A year is a long time in the eternal night. Seasons are marked not by sun, but by shifts in the bioluminescent algae on the northern spires, or by the chemical tides of the underground filtration rivers. In the Imperial City, order is the official religion, administered by the Sentinel Gate and enforced by Miranda's black-armored legions. But beneath that polished adamant surface, the city breathes through a different set of lungs—its underworld.
This underworld is not a single entity. It is a ecosystem of territories, known as Turfs, each a necessary organ in the body of the dark. Miranda, in her flawless calculus, understood that total control bred brittle stagnation. A measured chaos was healthier. Thus, she cultivated the Turfs, allowing them to exist so long as they adhered to her one unbreakable law: No open challenge to the Crown's Harmony.
The Turfs are three, a dark trinity:
The Maelstrom: Lucian's domain. Based in the decaying river districts, they are the brute-force apparatus. They control physical smuggling—weapons, contraband tech, forbidden organic matter. They are the muscle, the fear in the alleyway, the enforcers of the underworld's own grim peace. Their symbol is a whirlpool swallowing three stars.
The Silken Guillotine: Operating from the high-end brokerage towers and datahavens, they deal in the intangible. Information, blackmail, digital ghosts, and identity sculpting are their currencies. They are whispers and poisoned secrets, cutting throats with contracts instead of blades. Their sigil is a slender knife draped in a thread of code.
The Gilded Cure: The most peculiar and tolerated of the three. Based in the old medical arcologies, they monopolize the creation and distribution of synth-blood and urban narcotics. They manage the populace's thirst and despair, a vital pressure valve. Their emblem is a golden chalice with a single, falling drop.
For a year, this ecosystem has operated in a tense, productive balance. The Maelstrom, under Lucian, has been particularly efficient—and quiet. There have been no poetic duels, no provocative visits. Just business, conducted with a cold, relentless focus that even the other Turfs have noted is unlike the man with the peach-toned skin and the messy bar.
The balance shattered forty-seven minutes ago.
The chase was a violent scar ripped through the manufacturing sector's perpetual gloom. Two vehicles—a low-slung, armored courier sled from the Silken Guillotine, and a brutish, retrofitted ground-ripper belonging to the Maelstrom—screamed through cavernous streets between endless, windowless factories.
The sled, sleek and coated in light-bending film, was trying to lose itself. The ripper, all exposed hydraulics, reinforced grille, and matte-black paint, was having none of it. It wasn't trying to be stealthy; it was a statement.
Inside the ripper, Kael, a Maelstrom lieutenant with a scar bisecting one pale eyebrow, wrestled the wheel. "He's heading for the Foundry Crossings! Trying to use the thermal updrafts to mask his signature!"
In the passenger seat, Lucian didn't look like a bartender. He wore tactical gear in muted grays, his expression a flat, focused plane. The year had honed him, sanding away any remaining softness until only a cold, sharp edge remained. He watched the sled ahead jink around a slow-moving cargo hauler.
"He's not running to hide," Lucian said, his voice devoid of its old warmth, a dry report. "He's running to deliver. He stole from our cache. He doesn't get to broker what's ours."
"What did he even take?" Kael grunted, slamming the ripper through a barrier of discarded packing foam.
"Prototype energy cores," Lucian said, eyes tracking the target. "Military-grade. Not for selling. For proving a point. The Guillotine thinks it can blur the lines." He reached down and flipped a switch on a jury-rigged console. "Time to make the lines very, very clear."
A pneumatic thump echoed from the ripper's undercarriage. From a hidden mount, a weighted net, woven with conductive filament, shot forward. It wasn't designed to destroy, but to capture and cripple.
The sled's driver saw it coming. In a desperate maneuver, he veered sharply into a narrow service alley, the net scraping sparks off the ferrocrete wall beside him. The ripper, too wide, couldn't follow.
"Damn it!" Kael slammed the brakes.
Lucian was already moving. "Block the eastern outlet. I'll take the western." He grabbed a compact, snub-nosed pulse rifle from between the seats and was out the door before the vehicle had fully stopped, melting into the alley's deep shadow with the familiarity of a man who belonged nowhere else.
The alley was a canyon of dripping pipes and shuddering ventilation units. The sled, its light-bending film flickering from damage, was trapped, its nose almost touching a sealed blast door. The driver's door hissed open, and a slender figure in a data-weave suit emerged, clutching a sealed case.
