The old Steel Furniture Factory signboard swayed overhead, its rusted hinges screaming into the night.
Shiv and Arav were pressed flat against a thick branch above — two shadows that the darkness hadn't noticed yet.
Below, the factory's sliding gate hung half-open. Just wide enough for the smell to bleed through.
Rancid grease. Old iron. The stench of a place the world had forgotten about.
"Move. And don't make a sound."
Arav's voice was lighter than the wind between leaves.
Shiv wanted to ask — why did you let Vikram and Saket fight? — but when he looked over, Arav had already gone. Dropped from the branch like smoke. Like he'd never been there.
Shiv exhaled through his nose and followed.
Five guards stood behind a stack of wooden crates near the entrance.
Shiv curved through the air in a clean arc and drove his boot into the nearest one's neck.
The man dropped without a sound.
Shiv turned toward Arav, ready to smirk —
Three guards were already unconscious at Arav's feet.
"Since when are you that fast?" Shiv whispered.
Arav's eyes snapped wide — not at the compliment.
At something behind Shiv.
He spun.
The blade was already at his throat. Close enough to feel cold.
Shush.
He vanished. Reappeared behind the assassin. Drove a kick into the man's spine hard enough to feel it in his own leg.
Arav caught the assassin mid-fall — one hand muffling the impact before the body could crash into the crates.
"Sorry," Shiv muttered, wiping the sweat from his jaw. "Almost blew our cover."
He glanced at Arav.
"You're this strong and you skipped the Academy Tournament?"
"Tournaments aren't my thing."
A pause.
"Missions are."
Something hollow lived underneath those words. Like a room where all the furniture had been taken out.
"So you don't even get to make small choices about your own life?"
Shiv's voice sharpened before he could stop it.
"Why would you join an organization like that?"
Arav didn't answer.
He just turned toward the factory entrance and tilted his chin upward.
High above, rusted catwalks lined the ceiling. Shadows moved along them — slow, patient, waiting.
Then the knives fell like rain.
— Elsewhere —
The alley outside the apartment building had gone quiet.
Not peaceful quiet.
The other kind.
The crimson-red wall that had defined the alley's far edge was rubble now. Its broken stones lay scattered across the ground — and where Saket's blood had soaked into the red brick, the color had deepened into something darker. Something that didn't have a name.
Saket leaned against what was left of the wall.
Each breath dragged. Each rise of his chest pulled blood fresh from the gashes cut deep across his torso — slow, dark, relentless. His black gear was shredded in strips, hanging off him like something had tried to peel him open.
Across from him, Vikram stood still.
Dried blood had tracked lines down his face. One sleeve was missing entirely, and beneath the exposed skin, the blue veins along his forearm were still trembling.
Saket gathered what he had left.
He spat.
A thin red line traced down his chin and dripped onto the rubble.
He kept his eyes — fading, but fixed — locked on Vikram.
"You're actually an animal.
Barely a voice. The kind that disappears before it travels far.
"But how long, Vikram? How long are you going to keep lying to Shiv?
His head dipped slightly. His eyelids grew heavy.
"He needs to know... about Master... or he'll end up exactly like us..."
His neck tilted to one side.
The sharp focus behind his eyes — that defiant, burning focus that had held through everything — began to drain. Slow. Steady. Like a candle running out of wax.
His body, which had stayed upright through sheer refusal, finally started to give.
Vikram's feet moved before his mind did.
He crossed the rubble in heavy, uneven steps and dropped to one knee beside Saket. His hands — trembling — found the cold of Saket's shoulder.
Those eyes of his. Always predator-sharp. Always hunting.
Blurred now.
One tear broke free and landed on Saket's still face.
"Forgive me."
Just a breath. Crushed under the weight of something that had been building for a long time.
Vikram bowed his head.
A chunk of the crimson wall broke loose and struck the ground.
He pulled Saket into his arms.
He already knew. There was no taking anything back from this moment. Whatever came after would only be wreckage.
— Back Inside —
A knife grazed Shiv's mask and opened a line across his cheek.
Warm blood ran down to his chin and dripped.
An assassin came in fast with a short blade — Arav stepped between them without a word and landed a left kick to the assassin's neck before the swing connected.
"Stay focused," Arav said sharply. "Low-level doesn't mean easy."
By the time the last assassin hit the floor, the factory had gone quiet again.
Just scattered iron rods. Overturned crates. Empty catwalks above.
"There's nothing here," Shiv said between breaths. "Just boxes."
Arav looked at him one last time.
"My job was to get you inside safely."
A beat.
"Done."
"Wait — what am I even supposed to—"
Gone.
Arav had stepped sideways into the shadows and simply wasn't there anymore.
Shiv turned a slow circle. The catwalks above held nothing but dried blood and silence.
He closed his eyes.
Zen Technique.
His vision shifted — the world peeling back layer by layer, edges glowing soft blue. The factory rearranged itself in his mind until he found it. Directly beneath the massive hydraulic press at the room's center. Hidden under a stack of crates.
A hatch.
He shoved the crates aside. Iron, cold against his palms. He pulled it open.
Metal stairs. Descending.
Dark below.
The underground base was dim and cold in a way that had nothing to do with temperature.
Shiv took the left corridor.
Two guards came around the corner before he reached the first door. He put the first one down with a punch. Caught the second with a kick to the neck. Neither got back up.
But one of them had gotten a swing in.
A sword edge opened his left hand clean.
"Ah—"
He pressed his palm to his ribs and kept moving.
The brown door at the corridor's end swung open easily.
What was behind it didn't.
Capsule tanks lined every wall — floor to ceiling — and inside each one, things floated. Things that had once been bodies. The fluid had long since gone bad, and the smell hit like a fist to the face.
Shiv breathed through his teeth.
In the center of the room sat a large computer terminal.
He crossed to it. Jammed the pendrive in. The transfer bar began crawling across the screen.
He looked at what was already loading.
His knees hit the floor before he realized he'd moved.
The files were photographs. Clinical. Documented. Girls — young, some barely teenagers — and what had been done to them was recorded with the same detachment someone might use to catalogue machine parts. Tubes ran from their bodies. The blood had been drained. Measured. Stored.
"No..."
He vomited.
Stayed there on his hands and knees, shaking against cold concrete.
"If I'd come sooner..."
The instinct fired before the thought finished.
He threw himself upward.
A knife passed through the space where his skull had been half a second earlier.
He landed. Turned.
Two men.
The one on the left was built like a wall — broad shoulders, thick neck, blue jacket. He was dragging a heavy baseball bat along the floor, the metal scraping concrete in long, lazy strokes.
The one on the right wore a black t-shirt splattered with dried white paint. An iron chain was wrapped twice around his forearm, the loose end hanging from his fist like a tail.
"What's a kid doing in here?
Baseball Bat let the scraping stop. His grin didn't reach his eyes.
"This isn't a place for children."
"Big brother."
Chain's voice was flat. Measured.
"He's a JFL agent."
Baseball Bat laughed — low, grating, unhurried.
"Yeah, I know." He let the bat drop with a heavy clang. "Just wanted to see if my junior had any sense."
The grin spread wider.
"Guess we find out.
Shiv reached back and pulled the pendrive free from the terminal.
His left hand was still bleeding. His cheek was still bleeding. His stomach was empty.
None of that registered.
The shaking was gone.
What had been grief compressed itself — quietly, completely — into something else. Something sharp and steady and very, very hot.
He looked at the two men.
And moved toward them.