Grand Aurora Hotel – The Penthouse Suite
The air in the lavish penthouse was thick with tension, the kind that precedes a storm. Crystal chandeliers cast fractured light across the marble floors, their reflections dancing like restless spirits on the polished surfaces.
"Enough of these theatrics, Kael." Seraphina Vale's voice was a blade sheathed in ice. She pushed the financial documents away with deliberate slowness, the papers whispering against the mahogany table. "I've personally verified these numbers three times. There are no discrepancies - unless you're manufacturing them."
Kael Stormcrest's carefully constructed mask of civility cracked at the edges. A bead of sweat traced its way down his temple, betraying his mounting panic. Why wasn't the drug working? The Rohypnol should have taken effect fifteen minutes ago. His fingers drummed an erratic rhythm against the tabletop, each tap echoing like a countdown to his unraveling.
"Due diligence isn't theatrics, Ms. Vale," he said, forcing his lips into something resembling a smile. It looked more like a grimace. "A billion-yuan venture deserves our utmost attention." The words tasted like ash in his mouth.
Seraphina rose from her chair with the lethal grace of a panther uncoiling. The click of her stilettos against marble was the only sound in the suddenly suffocating room. "While you play accountant, my company has actual crises to manage." Her gaze swept over him with dismissive finality. "Unlike some, I don't have the luxury of toying with shareholders' trust."
Kael felt the last threads of his composure snap.
{{If she walks out now, everything crumbles. The bribes paid to Bureau officials to overlook safety violations. The offshore accounts waiting to be filled. The hidden cameras primed to capture every humiliating second of her undoing.}}
Then—
A tremor ran through Seraphina's poised frame. Her manicured hands flew to the table's edge as the world tilted on its axis. The penthouse's opulent details blurred into a watercolor smear of gold and shadow.
"You... you drugged..." The words slurred thickly, her tongue suddenly foreign in her mouth. The Persian rug rushed up to meet her, its intricate patterns swimming before her eyes as darkness claimed her.
The last thing she saw was Kael's polished Oxfords approaching, the leather gleaming like a predator's bared teeth.
Kael's Moment of Triumph
"God fucking favors me!" Kael's voice cracked with hysterical glee as he kicked Seraphina's fallen phone across the room. It shattered against the minibar's crystal decanters, scattering glass like diamonds across the floor.
His fingers trembled as he tore at his tie, the silk slithering to the floor like a dead serpent. Up close, Seraphina's unconscious form was even more exquisite—the way her silk blouse clung to sweat-damp skin, the delicate flutter of pulse at the base of her throat. Each shallow breath made the pearls at her neck rise and fall like waves on a moonlit shore.
{{I'll make her beg. Make her scream. Make her regret ever looking twice at that back-alley exorcist.}}
Then—
His shadow twitched.
Kael froze. The penthouse's carefully calibrated lighting cast only two shadows: his own stretched long across the floor, and Seraphina's crumpled form.
Yet there, woven between them like a spider's thread—a third silhouette.
The Reaper's Entrance
Kael spun with the frantic energy of a cornered animal, the steak knife from the fruit platter flashing in his grip. The blade caught the light—
—and reflected something impossible.
A figure stood framed against the floor-to-ceiling windows, its form draped in a black duster that drank the light whole. Where a face should have been, a straw effigy twisted and seethed, each golden stalk writhing with unnatural life. The empty eye sockets pulsed with a darkness deeper than the void between stars.
Kael's bowels turned to water. His bladder threatened to betray him.
{{A Wraith. Here. But Grand Aurora's wards... the Bureau's protection...}}
The Straw Head cocked at a perfect 45-degree angle. With a sound like dry reeds snapping in winter, Kael's neck obeyed the unspoken command.
CRACK.
Cartilage shredded. Vertebrae punched through skin in a grotesque parody of birth. Kael collapsed in a heap of tailored wool and broken promises, his dead eyes staring eternally at his own Italian leather heels.
The Phantom Savior
The straw mask unraveled strand by strand, revealing Ethan Cross's impassive face beneath. His breath fogged in the suddenly frigid air, though the penthouse's climate control hadn't changed.
His boot nudged Kael's corpse. "Rule-Class my ass." The hotel's much-touted "Wraith-proofing" was clearly another Lin family fiction, bought and paid for like everything else in this gilded cage.
Seraphina breathed evenly on the rug, her dark lashes casting delicate shadows across porcelain cheeks. The rise and fall of her chest was the only movement in the death-still room. Ethan weighed his options with clinical detachment:
Wake her → Endless questions. Political fallout. Loose ends.
Leave her → Clean exit. Plausible deniability. No witnesses.
His choice took exactly 0.3 seconds.
By the time hotel security found Seraphina—drugged but untouched in a room with a mysteriously broken necked corpse—Ethan was already three blocks away, just another shadow in a city drowning in darkness.