L*st and Death

No one knew how long The Reading Circle by Lev Tolstoy had been in the prison on Lemon Island. The book, yellowed and brittle with age, had been lying alone atop the filthy mattress from the very first day Isaac Bazelli was incarcerated here. No name was written on it, but it was easy enough to imagine the previous owner: some long-forgotten prisoner, who had managed to obtain the rare volume through a guard’s mercy.

It wasn’t Isaac’s type of book. Religious, philosophical musings weren’t to his taste. But in this blinding white prison, if he didn’t want to stab his own eyes out just to escape the boredom, he had no choice but to read the 1,400-page tome.

“A life that forgets death is entirely different from one that lives with death inching closer every day. The former resembles the state of an animal, the latter nears that of a god.”

Isaac Bazelli’s glacial, burning gaze locked onto the short sentence.

“A brilliant line.”

He spoke with genuine admiration. Just as Tolstoy had written, a life lived in constant awareness of death elevated him to a divine state. A life that could end tomorrow. His purpose grew sharper—honed like the edge of a freshly whetted blade.

Isaac would go on hating them until the day he died.

But Isaac hadn’t always possessed such clarity of purpose. There had been a time, too, when he had drifted according to instinct, like a beast unaware of death, living as if eternity were guaranteed.

Fifteen years ago, Isaac set fire to the Federal Biological Research Institute (BRI), a facility dedicated to the genetic study of alphas. After successfully escaping the underground lab, he fled to Europe and began working as a mercenary for a subcontracted dispatch unit under a private military company.

He had no qualms about getting his hands dirty. Defense missions against terrorist raids, covert ops, assassinations—he took every job his employers requested. And the so-called “villains” he caught along the way? They were just side dishes. He used them to relieve his rut cycle, punished them without guilt, and threw them away.

But that lifestyle didn’t last long. During a mission to rescue employees from a Colombian trading company, Isaac mutilated the genitals and internal organs of a guerrilla leader. His teammates finally broke their silence and voiced their disgust at Isaac’s disturbing appetites.

That incident was the final straw. Isaac left the dispatch firm and began working as a freelance mercenary. He roamed from war-torn city to city, taking on any high-risk, high-pay jobs that came his way. He had a particular knack for finding hostages held in exchange for something—money, power, leverage. Most of his work involved retrieving those kidnapped for financial or political reasons.

The kind of job he avoided at all costs? Tracking down victims of human trafficking. Especially young girls snatched by Eastern European mafia or South American cartels—it was always a nightmare.

There was a saying passed around among the mafia like a joke: cocaine gets used up once it's sold, but a single girl could generate profit continuously for at least seven years.

The mafia didn’t leave things to luck. They conducted thorough background checks before trafficking anyone. The minors sold on the black market were usually orphans or the children of the desperately poor. Most were from Eastern Europe, sold like merchandise to the wealthy elites of Europe, America, or the Arab world. Always to sociopaths addicted to sex.

These operations involved far too many people. With the government looking the other way, orphanages, employment agencies, document forgers, smugglers, transporters, and border agents formed a dense and unbreakable network. Even if one of the kidnapped girls was miraculously returned to her family, the organization remained intact.

Isaac was paid roughly $80,000 for each girl he rescued from these trafficking networks. Not only was the payout disproportionately low compared to the danger, but the sense of unresolved disgust lingered long after the job ended.

Sometimes, the blank stares of drugged-up girls abandoned in brothels would come back to him, and in a twisted act of catharsis, Isaac would violate the bodies of the men involved. Days passed like that—until one day, after strangling the head of a Mexican cartel mid-coitus, Isaac swore to never again accept a job involving human trafficking victims.

And yet now, two years deep into tracking an organization of indeterminate size, he was still chasing their tail. Fully aware that death could arrive any day, he even resorted to conducting reckless clinical trials in the hope of extending his life—by creating an omega.