Lucian stepped into the center of the alley behind him, blocking the way out. He didn't raise the rifle. He simply stood there, a solid, silent obstruction in the gloom.
The courier turned, his face pale with fear under a sleek helmet. "Lucian. This… this doesn't have to be a Maelstrom problem. The Silken Guillotine offers a fifty percent brokering fee. A sign of respect."
Lucian took a step forward. The courier took a step back, hitting the sled. "The cores," Lucian said, his tone conversational, deadly. "You took what was under our mark. That makes it a Maelstrom problem. The fee is one hundred percent. And your left hand."
The courier's breath hitched. He was calculating, his eyes darting. He was a creature of information, not force. He had no defense against the sheer, grounded will radiating from the man before him. This wasn't the calculated cruelty of the Crown; this was something older, more visceral.
With a trembling hand, he placed the case on the wet ground and slid it forward. "The hand… please. I'm just a messenger."
Lucian looked at him for a long moment, the hum of the distant factories the only sound. The year of silence, of burying himself in the brutal logic of the Turf, rose up in him. This was the clarity he had chosen. Simple rules. Clear consequences.
"Tell your masters," Lucian said, finally picking up the case, his voice cutting through the damp air. "The lines exist for a reason. The Maelstrom enforces them. The next messenger who crosses one won't keep his tongue to deliver the apology."
He turned and walked back down the alley, leaving the shaken courier slumped against his expensive, useless sled. The message would be delivered. The balance, however brutally, was restored.
But as Lucian emerged back onto the main thoroughfare, the case heavy in his hand, he glanced up, past the towering factory chimneys vomiting their synthetic smoke into the starless sky. His gaze was drawn, as it always was despite himself, toward the distant, needle-like pinnacle of the Sovereign's Spire, glittering cold and alone in the artificial heavens. The silence between there and here felt heavier than the entire city pressing down on him. The chase was over. The quiet war within him, it seemed, had just entered a new, more desperate phase.
The low growl of the ripper's engine cut through the alley's drip and hum as Kael brought it to a stop inches from Lucian. The lieutenant jumped out, his scarred face etched with a mix of adrenaline and concern.
"Boss. For a guy who bleeds real, you sure got a death wish clocking overtime," he grunted, eyeing the slick walls of the alley as if expecting more Silken operatives to peel out of the shadows.
Lucian's response was as flat and worn as the alley stones. "Only the living are afraid of dying, Kael. The rest of us are just waiting." He tossed the sealed case. Kael caught it with a solid thump against his chestplate.
As they slid back into the ripper's armored belly and Kael gunned them away from the scene, the lieutenant's knuckles were white on the wheel. "So, that's it then? We just declared open season on the Silken Guillotine? A three-Turf war because of one idiot courier?"
Lucian stared out at the blurring, industrial wasteland, his reflection a ghost over the dark city. "War was already declared," he said, his voice low and analytical, devoid of its old barroom warmth. "The moment they authorized a snatch-and-run on a Maelstrom asset inside my territory. The moment they did it while I was present. That's the declaration."
He turned his head, meeting Kael's sidelong glance. "If it was just some freelancer, or if I'd been across the city, it would be a grievance. A negotiation. But they moved on my turf, with me in it. That's a message. They're not testing our security. They're testing me."
Kael processed this, weaving the ripper through a maze of coolant towers. "So the cores…"
"Are meaningless," Lucian finished. "A prop. A shiny bit of bait to see if I'd bite, if I'd get emotional, if I'd come roaring out personally—which I did. This wasn't about profit. It's about psychology. They want to see if the year of quiet has made me weak. If I'm still the same man who…" He trailed off, the unspoken name hanging between them like a phantom. "They want to shatter the balance because a stable underworld is a predictable one. And predictability is boring for snakes who live in the data streams."
He leaned back, the cold certainty settling around him like a familiar coat. "They want attention. Fine. They've got it. But we don't play their game on the data-havens. We play it in the dark where their light-bending sleds can't hide. Where the only currency is fear, and we print it by the ton."
Lucian's smile was a thin, razor-like thing, devoid of any humor. "Turn us around, Kael. We're not going back to the river. Head for the Night Bazaar. If the Silken Guillotine wants to declare war with a whisper, we'll answer them with a scream that'll freeze the blood in their veins. And we'll make sure the Crown hears every last echo."
