Chapter 1

     The city stank of rot and rusted metal, the smell clinging to your skin like old blood. The kind of place where you don’t notice the filth until it’s under your nails. I sat in a booth under the jaundiced glow of the bar’s light, watching the condensation on my glass pool like a patient’s cold sweat. The world outside the window was a steady pulse of rain, each drop a needle finding its way into the city's veins.

    The neon flickered like a broken promise, casting shadows across the rain-slick street. I was nursing my drink in the kind of bar that swallowed men whole—a place where regrets and memories had no difference.

    That’s when the man with the hat walked in, his steps deliberate, his eyes dull, like someone who had been drained of too much and kept going because he hadn’t realized he was empty yet. The hat itself sagged, soaked with rain or worse, the brim low enough to hide what was left of his expression. He carried an air of violence that seeped from him, quiet, like an infection you don’t see until it’s too late.

    The hat wasn’t the thing that made you notice him, though. It was how he wore it, tilted low like he wanted to be invisible but was too damn arrogant to stay hidden. A hat that had seen better days, but still carried weight, just like its owner. He slid onto the stool next to me, didn’t order, just stared at the bottles lining the back wall, his lips curling like they had something bitter to spit but didn’t bother.

    “Hat’s seen action,” I said, just to break the tension that had curled itself around us like a tourniquet.

    His lip twitched, but his eyes stayed fixed on the bottles behind the bar, unfocused. “Everything’s seen action,” he muttered. His voice was like a rasp on bone, hollow, as if he had coughed out more than words in his time.

    I didn’t press. People in this town didn’t need reasons to hate, but this guy? He wore it like a second skin, tight and suffocating. You could feel it in the air, thick and palpable, like a storm rolling in.

    He turned back to the bar, fingers tapping on the wood, slow and deliberate, a rhythm that didn’t match the soft jazz crawling out of the jukebox in the corner. He didn’t belong here, but something kept him tethered. Maybe it was the same thing that kept me glued to my stool, even when every instinct told me to move.

     "Achilles," he said, like a gunshot in the quiet. The word hung there, heavy.

    I stiffened. “Achilles?”

    He didn’t look at me. His fingers still drummed, like he was waiting for something, or someone. “Yeah,” he said, voice thick with something unsaid. “Achilles. He’s a disease. Been spreading through this city too long.”

    I could feel the cold creeping up my spine, like a slow injection of something icy. “Hat ad hit hated Achilles,” he said, slurring the words into something dark, like a mantra. The bartender winced but didn’t say anything.

    I didn’t know who Achilles was, not really. But the way he spoke the name—it was like poison filling the air. Like the slow drip of a catheter, keeping something alive that should’ve been long dead.  I didn’t know who Achilles was, but I knew enough to stay away from men with myth in their names. Men like that didn’t play fair. Men like that didn’t lose.

    The bartender poured him a whiskey without being asked. They knew him here. That was never a good sign.

    “Hat ad hit hated Achilles,” he muttered under his breath, as he swirled the amber liquid in his glass. I thought it was some kind of joke at first. But the way he said it, low and full of venom, made it clear it wasn’t funny. Not to him. Not to anyone who knew the real story.

    He took a long sip and turned to face me full on, finally showing me the whole picture. His face was a battlefield of scars and grudges. “You ever hate someone so much it don’t make sense? Like, you don’t even know why, but the minute they walk into the room, it’s like the walls close in and every damn breath you take tastes like poison?”

    I didn’t answer. He wasn’t asking.

    "Achilles," he said again. "I got a score to settle with him. I ain't the only one."

    There was something final in his voice, like he was staring down the barrel of a past that couldn’t be outrun. He finished his drink in one gulp, slammed the glass down, and pushed away from the bar, leaving a trail of water behind him. He didn’t say goodbye.  The rain swallowed him as he walked out, like the city was pulling him back into itself, reclaiming what was left.

    The rain picked up outside, tapping the windows like a nervous drummer. I stayed seated, my gut telling me I’d just seen the start of something ugly. And ugly had a way of sticking around in this town, like a bloodstain that refused to wash out.

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