In Duskfall, fear was a currency, and everyone was poor.
It was in the way the perpetual rain fell, not to wash the streets clean, but to plaster the grime of yesterday into every crack and crevice. It was in the low, electric hum of the neon signs whose garish light promised pleasures that only the powerful could afford, their glow reflecting like slick oil on the wet asphalt. Most of all, it was in the silence. The city wasn't quiet; it was muted, as if a great and terrible hand were clamped firmly over its mouth, stifling every scream before it could be born.
That hand had a name, whispered only in the deepest shadows and most desperate moments: The Pale Hand.
You learned the rules of this city in your bones. You didn't speak too loudly. You didn't look too long. And when you passed a man in a black coat with a single, unadorned silver ring on his finger, you crossed the street.
Or you never crossed again.
This was the order of things. Unbreakable. Eternal.
Until the girl ran.
Ayla Kazuki was a symphony of desperation composed in sweat, blood, and terror. Rain plastered her dark brown hair to a cheek already swelling with a fresh, purple bruise. Her pristine white school uniform was torn at the shoulder, a violation of fabric and innocence against her grimy skin. In her right hand, she clutched a cheap smartphone with a spiderweb of cracks across the screen. In her left, a tiny USB stick that felt heavier than the world.
A progress bar on the phone's glowing screen was her only prayer. A final, defiant scream against the crushing silence of Duskfall.
[ EVIDENCE_PACKAGE_01.zip UPLOADING TO SECURE SERVER… 12% ]
"There she is! Down that alley!" a voice snarled behind her, thick with casual cruelty.
Heavy, confident footsteps splashed through the puddles. They were predators, and she was just meat running on borrowed time. Ayla gasped, forcing her burning lungs to work, and darted between a rusted dumpster and a brick wall that smelled of damp and decay. The taste of her own blood, metallic and coppery, mixed with the rain in her mouth.
She risked a glance back. Three of them. Thick-set, their cruel smirks illuminated in strobing flashes of red and blue neon. The glint of silver on their fingers was a death sentence. Pale Hand enforcers.
Her foot caught on a loose paving stone she didn't see.
Gravity was a merciless tyrant. She went down hard, the impact jarring her teeth and sending the phone skittering across the wet concrete. It landed screen-up, a tiny island of light in the filth.
[ UPLOADING… 14% ]
"Nowhere left to run, little rat," the leader chuckled, his voice a low rumble. He stopped a few feet away, cracking his thick knuckles with a sound like popping cartilage. The other two fanned out, sealing the alley. "Did you really think you could leak evidence about the Councilman's 'accident'? About your dear brother? In this city, the only thing that leaks is blood."
Ayla scrambled backward on her palms, her back hitting the cold, damp wall. This was it. The end of the line. The silence was about to claim another victim, and the world would never know. Her brother's memory would be erased, just like him.
It was then that she slammed into something. Not the wall. It was soft, yet utterly unyielding, like hitting a statue wrapped in cloth.
Startled, she looked up. A person. A boy, maybe a year or two older than her, with messy jet-black hair that fell over his eyes in a way that seemed careless but deliberate. He wore a plain, slightly-too-large black school uniform, the kind worn by students from the outer districts. In his hand, he held a crumpled, hopelessly outdated paper map.
He didn't look at the thugs. He didn't seem to notice the blood on her face, the terror in the air, or the imminent, brutal violence. His gaze shifted from the map to the street signs beyond the alley, a faint line of confusion creasing his brow.
"Excuse me," he said. His voice was unnervingly calm, a still, deep lake in the middle of a hurricane. "I'm a bit lost. Can you tell me which way Tonkotsu King Ramen is? The guidebook said it was legendary."
The thugs froze, their predatory smirks faltering. The sheer, idiotic normalcy of the question was an insult more profound than any challenge. The leader's face twisted from amusement into a scowl of pure annoyance.
"Piss off, kid. This is official Pale Hand business," he spat, flashing his silver ring. "Hand the girl over before you get hurt."
