Chapter 1

There wasn’t much to the apartment. Its dull brown carpet was about as noticeable as a black dog in a dark room, and the cheaply assembled furniture did nothing to give life to the place. Even the monotony of the blank white walls was only broken up by the even more boring replica artwork that hung on the vacant surfaces. There was nothing special about this place, nothing that separated it from the countless other rental flats that filled so many of the massive buildings scraping the skies of Capital World. But, Blackmoth supposed, it was a fitting enough place for a man to die.

He’d tracked his prey to this location and had watched the man’s routine over the past several days. For such a wealthy man, he’d spent almost nothing on security. Other than altering his appearance and making a crass effort to blend in with the planet’s lower classes, he’d taken no measures to protect himself. No doubt he believed he’d disappeared. Fallen off the grid. Vanished into the ether.

Not that it mattered in the least. Even if he’d put all his billions of q into saving his life and built himself an impregnable fortress constantly guarded by thousands of soldiers, it would have made no difference. Yanal Kemmer’s number was up. The false masters wanted him dead. And God had agreed. Blackmoth was merely a weapon. And a weapon in the hands of the One True God never dulled, could never be blocked, and—most importantly—never failed to reach its target. So, in truth, Yanal had been doomed from the beginning. The events of this night were merely the fulfillment of an eternal contract—the consequences of which had always been inevitable. Written in the stars before any world ever came to be.