The city of Aurelia woke restless.
By dawn, the streets around Clock Tower were clogged with bodies—reporters jostling for angles, protestors waving placards, pedestrians craning necks just to watch the spectacle. The drizzle hadn't stopped them; umbrellas dotted the sidewalks like a battlefield of black shields. Flashbulbs went off in bursts, reflecting in puddles, while megaphones crackled with chants.
"Save Clock!"
"Heiresses Sold Us Out!"
"Where's our money?"
Flyers littered the pavement, soaked to pulp by the rain. Screens on passing vans replayed looping headlines in bright neon fonts:
"CLOCK CORP HEIRESSES FIGHTING OVER A GANGSTER?"
"SLEEPING WITH THE FIXER: IS THIS THE END OF CLOCK?"
"MARKET CHAOS: COUNCIL VS CLOCK."
The trading floor's chaos had spilled out into the streets. And now, Aurelia itself smelled of smoke and fear. The sharp tang of burnt cigarettes hung in the mist, mixed with fried food from street vendors capitalizing on the crowd, and the sour sweat of bodies pressed too close.
From inside a tinted sedan idling at the curb, Mira watched it all.
Her jaw was set, her navy blazer perfect, but her grip on the tablet in her lap was so tight her knuckles whitened. Every headline replayed on the screen above the crowd was a cut across her composure. Sleeping with the fixer. They had taken her company's blood and twisted it into gossip.
She exhaled sharply through her nose, forcing her mask back into place. "Disgusting," she muttered, voice low, brittle.
Beside her, Myra leaned against the window with the lazy grace of someone who had not only accepted the chaos but seemed to delight in it. A tabloid paper—snatched from a vendor on their way out—rested in her lap. She flipped it open, eyes sparkling as she read the headline aloud.
"Sleeping with the fixer," she repeated, letting the words drip like honey. Her laugh was soft, dangerous. "At least they picked a flattering photo of me."
Mira's head snapped toward her, ice blazing behind her eyes. "This isn't a game."
Myra folded the paper, smirk lingering. "No, it's a war. And wars are messy. But you can't deny—" she tapped the headline with one manicured nail, "—mess makes things interesting."
Mira turned away, her reflection caught in the window: lips tight, eyes shadowed. Outside, chants rose louder, camera flashes harsher. For all her armor, the smear cut deeper than she'd ever admit.
Arkellin, seated across from them, said nothing. His gaze was fixed on the mob beyond the glass, posture relaxed, suit immaculate. The storm of gossip and fury didn't touch him.
But his silence spoke louder than either sister's words.
The Council had fired their next volley. And this time, they weren't just after the company's money.
They were after its soul.
By nightfall, Clock Tower's boardroom glowed like a fortress lit against the dark. The storm outside hadn't let up—rain lashed at the glass, thunder rolling low, as though the city itself wanted to drown the chaos within.
The directors gathered around the obsidian table looked frayed, jackets unbuttoned, ties pulled loose. Coffee cups littered the surface, some half-drained, others untouched. The whispers that rippled through them weren't strategy—they were fear.
"Shares will crater by morning."
"Council's bleeding us dry."
"We should consider liquidation before we—"
The doors opened.
Arkellin stepped in first. Black suit, uncreased, tie knotted sharp. His presence pulled every voice to silence. Mira followed, her heels striking clean, mask of authority restored, though the faint lines beneath her eyes betrayed the weight of the day. Myra trailed behind them, silk blouse catching the light, smile faint as if she'd walked into a stage play written just for her.
Arkellin didn't sit. He walked to the head of the table, a slim folder in one hand, a drive glinting in the other.
"You're bleeding," he said, voice low, steady. "But not because of weakness. Because someone is cutting you open."
He dropped the folder onto the table. Papers slid across polished black, stopping at trembling hands. Graphs, account trails, shell companies stacked like nesting dolls. Names buried, funds hidden offshore, trades timed to trigger panic in perfect waves.
"They think money is fire," Arkellin continued, eyes sweeping across every director, cold steel catching the room. "They forget I've walked through flames."
For a moment, the room was silent, the rain outside battering the glass like applause.
Mira's gaze held him, sharp and unyielding, but behind it burned a flicker of relief—he wasn't just fighting the markets, he was fighting for her legacy.
One director, pale and sweating, whispered, "If this is true, then Council—"
Arkellin cut him off with a glance, sliding the drive across the table. "It is true. And this," he tapped the folder, "is the blade they thought we'd never find."
Murmurs rippled, some nodding in awe, others shifting in discomfort. Myra leaned forward, chin resting lightly on her hand, eyes glittering as she watched him command the room. "And flames don't scare him," she said, her tone playful but edged, meant to sting Mira as much as it teased Arkellin. "I'd know."
Several directors shifted uncomfortably. Mira's pen stilled in her hand, the crack of tension audible in the silence that followed.
