Daemon lowers his knife but doesn't sheath it. "The ledger's master copy isn't here. You want to live, you help me reach it."
Katerina exhales through the pipe, smoke finally curling.
"Three minutes," she says. "After that, I kill you if you still breathe."
He almost smiles. "Fair."
The train rattles on into the dark.
Scene — Bar: Pressure Behind the Smoke
The train hissed as it slowed into the next carriage. The lights flickered, dim red bulbs reflecting off the polished wood and stained glass of the bar. Smoke curled from a still-lit heater, mingling with the scent of whiskey, gun oil, and iron. Patrons froze when the train's shift rattled the glasses on the shelves.
FIRST SECOND:
Daemon stepped in first, hand brushing the back of a chair like he already knew the trajectory of every swing. One bartender's eyes widened; another froze mid-pour.
SECOND:
Katerina entered behind him, pipe clenched between teeth. Her boots made no sound, but the faint metal tang from the brass fittings on her coat hinted at danger. Two men in the corner subtly reached for pistols. They weren't fast enough.
THIRD:
A shot rang out—Daemon's knife had flipped, slicing the edge of the nearest man's hand as he drew. Blood arced through the dim light, leaving a smear across the bar. He kicked the chair into another guard, sending him sprawling into the tables.
---
The Dance of Death
The patrons screamed, ducking or freezing, but no one dared approach Daemon or Katerina.
Daemon's eyes scanned the ceiling beams, the liquor racks, every reflective surface. The fairy floated above, light pulsing like a warning heartbeat.
Katerina ducked under a swinging chair, snapping the pipe against a man's temple, then flipping him into the wall. She caught herself mid-spin, rolling, and fired a compact pistol—two shots, two knees gone.
The bar's bottles shattered, sending shards across the floor. Sparks from the train's friction hit the glass, causing small fires to flare along the edges. Smoke thickened instantly.
---
Split-Second Coordination
Daemon grabbed a collapsed table to cover his flank, knife flashing.
Katerina slid behind the bar, knocking over crates, cutting the path of a man rushing her with a broken bottle.
They moved like professionals—no hesitation, no theatrics, just survival and execution.
Every shot, every strike, calculated.
The 3-second rule applied to everyone: hesitation meant death.
The fairy's glow helped Daemon anticipate the unseen, revealing shadows of movement that weren't real—but could be fatal.
---
Squaring Off
After thirty seconds, silence fell, broken only by the hiss of smoke and the creak of the train. Patrons were cowering in corners; bodies littered the floor.
Daemon's coat was streaked with blood and dust. Katerina flicked her pipe, ash falling into the shattered glass at her feet.
No words were needed. The ledger was here somewhere, and every guard, patron, or rival in this carriage was either a threat or bait.
Her icy gaze met his.
"Three minutes," she reminded him, voice soft but sharp.
Daemon allowed a shrug. "Let's find it before someone else does."
The bar had become a battlefield, and the next three minutes would decide who walked away.
---
Scene — Bar: Aftermath and Intel
The last of the armed men groaned on the floor. One lifted his head, wincing, eyes darting between Daemon and Katerina.
"Whatever you're looking for," he rasped, coughing up blood, "it's probably… in the museum vault. Other items… they don't mix…" His words cut off as he slumped back, half-conscious.
Daemon knelt slightly, studying the man like he was inspecting a broken machine. "Vault, huh? Noted. Thanks for… whatever you just gave me," he muttered, voice low, cold.
Katerina's eyes scanned the bar. Shadows moved unnaturally along the walls. The smoke had thickened, curling like sentient fingers. Then they saw him.
A man with a crow for a head. His cloak, opera-style and asymmetrical, left one shoulder exposed. Pinstripe trousers sagged just enough to show ornate Victorian suspenders beneath. Runes, glowing faintly like graffiti tags, sprayed across the fabric in chaotic patterns. He leaned casually against the bar, one clawed hand brushing a glass, eyes—or whatever passed for eyes under that mask—tracking their every move.
The glow from his runes pulsed as if breathing. A smirk—or something approximating one—shifted the feathers over his beak. With a flick of his wrist, shadows and smoke coalesced, creating the illusion of dozens of crow-headed minions darting across the room. Patrons screamed or ducked instinctively.
Daemon's fairy glowed, swiping light across the walls, revealing the illusion for what it was: tricks of the eye, smoke, and magic combined. Still, the man's presence radiated control. Calm, cold, and deadly.
---
Transition — The Upside-Down Carriage
Without warning, the train shuddered violently. The illusion flickered, failing entirely. In that instant, the carriage flipped.
Gravity inverted.
Tables, chairs, and chandeliers clung to the ceiling as if magnetized.
Patrons scrambled, clinging to walls or the ceiling itself.
Gunfire rang out, ricocheting unpredictably across the now upside-down bar.
Daemon's mind raced. Every movement had to account for gravity reversing mid-fight. He knelt on the ceiling's underside, gripping a railing, and whispered to the fairy. The small light orb pulsed, illuminating points of safe traction across the surface. He reached into his coat, whispering the runes that called forth the abomination.
A mass of corrupted, sinewy flesh erupted from the floor—now the ceiling—and clung instantly, its tendrils wrapping the inverted furniture like sticky, living webs. Daemon leapt, riding its back, redirecting its appendages to knock out armed opponents while remaining mobile.
Katerina's boots scrapped sparks against the ceiling tiles. She adapted immediately, kicking off light fixtures, flipping across the room, and letting the inverted chaos work in her favor.
From the corner of his vision, Daemon caught the crow-headed figure stepping lightly across the ceiling, cloak flowing like ink in water. The runes pulsed as the man whispered something unintelligible, shadows stretching and elongating into grotesque shapes, claws grazing the walls for leverage.
