The cold bit deep into her bones, but it was the silence that truly swallowed her whole. The city's forgotten alleys had been her cradle, the harsh whispers of night her lullaby. Dirt and blood smeared her skin, and every breath tasted like despair. She was ten, but the girl in the cracked mirror was a ghost already—eyes too old, heart too raw.
She remembered the first time she found a book, a battered volume with yellowed pages tucked inside a dumpster behind a forgotten café. It was her stolen sanctuary. The words—stories of love, pain, and distant worlds—offered a brief escape from the cold reality clawing at her. Each page turned was a small rebellion against the darkness encasing her life.
But the world didn't forgive. The organization's eyes had found her in that alley, their hands cold but promising. They pulled her from the gutter and hammered her into shape—a weapon. The nights of wailing, of broken bones set wrong on purpose, of fever and screaming, became the foundation of her new existence. Pain was no longer something to fear. It was a tool, a language she learned fluently.
Her first kill was nothing like the stories in her books. It was a man who had tried to end her before she could become useful. The crack of the pistol was loud and final, the weight of a life ending settling cold in her hands. No victory, no celebration—just the deep, raw edge of survival.
Years bled into one another. Her comrades were as fractured as she was, but among them, Layla shone like a fragile light. A medic with gentle hands and warm eyes, Layla held a secret—a family hidden away, a chance at normalcy Nyx dared to believe in. She guarded that hope fiercely. For Layla, she hacked the unhackable, erased trails, and wove illusions so perfect that no one could trace the fragile life Layla tried to protect.
But hope was a cruel joke.
Orders came like poison slipped into a wound—cleanse the breach. Erase the weakness. Nyx arrived in the dead of night at Layla's safehouse, begging her to flee once more. But the enemy was already at the door.
The screams still echoed in her mind—the baby's cry muffled forever in her arms, Layla's eyes wide with betrayal and fear as Nyx was forced to do what she could never forget. Three shots, each a fracture in her soul.
The weight of those moments crushed her. She had betrayed everything she held dear—her only flicker of light snuffed out by the hands meant to protect it.
She collapsed then, sobbing in the dark, the first true tears in years. But the organization demanded more. She was broken, but not yet defeated.
When hope dared bloom again, it came disguised as a promise—a handler offering freedom, a future beyond the shadows. She grasped it desperately, allowing herself to believe.
But it was a trap.
Betrayed once more, she stepped onto a hidden mine of lies. The explosion shattered more than flesh—it shattered trust, and with it, the last remnants of her fragile humanity.
Captured again, she fell into a nightmare worse than any before.
Two years of unrelenting torture. Bones broken and reset wrong, muscles shredded and rebuilt with cold precision. Every scream was silenced by needles and promises of death. Her mind was hammered until feelings were just a distant memory.
Reading, once a joy, became an act of rebellion—smuggling a tattered book in her torn clothes, the whispered stories a balm on her shredded soul. But even that was punished. Each page turned brought a new lash, a reminder that softness was weakness.
They stripped her of laughter, of hope, of tears.
The cold machinery they built was flawless. No hesitation. No mercy. No trace of the girl who once dreamed.
And when the final mission came, she dared one last time to trust a comrade—an ally in a world of shadows.
He raised the gun.
The betrayal was clean, merciless.
Her last breath was swallowed by darkness.
Nox awoke drenched in sweat, his breath ragged beneath the hoodie's shadow. His violet eyes pierced the night sky, sharp and unyielding.
No tears fell.
Only the relentless ache of a soul forged in fire.
He went up the roof ,lit a cigarette, the glow a brief defiance against the cold, and let the smoke curl into the night—the only comfort in a world that had taken everything.
He remembered the girl who once wanted nothing more than to lose herself in stories.
Now, only the machine remained.
End of Chapter 8