The destroyed bar, 9:58
Julius's hair clung to his sweat-slicked forehead, strands dangling over his eyes as a fit of coughing tore through his chest. His lips curled back with the effort, teeth bared in a grimace of pain. A thick, metallic-tasting warmth filled his mouth, and he spat it out in a wet splatter onto the dusty floor. The blood spread into the grime, washing away some filth while adding another stain to the bar's history.
He pressed a trembling hand against his ribs, feeling the hot seep of blood through the torn fabric of his shirt. The pristine white had been reduced to a sodden, dark crimson, the color deepening with every heartbeat. With his free hand, he grabbed at the nearest object for balance—a cold metal pipe—only to nearly lose his grip as slick, lukewarm water coated his palm. He glanced at it, and his stomach twisted.
A sewage pipe.
Julius could stomach gore, bone, and battlefield rot, but sewage? That was different. That was filth without honor. His face twisted in revulsion as he shook his hand violently, droplets pattering onto the floor. With no better option, he smeared the rest onto his shirt. The shirt was ruined anyway—what difference did a little more corruption make?
Even as he tried to stem the flow from his ribs, fresh blood leaked through his fingers, coating them in a sticky, maroon sheen. Saying he was "doing badly" would have been an understatement bordering on comedy.
Across the ruined space, what remained of the bar lay in jagged heaps of splintered wood, cracked tile, and shattered glass. The air was heavy with the smell of rain leaking through the fractured roof, mingling with the copper tang of blood and the acrid aftertaste of gunpowder. In the corner—still, almost unbothered—sat Alexander and Seymour.
Alexander leaned lazily against the side of the arcade machine he'd been playing on mere minutes ago, his head tilted back, grey hair tipped with flecks of mud. His eyes were closed, his breathing slow. In that moment, he looked almost peaceful. Vulnerable.
Julius's instincts told him to strike—but Seymour was there.
Seymour perched on the edge of a half-destroyed wooden table, dust blending perfectly into the fabric of his grey trousers. His head rested in the cradle of his right hand, fingers curling along his cheek, the pads brushing against skin that had once been pale but was now smudged with dirt. His cold, grey eyes locked on Julius—not with hostility, but with an unwavering, penetrating stillness.
They weren't attacking him. They weren't even preparing to. And that infuriated him more than any wound could.
Julius craved the fight—the crash of fists, the sting of pain, the sharpened focus that came when every heartbeat was a gamble. Alexander and Seymour had given him that for a minute, and it had been glorious. But now? Now they sat like statues, dismissing him without words.
Julius wasn't like Caspian or the others. He didn't care for the "why." The plan was never his concern—only the execution. Perhaps that was why the Syndicate valued him. He was a blunt weapon: obedient enough, relentless enough, and merciless enough to get results.
But now, the weapon demanded more blood.
"Hey!" Julius's voice split the air, cracking under the strain, each syllable sending pain lancing through his ribs. "We're not done fighting yet!"
His words clawed through the gutted building, rattling across fractured beams and shattered bottles, slipping out into the skeletal treeline beyond.
Silence.
Seymour didn't blink. Alexander didn't stir, save for the occasional deep inhale that sounded more like the exhale of something ancient than a man at rest. Julius's jaw flexed, veins standing against the pale of his skin. His boots struck the fractured tile in sharp, deliberate beats, the muted crunch of glass and wood splinters filling the vacuum between them.
"Are you even listening to me!?" His voice cracked again, not from weakness, but from rage, the words carrying the weight of a lash as he hurled a punch.
The air burst into a choking cloud of dust.
When it thinned, Julius's hand was buried in the arcade machine's casing—a mere breath from Alexander's temple.
Alexander hadn't moved. Not an inch.
A sigh, long and heavy, slid from his lungs. Then his eyes opened—calm, cold, and sharp enough to pierce bone. He straightened, not as a man preparing for a blow, but as one politely resuming a conversation.
"You wouldn't hit me," Alexander said softly, "even if I leaned into your punch."
Julius wrenched his hand free, the skin split, blood already dripping down his knuckles, glittering with bits of shattered circuitry.
"What a cocky assumption," he sneered, flicking the plastic from his hand like an afterthought. "I'm not that inaccurate. I'm human. Humans make mistakes."
"I don't think it was a mistake," Alexander replied, his voice as level as still water. "You're strong—undeniably so. Strong enough that you wouldn't miss an opportunity to kill your enemy."
