The leader raised his sword. Crimson Aura pulsed.
They attacked as one.
Metal screamed against metal.
Revan parried the first strike, deflected the second, and twisted his body to avoid the third. His movements were fluid but desperate—three-on-one against equally skilled opponents left no room for elegant technique.
The cheap sword in his hand vibrated dangerously with each impact. Hairline cracks were already forming along the blade.
'Twenty seconds. Maybe thirty. That's all this piece of junk will last.'
The second attacker—the fastest of the three—appeared at his flank. His thrust aimed for Revan's kidney, the angle designed to slip past any guard.
Against Vargos, Revan had learned one crucial lesson: when you can't win with defense, offense becomes your only option.
He deliberately stepped into the attack's path.
The blade pierced his left side.
"Got—"
Before the attacker could finish his thought, Revan's left hand clamped down on his wrist like a vice. The kunai hidden in his palm drove straight through the man's forearm, severing tendons.
"ARGH—!"
The scream was cut short as Revan headbutted him. Cartilage crunched. Blood sprayed.
But Revan paid for that exchange.
SLASH!
The third attacker's blade carved across his back. Pain exploded along his spine—right where the barely-healed wounds from Vargos's attacks still lingered.
Fresh blood soaked through his shirt.
Revan spun, using the momentum to throw the second attacker's body into the third. They collided, stumbling.
One second of breathing room.
'The wound in my side. The gash on my back. Add that to the damage I'm still carrying from the train...'
'I'm running out of time.'
The leader appeared in front of him.
No warning. No sound. Just suddenly there, his crimson sword already mid-swing.
Revan's eyes widened.
'Are you kidding me?'
The blade connected with Revan's hastily raised sword.
CRAAAAACK!
The cheap weapon shattered. Fragments of metal scattered like broken teeth.
The leader's strike continued through, carving a deep gash across Revan's chest. Blood erupted. Revan staggered backward, slamming into the brick wall.
"Kuh—!"
The leader stood before him, crimson Aura blazing like a small sun. His two companions recovered and flanked him on either side.
Three against one. Revan was wounded, disarmed, and cornered.
Any normal person would surrender.
But surrender meant capture. And capture meant interrogation. And interrogation meant revealing everything he knew about Sylvia, the Vespera family, [Crimson Tears], and God knows what else.
'Not an option.'
"You know," Revan said, blood dripping from his chin, "I noticed something interesting."
The leader tilted his head slightly. The first reaction Revan had gotten from any of them.
"Your attacks. They're precise. Calculated. Designed to wound, not kill."
He spat blood onto the cobblestones.
"You're not here to murder me. You're here to capture me."
Silence. But the slight tension in the leader's shoulders confirmed Revan's suspicion.
'They want me alive. Which means they need something from me. Information? Leverage against Sylvia? Or something else entirely?'
"Which means," Revan's lips curved into a bloody smile, "I can afford to be a little reckless."
His left hand plunged into the shadow at his feet.
What emerged wasn't a kunai.
It was a chain—thick, black, and pulsing with volatile Aura.
The same weapon he'd used to bind Vargos in their final exchange. The same desperate technique that had nearly killed him then and might kill him now.
But desperation was all he had left.
The chain erupted from the ground like a living serpent.
It wrapped around the third attacker before anyone could react, binding his arms to his torso in a single fluid motion.
"WHAT—!"
Revan yanked. Hard.
The third attacker was ripped off his feet and sent hurtling toward his companions. The leader dodged. The second wasn't fast enough.
Two bodies collided and tumbled across the alley.
The chain didn't stop there. It continued expanding, connecting to the kunai Revan had planted in the walls earlier. In seconds, the narrow alley had become a web of black chains—a cage with no exit.
The leader finally spoke.
"...Clever."
His voice was low. Emotionless.
Revan didn't waste time on banter. His body was failing. The old wounds were reopening. The new ones were bleeding freely. If he didn't end this now—
He channeled everything he had left into the chains.
Black Aura exploded through the web, turning every link into a conduit of destructive energy. The same principle he'd used against Vargos: if you can't beat them with strength, overwhelm them with everything.
The third attacker—still tangled in chains—screamed as the Aura burned through his defenses. His body convulsed once, twice, then went limp.
The second, already dazed from the collision, tried to cut through the chains. His crimson-coated blade bounced off harmlessly. The chains snapped tight around his throat before he could react.
CRACK.
His neck twisted at an unnatural angle. He crumpled to the ground.
Two down.
But the leader...
The leader simply stood there.
His crimson Aura condensed. Compressed. And then exploded outward in a single devastating pulse.
Half of Revan's chain web disintegrated instantly. The shockwave threw him backward, crashing into the wall hard enough to crack stone.
For a moment, Revan couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. His vision was nothing but white static and searing agony.
