The news about the white-haired merchant was never announced officially.
He simply vanished.
His stall remained half-open in the northern district. Cheap fabrics still hung from their wooden frame, swaying slightly in t"COhe wind as if waiting for hands that would never return. A thin layer of dust had begun to settle over the counter. No sign of struggle. No explanation.
People did not ask too loudly.
In Bouten, asking too loudly meant wanting to disappear as well.
Lucas heard the story from a dockworker who spoke in a careful whisper. "He was taken by the northern patrol," the man muttered, eyes darting around before continuing. "Accused of hiding taxes."
Hiding taxes.
The old man could barely hide his coughing fits.
Lucas showed no reaction. He nodded once, as if the information meant nothing to him.
But that night, he did not return to his room as the quiet harbor laborer everyone knew.
He left without sound. No emblem. No identity. No name.
Only a shadow.
The northern district was darker than the rest of the city. The stone walls loomed high, torches flickering weakly against damp surfaces. In one corner, two city officers stood drinking and laughing, their armor unfastened, discipline forgotten.
"That old fool is probably rotting in a cell by now," one of them said with a crude laugh.
"Good," the other replied. "Less trash in the streets."
They never noticed when their laughter began to echo strangely in the night.
The wind slowed.
Footsteps made no sound.
Lucas emerged from the darkness like a shape that had decided to exist. Calm. Controlled. Patient.
One of the officers turned slightly, sensing movement.
Too late.
A sharp, choked sound died in his throat. His body stiffened, then collapsed without ceremony, as if the night itself had claimed him.
The second officer spun around. "Hey...."
The word never finished forming.
Silence swallowed the rest.
There was no dramatic exchange. No extended struggle. Only the heavy stillness that follows inevitability.
Minutes later, one body lay motionless against cold stone.
Lucas stood above it.
There was no rage in his expression.
Only terrifying calm.
He did not kill in a burst of fury. He did it because the name had already been written. Because it had been measured. Weighed.
And judged.
He dragged the body toward the base of Bouten's great wall, where the city's emblem was carved into stone a symbol of pride and authority.
Under the dim torchlight, he stripped away the uniform.
Without the armor, without the insignia, the officer looked smaller. Fragile. Human.
Lucas worked without haste.
He left no chaos behind only intention.
When the body was finally suspended against the stone wall, exposed beneath the emblem it once represented, Lucas stepped back.
From beneath his dark coat, he withdrew what he needed.
He wrote carefully.
On the bare back of the fallen officer, crude letters emerged dark, unmistakable:
COUNT YOUR SINS
Lucas studied the message from a distance.
Not with satisfaction.
With evaluation.
Was it visible enough?
Would it be clear when dawn arrived?
Would it force them to think?
He felt no triumph. No relief.
Only movement.
The first step had been taken.
Before the next patrol could pass through the district, he vanished once more into the city's shadows.
—
The first scream came at dawn.
It cut through the quiet morning like torn fabric.
Within minutes, a crowd gathered beneath the northern wall. Citizens stood at a distance, unwilling to approach yet unable to look away.
Some covered their mouths.
Some turned pale.
Some stared longer than they should have.
The commander of the district arrived, his face flushed with fury and something dangerously close to fear. "Take it down!" he barked.
But it was too late.
The message had already been read.
COUNT YOUR SINS.
The words spread faster than the image itself.
The officers who once walked the streets with arrogance now seemed unsettled. Their hands lingered near their weapons. Their eyes searched rooftops and alleys.
For the first time, caution replaced confidence.
Rumors bloomed in the marketplace like mold in damp air.
"There's a killer."
"A ghost."
"No," someone whispered. "A judge."
Lucas stood among the onlookers, indistinguishable from the rest. His expression remained neutral, touched with just enough unease to blend in.
Inside, he observed.
Fear.
It had shifted.
For years, fear belonged only to the powerless. To the merchants, the laborers, the children who learned to lower their eyes.
Now it was spreading.
And it had only begun.
—
That night, patrols doubled. Officers moved in larger groups. No one lingered alone in dark corners anymore.
But numbers could not erase what had been planted.
Fear did not vanish simply because swords were drawn.
It lived in the mind.
Every shadow became suspect.
Every faint sound carried weight.
Lucas stood atop an abandoned building, watching Bouten from above. The city lights flickered uneasily. Tension ran beneath the surface like a fracture slowly widening.
He opened his small notebook.
The first name was crossed out.
Many remained.
The white-haired merchant had not been found.
Perhaps he was already dead.
Perhaps he was still suffering beneath stone floors no one dared to enter.
Lucas closed the notebook slowly.
Gabriel's voice echoed faintly in his memory.
"If everyone stays quiet, they'll keep doing bad things."
Lucas had once chosen silence.
Now he had chosen something else.
He did not speak.
He left messages.
COUNT YOUR SINS.
He understood the cost of this path. The city would hunt him. They would call him criminal. Terrorist. Monster.
It did not matter.
Because in Bouten, justice had long ago become decoration like the emblem carved proudly into stone while corruption rotted beneath it.
If the law was diseased, then something outside the law would rise.
Lucas inhaled slowly, steady as ever.
This was no longer about anger.
It was about balance.
The conflict had begun.
And from this night forward, every officer who had ever abused their power would wake with the same quiet thought pressing against their mind:
Am I next?
Under the dark sky of Bouten, the boy who once chose survival over defiance had become something the city did not yet understand.
Not a hero.
Not a martyr.
But a reckoning.
And reckoning does not ask permission.