Mara broke faster than they expected.
Not like Elias, trembling and begging for forgiveness.
Mara broke outward—a cracked dam, a storm that screamed instead of weeping.
It started in the marketplace.
A boy brushed against her, running past, laughter sharp in the air. A simple accident. A moment so small it should have slipped away like breath.
But something inside Mara snapped.
She turned with a feral snarl, knife flashing before anyone could blink. The blade caught him across the cheek, slicing a clean red line that welled instantly with blood.
The crowd froze.
The boy fell.
And Mara stood there, knife raised, trembling, wild-eyed, waiting for the world to collapse around her.
It did.
But not in the way she needed.
The boy's father roared, fists raised. Bystanders gasped—some shouting for help, some backing away. A woman tried to grab Mara's wrist. Mara lashed out, cutting her across the palm.
Within minutes, chaos swallowed the square.
By the time the constables arrived, Mara was gone, vanishing into the alleys like smoke chased by a storm.
Carmen watched the aftermath from a rooftop, smoke trailing from her cigarette into the grey sky.
She didn't speak.
She didn't move.
Julian stood behind her, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
Vivienne sat on the cold stone, knees drawn to her chest, watching the faces below as the boy was carried away, wailing, his father shouting for justice no one would deliver.
"She's lost," Vivienne whispered.
Carmen didn't look away.
"She was never ours," she said.
Julian smiled thinly, the way he always did when something broke on schedule.
They found Mara two days later.
Crouched in the ruins of a burned-out bakery, knife clutched to her chest, rocking back and forth.
Her dress soaked in blood.
Her hair tangled and filthy.
Her mouth moving in frantic, soundless prayer.
Vivienne flinched when she saw her.
Mara looked up, wide-eyed and empty.
"I did what you wanted," she whispered.
Carmen knelt before her, the hem of her coat brushing ash.
"You did," she agreed softly.
Julian moved behind Mara, silent as death.
Vivienne turned away before the blade slipped between Mara's ribs.
She didn't need to see it.
She had already memorized the sound.
They buried Mara beside Elias, the dirt cold and heavy against the ruined floorboards.
Another pawn.
Another crack sealed with silence.
Vivienne wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, bile burning her throat.
But she said nothing.
Because nothing she said would matter.
Carmen lit a cigarette with hands steady as glass.
Julian whistled tunelessly, the sound bouncing off the broken walls like a ghost refusing to leave.
The spiral turned tighter.
The city bent lower.
And still, no one saw them.
Hargreave saw the edges.
He didn't know names.
He didn't know faces.
But he knew there was a shape to the violence now—a cruelty pulsing behind the chaos like a heartbeat.
The woman, Liza, had led him to another trail—burned letters, half-legible, smudged with blood.
He pieced them together by candlelight, hands trembling.
The spiral was everywhere.
Not just carved into bodies.
Drawn onto church pews.
Scratched into alley walls.
Etched beneath loose cobblestones.
A language no one else knew how to read.
Hargreave understood it now.
It wasn't a message.
It was a map.
Not leading to the killers—but to what they believed.
He sat at the center of his ruined room, red thread tangled around him like veins pulled from a living body, and whispered the only truth that mattered.
"They're not ending the city."
He swallowed, throat raw.
"They're remaking it."
That night, Vivienne came to Carmen.
She stood barefoot in the kitchen, hair damp with sweat, hands trembling.
Carmen didn't turn.
She didn't need to.
"I want to be useful," Vivienne said, voice breaking.
Carmen finally looked at her.
Not cruelly.
Not kindly.
Just measuring.
"You already are," she said.
Vivienne shook her head, tears stinging her eyes.
"Not enough."
Carmen set her cigarette aside, walking toward her in slow, silent steps.
She stopped a breath away, cradling Vivienne's face between her palms.
"You'll never be enough," Carmen said, almost sweetly. "But you'll do."
And she kissed Vivienne—slow and brutal, tasting of possession and endings.
Vivienne kissed her back.
Because there was nothing else left to do.
In the other room, Julian smiled to himself, the cigarette burning low between his fingers.
He knew Carmen's games.
He loved her for them.
Because in the end, there was only the two of them.
Only ever the two of them.
The rest were just dust waiting to be scattered.