Kael's hands tightened on the wheel. "Just the two of us? Boss, the Night Bazaar is Silken-adjacent turf. It's crawling with their data-mules and whisper-men. We roll in there with just a ripper and a pulse rifle, we're not sending a message, we're serving ourselves on a platter."
Lucian didn't look at him, his eyes still fixed on the passing gloom. "Why not? We're here already. Might as well."
It was a statement that defied all tactical logic, a signature Lucian move that had both infuriated and awed Kael for two years. Kael took a deep breath, the scar on his brow itching as his mind raced, trying to trace the invisible map his boss was following. He was being tested, and he knew it.
"Okay," Kael said slowly, thinking aloud as he navigated. "We're not going for a fight. Not directly. We go in loud, they'll swarm us with proxies and vanish into the data-stream. So… we're going for information. The cores are a prop, so the client list is the real target. Who were they meant for? The Guillotine's clients are ghosts on the dark spectrum, but…"
He glanced at Lucian, whose expression remained an unreadable mask. Kael pushed on. "But the Bazaar isn't just a market. It's a switchboard. And the best switchboard operators… they remember everything. Even after they 'retire.'" A light went on behind Kael's eyes. "Silas. No, not that Silas. Old Man Silas. The one who ran the comms hub before the Guillotine digitized him out of a job. He still lives above the Bazaar. And he still owes us for keeping the Gilded Cure off his granddaughter when she got hooked on their bad batch."
A slow, approving nod from Lucian. It was the barest flicker of warmth, but in the frigid economy of their world, it felt like a commendation.
"Good," Lucian said, the word crisp. "You're not just listening to orders anymore. You're listening to the city. You're reading the silence between the notes." He looked at Kael, a rare moment of direct assessment. "You'll make a fine leader one day, Kael. Sooner than you think."
The words hit Kael with a physical weight, settling in his chest alongside the adrenaline. For two years, he'd been a blunt instrument learning precision. He'd watched Lucian's quiet, simmering fury reshape the Maelstrom into something colder and more efficient than it had ever been. To have that acknowledged, to be seen as more than just muscle… it was the only kind of immortality someone like him could ever aspire to.
"Don't say that, boss," Kael muttered, focusing intently on the road to hide the swell of pride. "Makes it sound like you're planning on retiring to some sun-drenched beach."
Lucian's gaze returned to the window, to the distant spire. "There are no beaches," he said, his voice dropping back into its familiar, hollow register. "Just deeper water. Now, drive. Let's go have a conversation with a ghost from the analog age."
A few minutes later, the growl of the ripper faded into the pervasive hum of the Night Bazaar. They parked in a shadowed culvert, the vehicle's matte-black hull becoming just another piece of industrial debris.
Inside, they shed their tactical shells. Kael emerged in a serviceable, dark gray suit, his posture stiff, feeling exposed without the weight of his armor. Lucian's transformation was more profound. He shrugged into his familiar, long-sleeved white shirt, leaving it untucked, the cuffs slightly frayed. He forewent a tie, the top button undone against the pale column of his throat. He looked less like a mafia boss and more like a haunted poet who'd stumbled into the wrong part of the city—which, Kael supposed, was partly true.
"Boss, leaving the comms, the scanners, the rifles…" Kael's voice was tight as he locked the vehicle's secure compartment. "It feels like walking in naked."
"That's the point," Lucian said, his voice calm as he checked the slide on a standard, blocky Glock. "In there, every digital pulse is a shout. Every encrypted signal is a flare. The Silken Guillotine owns the airwaves here. We go in tech-silent, we become ghosts. Just two more faces in the crowd, hungry for a taste of the old ways."
Kael wasn't convinced, but he trusted the calculus. He tucked his own Glock into his waistband at the small of his back, its weight a cold comfort. From a hidden compartment in the ripper's floor, he retrieved a length of fine, high-tensile chain, its links darkened to a non-reflective gray. He looped it around his waist under his shirt, the cool metal a familiar, brutal promise.
Lucian, meanwhile, reached for one final item. From a long, narrow case, he drew a sheathed katana. The saya was plain, unadorned black lacquer, the tsuka wrapped in worn, dark silk. It was an absurdly anachronistic weapon in a city of pulse rifles and plasma blades. It was also utterly, terrifyingly personal. He slipped it into a custom harness on his back, the hilt rising over his shoulder like a stark, final punctuation mark.
