The monsters we choose

The Black Veil was not a place ordinary people knew existed.

Hidden beneath the streets of Chicago, beneath the lights and noise of the city above, was a world where magic was real, monsters walked freely, and violence was treated as entertainment.

The underground arena had hosted every kind of fighter imaginable—vampires with centuries of experience, shifters who could tear through steel, witches who could bend reality itself.

Everyone who entered the ring had something to prove.

Tonight was no different.

Until you stepped inside.

At first, the crowd laughed. Another challenger. Another person who thought they belonged among monsters.

Then the fight began.

And the laughter stopped.

There was something wrong about how easily you adapted. Something impossible about the way they moved, survived, and refused to break. They weren’t fighting like someone trying to escape.

They were fighting like someone who had finally been given permission to stop holding back.

From the private balcony overlooking the arena, four sets of eyes followed every movement.

Lucien Vale watched with quiet interest, his fingers resting against the glass as flames flickered beneath his skin.

Riven Blackthorn smiled for the first time that night.

Soren Vey studied every detail, searching for an answer that didn’t exist.

And Caelan Everhart wondered how someone could look so much like a storm while carrying so many wounds.

For the first time in years, the balance of Chicago’s hidden world shifted.

Because the most dangerous thing to enter the Black Veil that night was not a monster.

It was someone the monsters could not understand.