The city clung to her like wet silk, filthy and suffocating.
Fog bled from the Thames, thick with the stink of coal and old secrets. Horse carts lurched past, iron wheels shrieking over rain-slick stones. A bell tolled noon, but the sun never touched the sky.
Carmen Vale walked alone.
Julian had offered to come. So had Vivienne.
But this—this had to be hers.
Some debts could not be delegated.
Some hungers, only fed by one mouth.
The chapel slumped at the end of the crooked lane, scorched black by an old fire no one spoke of anymore.
Shattered glass fanged the windows.
The bones of the pews rotted where they fell.
God had abandoned this place. Carmen only came to finish the job.
She slipped inside. The door whimpered behind her.
On the crumbling stage: a chair.
And lashed to it—a man. Barely breathing.
He was stripped to the waist, his arms bound so tightly the ropes had fused with flesh. His chest was a ruin, carved and bleeding, the words gouged without mercy:
TELL THEM WHO.
Carmen stood still. Let him feel her. Let him wonder if he was hallucinating.
Somewhere in the silence, rain ticked on broken glass.
At last she moved, each step deliberate. Boots whispering through the ash.
She crouched, folding herself like a silk ribbon until her face was level with his.
The man shuddered. His mouth opened in a noise too broken to be called a plea.
Carmen studied him—tilted her head slightly, as if admiring a painting she hadn't decided whether to buy.
Her voice, when it came, was silk wrapped around a scalpel.
"What did he ask you to say?"
The man bled more than spoke, forcing the words out.
"He said... if I didn't name you... he'd... cut out my eyes."
Carmen smiled, but there was no cruelty in it.
No warmth, either.
Only something precise. Surgical.
"And did you?"
The man swallowed, but no answer came.
He didn't need to speak.
The guilt poured off him in waves.
For a moment, Carmen just watched him—a flicker of something strange crossing her face. Almost regret. Almost.
Then she rose, brushing ash from her coat like an afterthought.
No rage. No sadness.
Just the soft click of inevitability.
Outside, the rain fell heavier.
Vivienne stood just beyond the doorway, shoulders soaked, eyes hollow and unreadable.
Julian leaned against the fence, smoke curling from his cigarette, watching the world like it was a joke only he understood.
Carmen didn't slow.
"He wanted a confession," she said, passing them without looking.
Vivienne fell in step, her boots splashing through puddles.
"And?" she asked.
For a heartbeat, Carmen seemed thoughtful.
Then she smiled—a small thing, fragile and false as a butterfly pinned to velvet.
"Then we'll give him one."
Later they found another man before the next dawn.
Not the one Carmen had left to the dark.
No, this was someone louder. Cleaner.
A merchant. A pillar.
A man who'd spat righteous fury into the newspapers, condemning the monsters gnawing at London's bones.
Innocent, if you believed in innocence.
They left him sprawled across a public bench outside Scotland Yard, hands crushed, mouth sewn shut with thick black thread.
The knife work was careful this time, almost beautiful, the letters carved deep and clean:
WE SPEAK IN ACTION.
YOU WANTED A VOICE.
THIS IS VOLUME.
The city cracked wide open.
Panic ran through the alleys, flooded the gutters.
Priests lit candles in trembling hands.
Mothers pulled their children inside.
The newspapers couldn't print fast enough.
Rumors thickened the air like smoke.
No one realized this was only a prelude.
A taste.
A name whispered at the edge of sleep.
Inside, Carmen sat by the window, swirling her wine—red, viscous, almost black.
Julian lounged in the chair, boots still caked in mud, a half-smirk playing on his lips.
Vivienne knelt by the fire, notebook open, her pen dragging slow, endless circles before she ever began to write.
Outside, London seethed.
Inside, Carmen smiled faintly, but this time it wasn't hunger alone.
There was something else inside her now.
A flicker of curiosity.
A small, restless thing, gnawing at the edges.
She had expected satisfaction.
Instead, she found herself... waiting.
Waiting for the next move.
Waiting for someone—anyone—clever enough to see the pattern before it swallowed them whole.
This was only the beginning.
And they were only getting sharper
Carmen almost shows regret—but pulls back.