Arkellin didn't react. He straightened, calm as a man untouched by fire, and let the weight of his words settle.
"The Council showed their hand today," he said. "Now, we show ours."
Lightning forked across the skyline, flooding the boardroom in white. For a heartbeat, every reflection on the glass wall looked doubled—directors, the sisters, and Arkellin himself—caught between shadows and light.
By the time they left Clock Tower that night, the storm hadn't washed the city clean. It had only made the filth run louder.
The sedan rolled slowly through Aurelia's central district, wipers straining against sheets of rain. But the storm wasn't what made the streets burn.
It was the people.
Crowds had gathered at intersections, some genuine protestors, others paid to shout slogans. Placards jutted into the air, rain soaking cardboard until the ink bled: "Clock Bleeds Us Dry", "Heiresses for Sale", "Fixer or Fraud?".
Flares hissed red against the night, painting the wet asphalt in angry light. Trash bins blazed with fire, smoke twisting into the rain-heavy sky. Shops affiliated with Clock Corp were vandalized—glass shattered, mannequins toppled into the street. The acrid stench of burning plastic seeped into the car vents, clinging to the tongue.
Inside the sedan, silence pressed heavy.
Mira sat stiff in her seat, her blazer immaculate despite the chaos outside, but her eyes betrayed the storm beneath. She watched through the tinted glass as men in masks scrawled graffiti across a storefront: CLOCK IS DEAD. Her knuckles tightened around the leather folder in her lap until the edge bit into her skin.
Beside her, Arkellin sat with his arm draped loosely against the door, posture deceptively relaxed. The red glow from the flares cut across his face, sharpening the streak of white in his hair. He glanced once at the mob, then leaned back, voice cool and steady.
"This is noise," he said. "The real blade is still hidden."
Mira turned, eyes snapping to him, searching his calm expression for something—fear, worry, anything human. But there was nothing. Just that composure, unshaken, as if riots were as trivial as rain.
"Noise?" Her voice was low, brittle. "They're tearing our name apart in the streets."
Arkellin's gaze didn't waver. "Names can be rebuilt. Empires can be rebuilt. But the one holding the blade—if you don't find him, you bleed forever."
The words struck her harder than the chants outside.
From the third seat, Myra leaned forward, chin resting lazily on the back of Mira's chair. Her smile curved sharp as the neon outside. "He's right, you know. And besides—" she gestured toward the burning signs with a little laugh, "—all this chaos makes us look dramatic. Headlines love drama."
Mira's lips pressed tight, jaw rigid.
Arkellin only closed his eyes for a moment, the faintest exhale leaving his chest. Then he opened them again, gaze cold on the firelit streets.
The Council had declared war. Not just in the markets. Not just in the boardroom.
Now, they owned the streets.
The gala was supposed to be a balm.
A small affair in one of Aurelia's quieter districts, tucked into a glass-domed atrium draped with chandeliers and warmed by live jazz. Investors and socialites mingled with champagne flutes, their laughter forced but sharp, like crystal on the edge of breaking.
Mira played her part flawlessly—her gown of midnight blue hugging every line of authority, her smile rehearsed, her voice calm enough to steady the nerves of the wealthy vultures circling Clock Corp's carcass. Arkellin stood nearby in his black suit, a shadow and a sentinel, eyes scanning every corner.
And Myra…
She made the chaos her stage. In a crimson dress that shimmered under chandeliers, she laughed too easily, touched too boldly, leaning into every camera angle as though the scandal itself was perfume on her skin. More than one headline would leave this place with her fingerprints on it—and she knew it.
The night stretched long, drinks emptied, polite toasts turned stale. By the time the trio left, the city had fallen into an uneasy hush—rain thinning to drizzle, streets slick and glimmering under streetlamps. Their sedan waited in the roundabout, security detail half-dozing after hours of standing watch.
It happened fast.
Mira, ever the strategist, slipped into the car first, already thumbing through her tablet as though the gala were still going on. Arkellin moved to follow, but Myra lingered. She had stopped a few steps back in the covered walkway, laughing at something whispered by her bodyguard.
The black van rolled up with its lights dimmed. No screech, no warning—just a silent glide as its side door slid open. Two figures in masks spilled out, their movements sharp, deliberate.
One snatched at Myra's arm, yanking her back. The other swung for the bodyguard, steel flashing in the glow of the streetlamp.
Myra's laugh twisted into a scream, high and jagged, echoing off the glass walls of the atrium. Her clutch clattered to the ground, scattering lipstick and cards into the wet.
Arkellin's head snapped around. The world narrowed to that sound.
Rain, streetlight, the gleam of the van's open maw. Myra's crimson dress dragged toward it, her nails clawing at the hand that held her.
"Arkellin!" she cried, voice breaking against the storm.
And then—
The night cut to black.