"A sword?" Kael couldn't help the question.[1]
"No serial numbers. No power signature. Just silence, and then a very sharp point," Lucian replied, his tone leaving no room for debate. "And sometimes, a statement needs to be carved, not broadcast."
They approached the entrance to the Night Bazaar—not a gate, but a widening in the street that funneled into a gargantuan, repurposed drainage silo. Flickering holosigns in diseased greens and purples advertised everything from memory-wipes to designer emotions. There was no visible security, no scanners. That was the Bazaar's first and most important rule: you were responsible for your own life once you stepped inside. The lack of overt checkpoints was itself a filter, weeding out the unprepared.
Taking a final breath of the marginally cleaner outside air, Lucian stepped over the threshold, Kael a half-step behind. They were immediately swallowed by the sensory onslaught—the cacophony of haggling in a dozen dialects, the sizzle of dubious street food, the cloying smell of synth-incense and decay, and above it all, the low, digital thrum of ten thousand illicit transactions passing through the air, invisible and deadly.
They were in. Two ghosts, armed with lead, steel, and a cold purpose, moving unseen through a forest of whispers and light.
Kael walked through the throng, his eyes sweeping over the impossible scale of the place. The Bazaar wasn't a market; it was a vertical city within the city, its tiers carved into the silo's walls stretching up into smoky darkness, each ledge connected by rickety bridges and humming lift-platforms. Holo-screens flickered with cascading data, showing trades in forbidden code and contraband nano-assemblers. The sheer volume of sin was staggering.
He felt a sudden, crushing vertigo. "This... this isn't a city. It's a damn empire. How do a handful of royals even begin to rule this?"
Lucian didn't break stride, his eyes cataloguing exits, threats, and safe shadows. "They don't," he said, his voice cutting through the din. "Not directly. That's why we exist. The Crown handles the symphony—the grand infrastructure, the eternal night, the laws that keep the spires from collapsing. We," he gestured subtly around them, "handle the small jobs. The 'discordant notes,' as she called them. The things too messy, too personal, or too far into the dark for their spotless gloves."
The mention of her was like a drop of freezing water in the oppressive heat. Lucian's jaw tightened. His analysis of their surroundings sharpened, the analytical part of his mind shifting into overdrive. They were a trigger waiting for a hammer.
"Sending a messenger was a declaration," Lucian murmured, more to himself than to Kael. "But in a place like this, declarations have a half-life. The Silken Guillotine knows we're here now. Not through tech, but through gossip. The air is selling us out." He glanced at a data-mule who quickly looked away. "We're on a clock. They won't leave a gauntlet lying in the dirt. They'll send someone to pick it up. Not with an army—that's our style. They'll send a single, perfect needle to pop our balloon."
He changed direction, steering them away from the main concourse and into a narrower, dimmer alley of stalls selling physical relics—rusted data-slates, pre-night artwork, analog weapons. The noise level dropped. The shadows deepened.
"Old Man Silas's place is on the third tier, access via a maintenance ladder at the back of the 'Memory Lane' sector," Lucian said, his voice low. "But the direct route is a funnel. A perfect place for a needle." He stopped in front of a stall displaying rows of salvaged watch faces, all telling different, wrong times. "We split up. You take the ladder. I'll take the scenic route—draw the eye."
"Boss, that's—"
"It's chess, Kael. They're expecting the king to move straight for the prize. So the king becomes a pawn, and the pawn becomes the king for five minutes." He met Kael's eyes, the old, reckless fire briefly cutting through the ice. "Get to Silas. Get the client list for the last month. He'll have it. He remembers everything. Don't wait for me. If I'm not at the extraction point in twenty, you burn the list and get back to the river. Tell the crew the Maelstrom answers with fire, not whispers."
Before Kael could protest, Lucian turned and melted into a stream of robed figures heading towards a buzzing atrium filled with shimmering, hypnotic light-projections—the most crowded, most observable path.
Kael was alone. The weight of the order settled on him. He was no longer just following. He was being moved on the board. Taking a steadying breath, he adjusted the chain under his shirt and headed into the darker, quieter throat of Memory Lane, the ghost of Lucian's final words echoing in his mind: burn the list.
The game had begun, and the needle, he knew, was already falling.[2]
NO.1 END!
NEXT CHAPTER DROPS ON: 30 JAN!
[1] Personally i'm bringing an entire Atomic bomb, but that's just my opinion.
[2] I wonder if the story is making sense, tell me if you read this.