The boy, Ravi Kuro, finally lowered his map. His gaze fell upon Ayla, who was now huddled behind his legs like a cornered animal. He took in the torn clothes, the split lip, the absolute terror in her eyes… and the defiant, faint glow of the phone a few feet away.
She was muttering something under her breath, a broken litany of grief and rage.
"...they killed him… my Kenji… I just wanted someone to know…"
Ravi was silent for a full three seconds. The rain seemed to hush, the neon lights holding their breath. Then, he asked her a question, his voice so gentle it was terrifying.
"Did you fight back?"
Ayla looked up, startled by the strange inquiry. It wasn't "Are you okay?" or "What's happening?". It was a question of will. Through her tears, she managed a single, shaky nod.
A flicker of something—not a smile, but a grim, cosmic satisfaction—touched the corner of his lips. He folded his map with practiced precision and tucked it into his pocket.
"Then you don't need to run anymore."
The lead thug let out a harsh, ugly laugh. "Big words, tourist." He lunged, his thick, meaty hand reaching for Ravi's collar. "Time to teach you how we say hello in Duskfa—"
He never finished the word.
Ravi's hand moved. It wasn't fast in the way a bullet is fast. It was simply… there. His fingers closed around the thug's wrist, intercepting it mid-air.
CRACK.
The sound was obscene. It wasn't the muffled crunch of a fistfight; it was the clean, sharp, sickening report of a thick tree branch snapping in a dead-silent forest. The thug's scream was a choked gurgle as Ravi twisted, using the man's own momentum to spin him around. He didn't release the broken wrist. Instead, with a motion as casual as throwing away a piece of trash, he rammed the man's own hand—shattered bones, limp fingers, and all—into his open, screaming mouth.
The second thug, snapping out of his shock, roared and swung a lead pipe he'd drawn from his coat. The pipe arced through the rain, aimed at the back of Ravi's head.
Ravi didn't even look. He kicked backward.
His foot connected with the man's sternum. For a half-second, nothing happened. Then, the brick wall behind the thug exploded outward. A crater of pulverized brick and plaster formed as the man was embedded into it, his body going limp as a marionette with its strings cut, the pipe clattering uselessly to the ground.
Silence. The only sounds were the rain and the gurgling of the first thug, who was on his knees, choking on his own hand.
The third and final enforcer stood frozen, his bravado having evaporated into pure, primal terror. His mind couldn't process what it had just seen. That wasn't a fight. That was a disassembly. He saw the boy turn toward him. The rain seemed to part around him, sliding off an unseen, oppressive aura. His eyes, now fully visible under his hair, were not angry. They were not hateful. They were empty. A void that promised nothing but the end.
This wasn't a man. It was a monster wearing a human face.
"P-Please… mercy…" the thug stammered, dropping his own weapon as his bladder let go, a dark stain spreading on his trousers.
Ravi started walking, his footsteps slow, deliberate, and final.
"You shouldn't have touched her," he said, his voice a dead calm that was infinitely more frightening than any shout. "Now I have to touch you."
From the mouth of the alley, the few passersby who hadn't immediately fled stood paralyzed, their faces masks of horrified disbelief. A police officer, who had been deliberately looking the other way from his patrol car down the block, slowly turned. His hand hovered over his radio, his jaw slack.
"W-What… what did I just see!?" someone whispered, their voice trembling. "He just… crushed the Pale Hand…?"
The officer finally raised the radio to his lips, his voice shaking. "Dispatch… we have a situation in the Neon District. Sector 4. Code… Code Zero. I repeat, a Code Zero. Someone… someone just broke fear."
Ayla stared, her mind a blank slate of shock. She looked at the man choking on his own fist, the other man buried in the wall, and the third one who was now sinking to his knees, sobbing. Then she looked at the boy standing over him. Her gaze fell to her phone.
[ UPLOADING… 21% ]
The entire slaughter had taken less than ten seconds.
In the center of the carnage, Ravi Kuro looked down at his perfectly clean, unblemished knuckles, then back at the rain-soaked street. He let out a soft sigh, a sound of mild, genuine annoyance.
"...Still no idea where that ramen shop is."