hunt her, and next time he will not hesitate. He shouts for her to run before someone else can finish it. Paedyn flees. Kai kneels beside his father.
Chapter 67: I’ll have found my courage
From Kai’s perspective, Paedyn’s silhouette disappears into the rain, and with it, the Enforcer he is supposed to be. He kneels by Edric’s body, numb and hollow, and the puzzle snaps into place: Paedyn’s immunity to Silencers, her survival during the Resistance attack—she is an Ordinary. The mask of Pae shatters into the truth, and Deception and Hidden Identities finally reveal themselves as the flaw that blinds him.
Kai closes Edric’s eyes, so like his brother Kitt Azer’s, and feels the weight of title and blood settle on his shoulders. The moment he fails to act becomes the moment he defines his future: he will hunt Paedyn down and kill her. He frames it as courage reclaimed—the courage he cannot find in the alley, he will find when they meet again.
Chapter 68: How could I forget my father’s murderer?
Paedyn staggers through the woods, pain blazing at every step. Her fingers find the jagged O branded over her heart, a scar that names her and marks the cost of survival. The ache in her body fades against the shattering inside. A patch of blue forget-me-nots stops her cold—the same flowers Kai once gave her—and she hears his promise: “I don’t give a damn if you forget who I am in title, so long as you remember who I am to you.”
Now she remembers exactly who he is: her father’s killer. The realization rips the last of her composure. Rain and tears mingle with blood; she imagines the stickiness is honey, clinging to a sweeter past that curdles on her tongue. Their Forbidden Love and Romance collapses into trauma, grief, and a future defined by pursuit.
Character Development
Both leads cross a point of no return. Vengeance, duty, and memory redraw their identities, turning desire into a hunt.
- Paedyn: Completes her kill but loses her father’s dagger, her armor, and the story she tells herself about justice. The recovered memory brands Kai as her father’s murderer, transforming love into a wound she cannot cauterize.
- Kai: Loses his father and the illusion of Pae. He labels himself a coward, fails in his role as Enforcer, and resolves the crisis by choosing duty—vowing to find Paedyn and finish what he could not begin.
Themes & Symbols
The triumph of revenge fractures under the weight of truth. Paedyn’s victory fulfills the promise of vengeance, yet the revelation about Kai corrupts any peace it might offer. Duty and love collide in Kai’s paralysis, forcing a choice that recasts him as hunter and her as quarry. Deception—Pae’s identity, Kai’s buried role in her father’s death—poisons trust and rewrites every intimate moment between them.
Symbols sharpen the tragedy. Paedyn’s dagger, left in Edric’s throat, seals her mission and simultaneously strips her of her talisman; the rain mirrors the collapse of tenderness into grief, echoing their earlier near-kiss; the forget-me-not flips from token of affection to emblem of memory’s cruelty—some things must be remembered, even when they destroy you.
Key Quotes
“My pretty Pae, what have you done to me?”
Once a breathless confession, now an accusation. The repetition tracks the arc of their relationship—from yearning to devastation—and crystallizes how love becomes the instrument of pain.
“I’ll have found my courage.”
Kai reframes mercy as failure and promises a future self hardened by duty. The line marks his pivot from feeling to action, setting the inevitability of the hunt.
“I don’t give a damn if you forget who I am in title, so long as you remember who I am to you.”
In the woods, this memory wounds. It exposes how intimacy grows in the soil of secrecy and how, once truth surfaces, affection can only persist as agony.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
This sequence detonates the story’s core. Edric’s death reshapes Ilya’s power and completes Paedyn’s revenge, while the revelation about Kai annihilates the romance that anchored them. Kai’s failure to kill her—and his vow to correct it—recasts the narrative from clandestine love to relentless pursuit. From here, every choice funnels toward the reckoning they both promise: when hunter and hunted meet again, love will no longer soften the blade.