“Fantasies about Imprint? That’s just deprivation. Strip away the lofty talk—omegas, alphas, pheromones, rut cycles—and only one thing remains... You’re just looking for a life companion to save you.”

As Yoon Siron had said, Isaac did long for an Imprint—but not the romantic kind of salvation Siron described. He didn’t want a soulmate. He didn’t want a life partner.

What he wanted was simple: an omega that could extend his fixed lifespan by even a single day through the phenomenon of Imprint.

The thought of Siron led his mind back to the Sombras Mountains and the wetlands of Secreta, where the boy had once taken shelter. If Siron hadn’t escaped the basement in time during the bombing that collapsed the surface building, he would have died long ago. But if he had made it out alive, he’d now be showing signs—early signs—of the final evolutionary stage caused by stabilized genetic restructuring.

Isaac allowed a rare smile to creep across his face, recalling that cheerful expression always clinging to Siron’s melancholy features. But the smile vanished just as quickly, chilling over in an instant.

Isaac hoped Siron was alive—but if he was dead, there was nothing he could do. Even so, until he confirmed the boy’s fate with his own eyes, Isaac had no intention of creating another omega.

In this world, one omega was enough—just one, to Imprint with Isaac Bazelli.

And yet, not even Siron’s fate was within his grasp anymore. They were watching his every move.

Isaac stroked the smooth metal beneath his turtleneck. A bomb was strapped around his neck—one that could shred his body to pulp in a flash. Connected to a remote control system, it rendered him incapable of severing his restraints or straying more than a kilometer from the island’s center.

And he wasn’t the only alpha abducted to this godforsaken island.

Not far from him was another alpha—a temperamental, sharp-eyed East Asian man, confined somewhere nearby. Isaac had detected the pheromones he carelessly leaked and surmised his location.

The man—supposedly the youngest son of the Vile Group chairwoman—had once attempted a trade with Isaac, without an ounce of fear. In exchange for access to Yuri Berec’s omega research journals, he offered rut suppressants and minor conveniences.

Isaac rejected the offer without hesitation. And yet, the bitter aftertaste lingered. People who used sexual desire to control alphas would never let the invention of a suppressant slide. As expected, they had eliminated the chairwoman of Vile Group—erased alpha existence from public knowledge—and at the same time, obliterated any chance of freeing alphas from their base instincts.

In the past, they had gone by many names—Daredevils, Rebel Death, Ferox Pack, Piccaros. Symbols of angry youth. But as the organization evolved, they redefined themselves.

Hybris—“those arrogant enough to incur the wrath of God.”

A name that claimed equality with divinity through their own power.

“They want to be gods, here and there. What a pathetic farce.”

Isaac chuckled dryly and checked the clock. 8:26 AM. Time to close the heavy book.

He placed the brick-like tome onto the concrete bed, used only his arms to slide toward the bed’s edge, and transferred into his wheelchair. As he rolled to the door, the ceiling speaker buzzed right on cue.

Ten seconds later, the automated door slid open, and two alphas with guns greeted him. They cuffed his wrists and barked their order.

“Move.”

The two men—easily over two meters tall—stepped back toward the wall, eyes sharp and alert. Their bodies radiated tension. Isaac had once single-handedly annihilated the branch of their organization rooted in Belzoras. Even now, crippled in a wheelchair and chained with a collar bomb, he was still a threat.

Isaac glanced briefly at the ceiling CCTV and wheeled himself out of the cell.

As he moved down the obsessively sterile white corridor, he drew a deep breath. The pheromones left behind by the now-dead youngest son of Vile Group still clung thick in the air, despite the ventilation running all day. To Isaac, the scent was merely unpleasant—but to another alpha, it might have been spine-chilling.

“Ugh. This stinks...”

The two alphas trailing behind him reacted, as though a demon had cast a shadow across their backs. Isaac’s eyes twinkled with amusement as he wheeled into the elevator alone.

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