Julius's grin was slow and mocking, though something dangerous moved beneath it. "Wow. I'm flattered." He dipped in a theatrical bow, his blood dripping to the floor in neat little patters.
"If I may…" Seymour's voice broke the stale air, measured and precise.
Julius's gaze flicked to him.
"You want a fight," Seymour continued, "more than you want a victory."
The grin twitched, but Seymour went on, his words slicing clean and deliberate. "And unfortunately for you… we don't think you're worthy of fighting us."
The insult struck harder than any punch. Julius froze, just long enough for the silence to feel like mockery, before his chest began to shake.
Then came the laugh—low at first, then climbing into something jagged and unhinged, ricocheting off the ruined walls like the cry of a cornered predator.
"You said you were going to take over Nimerath," Alexander said, his voice cutting through the laughter. "That we would submit to you."
"So far," Seymour added, his grin curving into something predatory, "I don't see any of us kneeling."
He leaned forward, his words sharpened into a whisper that seemed to drop the air temperature by several degrees.
"You are simply… too weak."
Blackwood Tower
The street beyond Blackwood Tower glistened like a vein of dim gold and silver, the lamplight smearing across the wet pavement in long, trembling ribbons. From the front steps, Layla could see the rain dragging those ribbons into jagged streaks, as though the night itself were being pulled apart.
She lingered near the Tower's doorway, shoulders hunched against the damp wind that funneled down the narrow lane. Her breath rose in pale curls, wavering before dissolving into the mist. She wasn't shivering from the cold—at least, she told herself she wasn't—but her fingers wouldn't stop trembling as they clenched and unclenched around her phone. For ten restless minutes she had paced the short stretch between the doorway and the wrought-iron gate, the rhythm of her footsteps muffled by the soaking stone.
Caspian stood a few feet away, leaning against the rain-dark wall of the Tower with his arms loosely folded. He looked as though the weather had chosen to pass around him, the rain veering away before it could touch his face. His coat was heavy with moisture from the shoulders down, but his stillness made it seem deliberate—almost sculptural. The quiet between them was heavy, but not awkward; Layla could feel his eyes on the street as though he were waiting for something that wasn't coming.
Somewhere deeper in the Tower, muted footsteps echoed on the grand staircase—Andrew's slow, steady tread and Camael's lighter stride—before fading again into the hush.
The phone buzzed in her hand, sharp against her palm. Jackson's name glowed across the screen.
She answered instantly. "Jackson?"
The connection hissed with static. Behind it came a faint echo—wind? No, heavier than that, something slamming into wood.
"Layla." Jackson's voice was tight, breathless. "Listen carefully. I don't have much time."
Her pulse jumped. "What's wrong?"
A pause, as if he was choosing his words. "It's your grandfather. Seymour's with him. They're fighting someone—"
"What do you mean fighting someone?"
"—someone I've never seen before," Jackson continued, ignoring the question. "This guy isn't… normal. He moves like—hell, I don't even know how to describe it. Strong. Fast. And he's got this tattoo—on his neck. A boy eating ice cream while… shapes—like demons—stand behind him."
Layla frowned. "What?"
Caspian's eyes snapped to her. He didn't move otherwise, but his stillness deepened, like glass before it cracks. The description was precise enough to stir memory—memory he'd rather not have. He had seen that tattoo before, in darker places than Layla could imagine.
Julius.
He didn't let the name touch the air.
Layla pressed the phone tighter to her ear. "Where are you?"
"No," Jackson said sharply. "You can't come here. This isn't your fight."
"My grandfather is there, Jackson!" Her voice pitched higher, cutting through the rain. "If he's in danger—"
"You don't understand—"
"I don't care if I understand!" The words spilled from her before she could stop them. Her throat burned. "If something happens to him because I stayed away—" She cut herself off, the sentence lodged like a stone behind her teeth.
"You walk into this," Jackson said, and now his voice was lower, harder, "and you're walking into your own grave."
There was noise in the background—wood splintering, metal scraping across stone. Someone shouted, their voice muffled by distance.
Layla's grip on the phone tightened until her knuckles whitened. "Tell me where you are, or I'll find you myself."
The line went quiet for a heartbeat. Then Jackson's voice came back, almost a whisper: "Stay away."
She ended the call.