"Perfect," Daemon muttered under his breath. The upside-down chaos was now a tool, not a threat. The abomination clung, his movements precise, lethal.
The crow-headed figure moved with preternatural calm through the upside-down mess, heading toward the next carriage. The train's motion made gravity inconsistent; sometimes the floor would pull like a tide, sometimes the ceiling.
Daemon glanced at Katerina. "Ready to follow?" he asked.
She flicked her pipe, sparks drifting from the ember. "Let's see what you're hiding beyond that door."
The two sprinted—or rather, leapt and scrambled—across the inverted surfaces, abomination tentacles gripping furniture and railings as they went, the fairy hovering above like a sentinel.
The carriage groaned as if it were alive.
The lights flickered in rhythm with the train's heartbeat — boom, rattle, boom — and from the far end, through the crawling mist and inverted gravity, he stepped through.
Opera cloak draped asymmetrically — one shoulder bare, the other sheathed in black fabric that looked like burnt velvet.
The cloak's lining caught flashes of light, not bright, but oily — colors sliding like gasoline over water.
Runes — sprayed and streaked across the cloth like alleyway graffiti — pulsed, flickering between wet paint and dying neon. Each stroke bled light, as if half of them were written in code, the other half in prayer.
His trousers — pinstriped, Victorian cut, but low-slung, held by suspenders that crossed wrong, geometry of the mad and ritualistic.
A thin chain ran from the glove on his right hand to the hem of his cloak; when he moved, the chain sang, the faintest metallic whisper — his motion precise, deliberate, choreographed by violence.
His bare shoulder was gray and pale, feather veins visible beneath the skin, a pattern that looked carved rather than born.
On his back — a faint burnt ring, like something divine had once touched him and left only ash.
Every step left smudges of black dust. The air around him bent — not by magic, but by presence, like heat shimmer in the desert.
And his head—
A crow's skull sculpted in obsidian, feathered edges whispering faintly as if they breathed.
No mouth, no expression — but still, a smile.
The kind of patient, predatory smile that made your lungs forget their job.
The ceiling pulsed.
The entire carriage had flipped, and every breath disobeyed gravity. Katerina was perched upside down, one boot on a light fixture, pipe still in her mouth, eyes tracking his movement. Daemon hung from an abomination's limb, the thing clinging to the ceiling like a spider of flesh and iron.
"Eyes up," Daemon said — but his voice was already drowned by the hum of runes.
The Hollow Herald moved.
Not fast — right.
Every motion obeyed physics, but just barely. He used inertia, used gravity like a hinge, twisting his body so that when he spun his cloak, it generated lift. His chain dragged along the ceiling, striking sparks.
A spark hit a hanging liquor bottle — pressure changed — pop.
The bottle exploded, shards spiraling in slow-motion chaos.
Katerina ducked, boots kicking off the ceiling, firing. Her bullets passed through illusions — crow feathers scattering like confetti — and struck steel.
Then he was there.
Right in front of her.
He moved with no wasted momentum. One hand caught her wrist, the other pressed a single rune to her chest — it flared — she went airborne, slamming into the ceiling that was now the floor.
Daemon lunged, knife flashing — the Hollow Herald twisted, caught his wrist, and the sound of bones grinding filled the carriage. Daemon used the pain, turned with it, cut low — drew blood.
The blood was black and faintly glowing.
The Hollow Herald tilted his head, feathers rippling as if in laughter. "Almost," he said — the voice soft, modulated, two tones like a broken speaker.
The abomination lunged — tendrils flailing, sticking to walls — and the Hollow Herald spun, cloak flaring. The chain wrapped around a limb, dragged it taut. He yanked, and the creature slammed into a table that shattered in a realistic implosion of splinters.
Pressure differential, air displacement, glass and dust whirling — every movement rooted in physics but guided by instinct.
Katerina reappeared — faster.
Too fast.
Her hair was a blur, her face slick with blood, smile just too wide. She looked half-dead, eyes bright as ice.
She tore through a gunman's throat before Daemon could react, turned, and spat out blood like it was wine.
Daemon saw it — the smile, the crimson dripping down her chin — and the thought crossed his mind:
Three-second curse… or something worse?
The Hollow Herald saw it too.
He looked at her, then at Daemon, and bowed slightly. "Two against one," he said. "I approve."
Then he raised his hand, and a beetle the size of a fist crawled from under his cloak, its carapace etched with sigils. It scuttled along the inverted wall and burst into black dust.
The dust hit a crouching man — and killed him instantly.
No sound. No scream. Just a pop, like a light going out.
The fight burned out.
Smoke filled the air, the abomination half-dissolved into flesh tar, the runes on the walls fading like breath on glass.
Katerina was slumped against a wall, eyes half-closed, blood on her lips. Daemon stood, half-crouched, ribs showing through his torn shirt, grinning like something barely human.
Across the room, one man still breathed — the one they'd interrogated before.
Daemon walked toward him.
Not fast. Not slow.
Each step deliberate, the smile never leaving his face — nose dripping blood, eyes half-glazed with exhaustion and euphoria.
He crouched beside the man, voice gentle — too gentle.
"Do you want to live?"
The man trembled, nodding once, fear paralyzing his throat.
Daemon leaned closer, whispering, still smiling. "Then lay down your body. Accept me. I'll give you the strength to be the last man standing."
The man swallowed, nodded again, and Daemon whispered—
"On your knees."
The lights flickered, once.
Then the carriage went quiet.
Only the hum of the train remained… and the faint flutter of feathers.
---