The moonlight dripped like silver blood across the cobblestone path.
Mu Jin walked alone. His steps were silent, yet each one echoed through the night like a funeral bell. The wind stirred his cloak, fluttering it like wings of some fallen god. A faint scent of steel clung to the folds, old blood he never bothered to wash.
He didn't need to.
He didn't need to forget.
Because the past… still fed him.
He stopped as a low growl curled from his stomach.
Hunger.
A strange thing—how even after all these years, his body still remembered that particular ache.
But it wasn't food he hungered for.
It was silence.
And the only place he found it... was after the last breath left someone's lungs.
He paused beside a quiet alley. The moonlight tilted just enough to show a small shadow darting across the ground—a rat. Dirty, mangy, alive.
He didn't move.
"No… It's too clean," he muttered.
His crimson-slit pupils narrowed.
Fourteen years ago.
Darkness.
A cell. No windows. No warmth.
Just the squirming hiss of something alive in the shadows.
A white serpent—its body coiled atop a metal dish.
He was seven when they threw him into that pit.
The voice that first greeted him wasn't human.
It was the voice of hunger.
The first few times, he hesitated. The snake bit him. He bled. Screamed. No one came.
On the fourth day, his hands moved faster. He caught it by the throat. His mouth trembled.
And then he bit it. Alive.
The skin burst, blood filling his throat.
It tasted like rusted nails and hate.
They watched him from above, faces hidden behind black veils.
"He'll survive."
"Increase the dosage."
"Bring in the next batch."
He didn't understand those words at first. But he learned quickly.
Every day, another snake. Every day, more venom.
More hallucinations. More pain.
At one point, he thought he'd eaten nine hundred ninety thousand of them.
It was a lie.
He'd just stopped counting.
Now.
The tavern's warm light faded behind him, but he didn't look back.
He didn't want to remember the child that clung to him earlier, the one who called him Sir with a voice full of awe and terror.
She had seen his claws, his eyes—yet still smiled.
She didn't know.
She didn't know what kind of thing had saved her.
He walked past the stone gates, entering the lower market.
Then stopped.
A scent.
It was faint—masked beneath perfume, sweat, leather. But he knew it.
He would always know it.
Murder.
Not rage. Not revenge. Not survival.
Professionally planned death.
He looked left. A group of armored men were patrolling. On the surface, they were guards. Standard formation, polished insignias.
But Mu Jin saw through the lies.
"Mercenaries. No… too coordinated. Assassins in disguise."
His eyes scanned their movements.
Right flank weaker. Center too alert. Rear is bait.
Classic flanking setup. Designed for single-target subjugation.
Target: Him.
Mu Jin didn't stop walking.
Instead, he tilted his head toward the sky, letting the moonlight spill over his pale hair. The reflection caught in his eyes like shattered rubies.
His thoughts drifted again.
Back then.
After surviving the White Fang training pits, they branded him with a mark—serpent coiled around a dagger.
Not for pride.
For ownership.
The missions came endlessly. Assassinations, poisonings, blackmail through corpses.
By the time he turned fifteen, he had already ended 312 lives. Each one a notch on his bones.
Not weapons.
Bones.
They fused blades into his skeleton. Cut him open, installed devices, nerves tied to steel.
He became the Organization's reaper.
But they made one mistake.
They underestimated the boy who refused to die.
The betrayal came swift. One mission—one slip.
They sent ten assassins. Elite.
They never returned.
That day, Mu Jin carved his way back. Through their gates. Through their lies.
Through their necks.
He stood in front of the Grand Master, blood dripping from his jaw like tears.
"You wanted a weapon."
"You got one."
And then—he ended it.
All of it.
Now.
He turned to the approaching men.
Still twenty paces away. Casual. Confident.
The leader had a scar on his lip—recent. Poorly healed.
"State your business," the man called out. "City's under watch. No travelers allowed without—"
Mu Jin moved.
One blink.
That's all it took.
One heartbeat later, the man was face-down, a silver claw driven through his mouth and out the back of his skull.
Silence.
Then chaos.
The others shouted, drawing blades, forming a circle.
Mu Jin stood still.
His cloak fluttered.
"You're not from this world," one of them hissed. "You don't belong."
Mu Jin raised his head. For the first time, his lips curled—not a smile.
Something colder.
"No."
"But neither do you."
The shadows exploded.
They never had a chance.
Mu Jin didn't fight like a warrior.
He didn't even fight like a human.
He flowed.
Steel claws tearing through flesh. Fingers twisting like serpents, snapping joints with surgical ease.
One tried to flee—Mu Jin flicked a shard of bone into his eye.
Another begged—he didn't hear it.
He only stopped when the street was quiet again.
Twelve corpses.
And one watching shadow.
A girl. Maybe fifteen. Pale hair. Hidden behind a broken cart.
Mu Jin met her eyes.
She didn't scream.
She bowed.
"Even after all this… I still remember the taste of white snake."
"I wonder… how many more must die before I forget?" Mu jin Thought.