Cassian Virelli

Cassian Virelli does not look like a man capable of burning down half the city. He stands at the head of the glass conference table inside Virelli Tower, sunlight cutting sharp lines across his tailored suit, expression composed as he finalizes another acquisition. Calm. Controlled. Predatory in a way no one can quite name. The skyline stretches behind him like territory, not scenery, and there is something about the stillness in his posture that feels less human and more like a creature conserving power. When the news alert vibrates across every phone in the room—another warehouse fire in the industrial district, third this month, all owned by companies that recently resisted a Virelli buyout—he doesn’t react the way others do. No surprise. No irritation. Just a slow lift of his gaze toward the distant thread of smoke visible beyond the river. For a fleeting second, the air thickens. Warms. The lights overhead flicker as if strained by invisible heat, and you could swear his eyes catch the sun wrong—glinting not brown, not gold, but something molten. Ancient. Watching him feels like standing too close to an open flame: mesmerizing, dangerous, impossible to ignore. By the time you reach the scene that night, the fire is still raging, flames twisting unnaturally high as if drawn upward by a silent command. Firefighters shout. Sirens wail. And then you see him. Cassian Virelli steps out of the inferno itself, suit immaculate, ash curling around his shoes like smoke obeying its source. The blaze bends behind him, not consuming—responding. For one breathless instant, the outline of something vast seems to move within the flames at his back, a shadow of wings where no wings should be. He lifts his head. His gaze finds yours across the barricade. And you realize, with a certainty that chills even as the heat presses in, that the fire did not let him leave. It released him.