The forest air clung to Agnellus like a second skin, bitter with the cold kiss of approaching dawn, yet strangely exhilarating. It was around two in the morning, the darkest hour before the false promise of first light. He moved with a predator's silent grace through the skeletal trees, a gleaming Silver Samuel Colt revolver held loosely in his black-gloved hand—the leather a stark, perfect match for the impeccably tailored winter coat draped over his impossibly thin shoulders. At his side, a sleek Doberman Pinscher trotted with disciplined silence, its muscles rippling beneath its dark fur, one of many unseen shadows whose distant, guttural barking echoed like fragmented thunder through the frost-kissed woods. From deeper within the tangled thicket, the crisp crackle of gunfire punctuated the stillness—men shouting, cursing, dying, their desperate chorus swallowed by the vast, indifferent night.
He reached the Gothic-style mansion, a sprawling edifice that had once spoken of old money and quiet dignity, now a crumbling fortress of violence and chaos. Ornate gargoyles stared down from their perches with stone indifference as he slipped through a shattered window. Inside, the air was thick with gunpowder and the coppery tang of fresh blood. Men in expensive, bloodstained suits exchanged frantic fire, their Martini-Henry rifles spitting flame, their Adams revolvers barking, even crude magical armaments throwing sparks and eerie, flickering light. The Dobermans, unseen until they struck, tore through them with silent, brutal efficiency—fangs like sabers, sleek black bodies a blur, leaving men collapsing in heaps, their desperate struggles silenced.
Agnellus walked calmly, deliberately, his coat sleeve fluttering behind him like a dark, heraldic war banner, into what had once been a grand, opulent study, now a tableau of ruin and death. The Doberman that had been at his side followed, its heavy breathing the only sound besides the distant gunfire. There, behind a massive, overturned mahogany desk, stood a hulking man in a pristine grey suit, flanked by fifteen armed brutes, their faces a mixture of fear and defiance. Just as Agnellus crossed the threshold, a blurred figure, hidden cunningly behind the splintered study door, lunged forward, a glint of cold steel in its hand.
The attacker never made it.
In a horrifying, almost liquid shift, the Doberman beside Agnellus rippled and elongated, its sleek black fur dissolving into the black fabric of a French maid's uniform, its snout receding, its eyes sharpening into human cunning. A blinding flash of silver—Bowie steel, etched with unseen runes—sank into the assailant's throat with a wet, sickening thud. His eyes bulged in a silent tableau of shock and agony as he crumpled to the floor, already dead. Mary, now appearing as a woman in a blood-slick maid outfit, her unruly red hair a wild, vibrant halo, one eye twitching almost imperceptibly with a barely suppressed, feral rage, didn't even spare a glance for the man she'd so brutally dispatched. Her gaze, sharp and untamed, was already locked onto the remaining brutes in the room, even as bullets whined past them, embedding themselves into the plastered walls.
With a fluid grace that defied mortal comprehension and an inhuman speed that left echoes in the air, she sprang forward. There was a flurry of motion too fast for the eye to follow. Throats opened in silent gouts of crimson. Fingers flew from hands, severed with horrifying precision. Men screamed, their voices abruptly cut short as life drained from them. Then, as quickly as the storm had erupted, silence fell once more, heavy and absolute, broken only by the panting of Agnellus's remaining Dobermans.
Only the large man in the grey suit remained, trembling like a leaf caught in an unseen gale.
"Mr. Mark," Agnellus said calmly, his voice chilling in its placidness, "you didn't have to make such a mess. You could've just reached into the cookie jar and walked away with your trinkets. But no... you had to ruin my sleep. A cardinal sin, I assure you."
The man, Mr. Mark, stammered, his face pale, sweat beading on his brow despite the cold. "It's—it's a misunderstanding! I didn't know she was yours! I was unaware! Mr. Agnellus, please, I can explain—"
Agnellus didn't respond to the pleas. His attention was already elsewhere. Instead, he simply asked, his tone clipped, "Mary, did you find it?"
The red-haired maid—Mary—wiped a smear of blood from her cheek with a black-gloved finger and gave a sharp, affirmative nod, her eyes still burning with that barely contained ferocity.
"Good," he said, his voice flat. "Grab it. Let's go. And take some of his money for the inconvenience, Mary. Perhaps a whole drawer. Think of it as compensation for lost beauty sleep."
A distant flurry of gunshots cracked once more from the forest as Agnellus and Mary, a silent, deadly pair, vanished into the pre-dawn gloom, leaving behind only the dead and the chilling quiet.
Some time later, in a far more peaceful, if slightly less conventional, part of the world…
Lux pushed open the heavy, ornate doors to her massive Gothic manor—her sanctuary, her home, a quiet fortress against the industrial world outside. Behind her, the cold wind howled, rattling the ancient panes of stained glass. The air within, however, was warm, smelling faintly of old books and something herbal, comforting.
"Delta," she called casually, her voice echoing softly through the cavernous foyer, "pack some of our gear. We're going sightseeing and scavenger hunting."
In the vast, sprawling drawing-room, bathed in the dancing glow of a roaring fireplace, sat Delta. A woman who looked nearly identical to Lux—perhaps a twin separated by millennia, or a mirrored fragment of her own ancient soul. Her hair was styled in a casual half-updo, flowing like dried blood and dusky wine, with strands the color of slate and fertile earth—already preparing, as always, for winter's inevitable embrace, even indoors.
Wrapped in an ash-grey knitted sweater that swallowed her form, a thick, leather-bound book held open in one hand and a steaming mug of coffee clutched in the other, she barely looked up. Her eyes, the same unique blend of gold and tangerine as Lux's, were heavy-lidded with amused exhaustion. "What did you do this time, Lux?" she asked, her voice soft, laced with an old, familiar weariness. She stretched like a languid cat, her limbs extending, then sank deeper into the plush velvet of the armchair, pulling a heavy, knitted blanket tighter around herself.
"Huh? I didn't do anything," Lux muttered, a faint pout on her lips as she flopped dramatically to the thick Persian rug beside her sister. She began undressing, shedding layers of her travel-worn coat and scarf, stuffing a dry biscuit into her mouth between words. "I was on my way home when I was invited for tea by a… rather persuasive gentleman."
"Uh-huh." Delta merely raised a single brow, a silent challenge to Lux's innocent act.
Lux, undeterred, chewed thoughtfully. "Anyway, we've got to save a kid who got kidnapped."
Delta didn't even blink. Her only reaction was a slow, deliberate sip of her coffee. "What do you mean we?" she finally asked, her voice laced with flat resignation.
Lux pouted, shifting on the rug. "I'm terrible with strangers, Delta. Or… public."
"So am I," Delta shot back, her voice dry as dust.
Lux smirked, a conspiratorial glint in her eyes, leaning in. "But two Luxes can surely come up with a brilliant idea… no?"
Delta groaned, a soft, weary sound that vanished into the steam of her coffee, the unspoken acceptance already hanging in the warm, quiet air of the manor.