'This bastard... he's been holding back this whole time.'
"Impressive," the leader said. Same emotionless tone. "But not enough."
His sword rose, positioned to strike.
Revan's bloody hand shot up.
Not to block. Not to attack.
Just to grab the leader's ankle.
"You forgot," Revan rasped through bloodied teeth, "I plant my traps in layers."
The kunai embedded in the walls weren't just anchors for his chains.
They were marking points.
Shadow erupted from beneath the leader's feet, wrapping around his legs like a vise. The remaining chains in the web snapped tight, binding his arms against his body.
The leader's eyes widened behind his mask. For the first time, genuine surprise.
"Wha—"
Revan didn't give him time to finish.
A kunai materialized in his palm—his last one—and drove straight into the leader's right shoulder.
"GAAHHH—!"
The leader's composure shattered. His sword clattered to the ground as his arm went limp.
Revan twisted the kunai.
"Now," he said, his voice cold despite the blood pouring from his wounds, "we're going to have a conversation."
Fresh blood seeped from every wound on Revan's body.
The gash across his chest. The stab wound in his side. The slash on his back. His black shirt was now completely soaked, clinging to his skin like a second layer of crimson.
But he was still standing.
The leader knelt before him, bound by chains and shadow, the kunai still embedded in his shoulder. His two companions lay dead on the cobblestones—one with a broken neck, the other burned from the inside by Aura backlash.
Revan crouched down, bringing his face level with the leader's mask.
"Let's start simple," he said. "Who sent you?"
Silence.
Revan grabbed the kunai and twisted it deeper. Fresh blood spurted.
"NNGHH—!"
"I asked you a question."
The leader's breathing was ragged, but his eyes—visible through the holes in his cloth mask—remained defiant. Empty.
"You think... pain will make me talk?" His voice was strained but steady. "I've endured worse."
"I'm sure you have." Revan pulled the kunai out slowly, drawing another grunt of pain. "But I'm not just going to hurt you. I'm going to take you apart. Piece by piece. Joint by joint. And when there's nothing left to cut, I'll heal you just enough to start over."
He leaned closer.
"The Vespera family taught me many things. Patience is one of them."
For a long moment, the leader said nothing.
Then, unexpectedly, he laughed.
It was a hollow sound—wet and ragged from the blood in his throat. The laugh of a man who had already accepted death.
"You don't understand," the leader said. "None of you do. What's coming... it can't be stopped. The Garden will bloom. And when it does—"
He stopped mid-sentence.
His jaw clenched.
"The Garden?" Revan's eyes narrowed. "What garden? Who are you people?"
The leader's body began to tremble. Not from fear. Not from pain.
From something else entirely.
"You're too late," he whispered. "The seeds have already been planted."
His jaw moved in a strange motion—grinding, shifting.
Revan realized what was happening a second too late.
"No—!"
CRUNCH.
The leader bit down on something hidden in his back teeth. A capsule. Poison.
His body went rigid. White foam bubbled from the corners of his mouth, seeping through the cloth mask. His eyes rolled back, the defiance in them replaced by nothing.
In three seconds, he was dead.
"FUCK!"
Revan slammed his fist into the ground, ignoring the spike of pain from his wounds.
He forced himself to calm down. To think.
The leader had said something before he died. A name. A hint.
"The Garden."
Revan had never heard of any organization by that name. Not in the game's lore. Not in any intelligence reports he'd read while serving Sylvia.
This was something new. Something that shouldn't exist.
'First [Crimson Tears] appearing ahead of schedule. Now a mysterious organization I've never heard of.'
'The timeline is deviating. Badly.'
Revan began searching the bodies.
The two subordinates yielded nothing—no identification, no coins, no letters. Even their clothes had been stripped of any identifying marks. Professional erasure.
But when he turned back to the leader's corpse, he noticed something.
The man's sleeve had ridden up during the struggle, exposing his inner wrist.
A tattoo.
Revan grabbed the arm and pulled the sleeve higher.
The tattoo was small—no larger than a coin. But the detail was exquisite, almost artistic.
A black orchid.
The petals were rendered in such fine linework that they seemed to shimmer even in the dim light of the alley. At the center of the flower, barely visible, was a single drop—like dew, or perhaps a tear.
Revan checked the other two bodies. Same tattoo. Same location. Same design.
'A symbol. An identifier. This "Garden" marks its members.'
He committed the image to memory. Black orchid with a teardrop center.
A small crystal caught his eye.
It had fallen from the leader's pocket during the struggle—a fragment of red, no larger than a fingernail. It pulsed weakly in the moonlight, radiating a familiar sensation.
Revan picked it up carefully.
'This feels like [Crimson Tears]. But smaller. Cruder. Like a fragment or a prototype.'
He stored it in his Shadow Storage alongside the full crystal he'd taken from the train.