The rain filled the silence. Water coursed down the walls around them, pooling at their feet.
"Whoever this guy is," Layla said, sliding the phone into her pocket, "he's not going to hurt my grandfather."
Caspian's gaze lingered on her, unreadable. He thought of telling her exactly what kind of man she was talking about. He didn't.
The car smelled faintly of leather and rain. Andrew drove, eyes narrowed against the water blurring the windshield. The wipers swept in slow, rhythmic arcs, barely keeping up. Layla sat behind him, leaning forward, elbows braced on her knees, while Caspian sat beside her, one arm resting against the door.
"Jackson made it sound bad," Layla said. "We can't waste time."
Andrew's hands tightened on the wheel. "Running in blind is how people end up dead."
"That's my grandfather. I'm not just sitting here."
Silence fell between them, heavy except for the hiss of tires through shallow puddles. Caspian didn't speak. His gaze followed the line of the road ahead, the way the forest crept closer as they left the city behind. He was thinking—not about Seymour, not even about Layla's determination—but about Julius. About the way that man fought. About the way he ended things.
Layla had no idea what they were driving toward.
And Caspian had no intention of letting her find out the hard way.
The car curved along the edge of the forest, the storm turning the trees into writhing silhouettes. The sound of the rain deepened, drumming harder on the roof. In the shadows, Caspian's fingers flexed once, almost imperceptibly.
The world slowed—then stopped.
The rain froze mid-fall, droplets hanging in the air like strings of molten glass. The wipers halted mid-sweep, blades suspended just above the glass. Andrew's eyes were locked on the road ahead, unblinking. Layla was caught with her lips parted, as though she were about to speak.
Silence. Utter, oppressive silence.
Caspian exhaled and opened the door. His boots hit the wet asphalt without sound. The puddles didn't ripple. The air was thicker here, dense enough to resist his movement like invisible water.
He walked to the front of the car, running a gloved hand along the hood. The metal was cold, slick with suspended rain.
The blade came into his hand with a thought—its edge a thin curve of light in the stillness.
One clean slash through the front left tire. The cut opened without a whisper. The smell of severed rubber bloomed faintly in the unmoving air.
He moved to the next tire. Another slash. Then the rear tires. Four perfect wounds, and the car's fate was sealed.
But Caspian didn't return immediately.
Instead, he walked several steps into the forest's edge. The trees here were frozen mid-sway, leaves caught mid-flight, droplets clinging to their edges like pearls. He reached out and touched one leaf—its surface was cool, rigid. Time's grip on it was absolute.
For a moment, he considered staying here. Just staying—where nothing moved, nothing breathed, nothing changed.
But the stillness was not peace. It was absence.
He turned back, retracing his steps to the car. He slid into the seat, closed the door, and took a slow breath.
Then he let go.
The storm returned in a single violent rush.
The tires blew with a deafening pop. The steering wheel jerked in Andrew's hands. The car lurched sideways, the shriek of rubber against wet asphalt tearing through the cabin.
"Hold on!" Andrew barked, wrenching the wheel.
The road vanished under them as the car veered into the forest's edge. Branches snapped and scraped against the hood. Mud sprayed high into the air.
The spin ended with a jarring stop in the sodden ground, the engine sputtering before falling into silence.
For a moment, no one moved. The rain pounded the roof, a relentless drumbeat.
Andrew exhaled sharply, gripping the wheel. "Tires blew. Must've hit something."
Layla shoved open her door, the wind catching her coat and snapping it around her legs. She scanned the road behind them—nothing but the dark, rain-glossed asphalt vanishing into the distance.
"Caspian?" she called over the rain.
Andrew turned in his seat. The backseat was empty.
He frowned. "Where the hell—"
Layla's voice rose, sharper now. "Caspian!"
The forest swallowed her shout.
She stepped back, scanning the drenched trees. The rain streaked down her face, plastering her hair to her cheeks.
Andrew climbed out, moving around to the far side of the car, peering into the undergrowth. "I don't see him."
"Caspian!" Layla's voice broke slightly this time, swallowed again by the rain.
The only answer was the hiss of water and the restless whisper of leaves in the wind.
Andrew's jaw tightened. "He was here. Just a second ago."
But the road, the forest, and the storm gave them nothing—only the certainty that he had stepped out into the night without a sound, leaving them to wonder where he had gone… and if he was okay.