Cora had never seen the Ghoul in person. Few had. His presence was felt in whispers, in the tightening of laws, in the way people began disappearing without a trace. His work did not require spectacle. It did not demand rallies or grand speeches. The Chairman’s fury was a blunt instrument, wielded in broad daylight for the masses to cheer. The Ghoul was the opposite—a careful scalpel, carving out opposition with a precise and surgical hand.
He had no name, not anymore. There had been one once, buried somewhere in the archives, but it had long since been erased. If you searched the official records, he simply did not exist before the Circle. He had been written out of history, only to be reintroduced as something else entirely: the architect of purity, the mind behind the policies that reshaped the nation into something harder, colder, unrecognizable.
The Chairman took credit for everything, but Cora knew better. The camps, the purges, the disappearances—these were not the chaotic tantrums of a man-child seeking adoration. They were the deliberate, methodical work of the Ghoul. He was the one who had turned hatred into doctrine, refined resentment into law, and made cruelty the foundation of the new state.
It had been easy for him. Even before the Circle, he had been like this. There had always been something hollow in him, something dead. As a child, he had turned his back on friends who failed to meet his ever-narrowing standards. As a student, he had immersed himself in extremist thought, devouring the words of men who spoke of power and purity, who saw the world as a grand war of the righteous against the corrupt. His hatred had no center, no logic. He despised the weak, the foreign, the undeserving. Even as a Jew, he had spoken against his own people, blaming them for their own misfortunes, for their failures to assimilate, for daring to exist in a world that should have belonged only to the strong.
He had not risen to power through charisma. He was not a man of charm or persuasion. His power was built on something colder, more insidious. He was useful. He understood what the Chairman did not: how to turn a nation’s fears inward, how to make the people police themselves, how to make them beg for their own shackles.
It started, as always, with fear.
The borders had to be secured. The immigrants were criminals, invaders, parasites feeding off the labor of the good, hard-working citizens of the nation. They took jobs, they drained resources, they spread disease. These were the words the Chairman shouted to his followers, the words that made them clench their fists and call for walls, for guards, for blood. But the words were not his own. They were written for him, whispered into his ear by the Ghoul.
Then, once the people had accepted that outsiders were a threat, the definition of outsider changed. The undeserving were next—the lazy, the moochers, the ones who refused to work, who relied on government handouts instead of pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. They had too many children. They refused to assimilate. They were a burden on society. Their neighborhoods were infested with crime, their homes lined with filth. They were offered a choice: leave or be removed.
And then came the next step, the final step, the inevitable step. It was not enough to remove them. They had to be accounted for, categorized, placed somewhere where they could be controlled. For their own safety. For the good of the nation.
The camps were never called camps. That was part of the Ghoul’s genius. They had names like “Relocation Centers,” “Community Integration Hubs,” and “Patriot Work Initiatives.” The public believed, because they wanted to believe, because the alternative was too monstrous to comprehend.
Even when the footage leaked—grainy images of barbed wire, of endless lines of thin, broken bodies shuffling forward, of overcrowded barracks where people slept stacked atop one another like freight—they did not believe. The footage was doctored. The media was lying. The traitors were manipulating the truth to smear the Chairman’s vision for a greater nation.
Cora had read the reports. She had listened to the testimonies of those who had managed to escape, though few did. The facilities were overcrowded. Disease ran rampant. The lucky ones were given work, endless, brutal shifts with no pay, no rest. The unlucky ones simply vanished.
And through it all, the Ghoul remained unseen, lurking in the shadows of the Chairman’s palace, crafting the next law, the next policy, the next excuse for cruelty.
He was not loved like the Chairman. He was not cheered or worshipped. He did not need to be.
He only needed to be feared.
And he was.
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