⚠️ Content Warning:
This chapter contains intense emotional breakdown, themes of grief and revenge, and scenes of escalating violence. Reader discretion is advised.
But what Annie didn't know…
Was that Kayla was still alive.
When she was thrown into the river, fate took a rare moment to show mercy.
A fisherman nearby had seen something strange—an object floating, unmoving. He rushed to her, pulled her from the cold water just in time.
Kayla was barely breathing.
She was rushed to a remote hospital, unconscious and bruised—but alive.
When the doctors found out who she was—when they saw the markings, the name attached—they made a decision.
"She's being hunted. If we report this… they'll come for her."
To protect her, they told no one.
Not even her family.
Not even Annie.
They declared her dead.
Meanwhile, Annie—shattered by grief, fueled by rage—moved like a storm.
The Rose Shadow Garden was crumbling, piece by piece.
Warehouses burned. Drug routes collapsed. Members vanished.
Annie wasn't asking questions anymore.
She was cleaning house.
And somewhere, watching the chaos unfold, Black Rose was panicking.
"She was supposed to break. Not fight."
"She was supposed to fall apart… not become this."
But Black Rose had made a mistake.
She had turned a grieving girl into a weapon.
She had lit the fuse on a ticking time bomb.
And now?
That bomb was exploding.
As Kayla recovered in her quiet, hidden hospital room, she was finally allowed access to the outside world.
That's when she saw it.
"Funeral Held for Kayla Yuno—Shadow Garden Victim Mourned by Family, Friends."
And beneath it—
"Multiple Shootouts Linked to Shadow Garden: Organization Crumbling Under Unknown Attacker."
Kayla's hand trembled as she scrolled through the news reports.
She saw the aftermath. The burned warehouses. The bodies. The whispers of a lone woman storming through the Garden like a reaper in black.
She didn't need confirmation.
She knew.
"Annie…"
Kayla put it all together. Her "death" had broken the one person who had always stood beside her. It had changed Annie. Maybe forever.
She tried to get up—tried to tell the doctors, to leave.
But her body wouldn't allow it.
The wounds were still too fresh. The pain still too real. The risk of being seen still too high.
So she stayed behind.
Watching.
Helpless.
"I'm alive… but I still can't reach her."
She looked out the window, as if she could somehow see Annie from here.
"I lit the fire… and now I have to watch her burn the world down for me."
Meanwhile, Annie had become something else entirely.
A cold, hardened killer—methodical, unshaken, and unstoppable.
Every time Rose tried to talk her down, to bring her back to what she once was, Annie wouldn't even answer. She would simply walk past her, her eyes fixed on the next piece of the Garden to burn.
Nothing reached her anymore.
Not words.
Not reason.
Not even Rose.
The Rose Shadow Garden responded in kind.
They escalated—heavier firepower, smarter traps, more brutal tactics. They stopped hiding in the dark and started fighting back.
But neither side wanted to back down.
It was war now.
And war doesn't forgive.
Or forget.