The four-story drop from the hospital window should have shattered his newly regenerated legs.
Instead, Leo landed on the wet asphalt with the silent, heavy grace of a falling shadow.
Cursed Energy a dark, viscous power coiled around his limbs like a second skin, absorbing the kinetic impact completely.
He stood up slowly, the freezing rain washing over his bare chest where the jagged, black tattoos had etched themselves permanently into his flesh.
His secondary eyes blinked, adjusting to the dark.
The world looked entirely different.
The mundane veil had been ripped away.
He could see the residual energy clinging to the streets—the faint, sickening miasma of human misery, the lingering stains of old violence in the alleyways.
And beyond that, he felt his own presence.
It was a suffocating, dense aura that made the stray dogs a block away whimper and scurry into the shadows.
Leo didn’t go back to the apartment.
There was nothing left there but rubble and ghosts.
Instead, he vanished into the underbelly of the city, letting the darkness swallow him whole.
…
..
.
Three Months Later.
The abandoned meatpacking plant on the outskirts of smelled of rusted iron, stale blood, and wet dog.
To a normal person, it was a condemned hazard.
To the local pack of ghouls, it was a dining room.
Leo sat casually atop a rusted shipping container suspended in the center of the warehouse, his legs dangling over the edge.
He was wearing a dark, heavy trench coat he’d lifted off a pawn shop rack, open just enough to reveal the sharp lines of the cursed markings on his collarbone.
In one hand, he held a half-eaten cheeseburger.
Below him, three humanoid figures with pale, graying skin and jagged, elongated teeth were huddled around a fresh, horrific kill—a hitchhiker they had dragged off the interstate.
Leo took a slow bite of his burger, chewing thoughtfully.
The food tasted better these days.
Everything did.
When you stopped caring about the rules of humanity, you were finally free to enjoy the spoils.
“You know,” Leo called out, his voice echoing cleanly through the cavernous room.
“I was wondering why the cursed energy in this town tasted like an open sewer.
Now I know.”
The three ghouls snapped their heads up, dropping their meal.
Their eyes, milky and feral, locked onto the figure above them.
They hissed, their claws extending as they scrambled up the rusted scaffolding with terrifying, inhuman speed.
Leo didn’t move.
He didn’t even drop his food.
He just looked at them, his four crimson eyes narrowing in sheer, unadulterated contempt.
The grief that had once threatened to drown him had calcified into a weapon.
He no longer cried for his brother.
He honored Kai by ensuring that nothing in this wretched supernatural ecosystem survived his gaze.
“You monsters think so highly of yourselves.” Leo murmured, wiping a drop of grease from his chin.
“But you’re really just livestock.”
The lead ghoul leaped into the air, its jaws unhinging, aiming straight for Leo’s throat.
Leo raised a single, languid finger.
“Dismantle.”
There was no incantation, no grand gesture, and no flash of light.
There was only the sickening, wet sound of flesh parting.
In mid-air, the lead ghoul’s head cleanly detached from its shoulders.
A microsecond later, its torso split into four perfectly symmetrical pieces.
The ruined chunks of meat hit the concrete floor with a wet series of thuds, painting the rusted metal red.
The other two ghouls froze, their primal instincts suddenly screaming at them that they had just sprinted into the jaws of an apex predator.
They turned to run.
“Did I say you could leave?” Leo’s voice dropped, saturated with a heavy, oppressive command that forced the air out of the room.
He flicked his wrist twice.
Two invisible flying slashes of cursed energy tore through the warehouse, shearing through the steel scaffolding and cleanly bisecting the fleeing monsters before they could even scream.
Silence reclaimed the warehouse.
Leo finished his burger, tossing the wrapper aside, and hopped down from the container, his boots landing softly in the pool of blood.
He didn’t spare the corpses a second glance.
He just looked at the floating red text that materialized in his vision.
«Target eliminated: Minor Ghoul x3
+15 Kill Points.
Current Kill Points: 85/100»
Leo clicked his tongue in annoyance.
“Five points each?
System, you’re getting stingy.
I’ve been slaughtering these low-level bottom feeders for three months.
Vampires, rugarus, angry ghosts…
they barely put up a fight.
It’s getting boring.”
«Kill Point yields are proportional to the target’s strength and cosmic significance.
Hunt grander prey to reap grander rewards.»
“Grander prey,” Leo scoffed, sliding his hands into his coat pockets as he walked out of the slaughterhouse and into the cool night air.
He had spent the last three months testing the limits of his new vessel.
The cursed energy was vast, but without the physical fingers of , his output was capped.
Dismantle—the default flying slash technique—was brutally effective, capable of dicing standard monsters with zero effort.
But to unlock Cleave, which adjusted its power to the target’s toughness, or the ultimate trump card, his Domain Expansion, he needed more Kill Points.
He needed more of the King of Curses soul.
He needed a real target.
Something that thought it was a god.
Leo walked down the empty highway, the neon sign of a cheap motel buzzing in the distance.
He felt good.
The intoxicating hum of cursed energy in his veins kept his mind sharp and his emotions detached.
He lived exactly as he pleased now.
If a hunter got in his way, he beat them to a pulp and stole their cash.
If a monster annoyed him, he turned it into confetti.
He was a blind spot in this universe’s grand design.
As he reached the motel parking lot, a sharp, piercing migraine suddenly spiked behind his eyes.
The world around him flickered, the ambient light dimming as the System’s interface violently expanded in front of him, glowing an urgent, pulsating crimson.
«URGENT QUEST GENERATED
Anomaly Detected: Burkittsville, Indiana.
Target: The Vanir (Pagan Deity of Harvest).
Destined Variables Approaching: Warning.
Two primary subjects (Sam and Dean Winchester) are on an interception course with the Target.
Objective: Eliminate the False Deity.
Bonus Condition: Disrupt the fated timeline.
Execute the target in the presence of the the primary subjects to assert dominance over Fate.
Reward: 150 Kill Points + Sukuna’s Second Finger.»
Leo stopped dead in his tracks.
The headache faded, replaced by a rushing, exhilarating thrill.
His secondary eyes widened, a manic, terrifying grin slowly stretching across his face, revealing teeth that felt just a little too sharp.
“A fake god,” Leo whispered, a low, dark chuckle rumbling in his chest.
“And the universe’s favorite little heroes, all in one place.”
The Winchesters.
The hunters who were always too late for people like Kai, but always right on time for the grand, dramatic showdowns.
The pawns of the angels.
Leo looked up at the moon, his grin widening until it hurt.
I guess it’s about time to show these ‘heroes’ what a real monster looks like.