The phone feels wrong in Adrian’s hand.Too light. Too clean. Too… deliberate.It shouldn’t have survived the river, the fights, the fire, the fall from the Iron Bridge. No device should have powered on after all that. But when he pressed the button, its screen lit up without a flicker.A single message glowed:WHO ARE YOU STILL RUNNING FROM?Adrian wipes water and mud from his face, breathing through the ache in his ribs. The Old Harbor’s fog hangs thick around him—salt, rust, diesel fumes—and somewhere in the distance, a ship’s horn moans like a dying animal.He’s alone. Or he thinks he is.He stares at the phone again.There’s no number attached to the message.No contact.No trace.Just emptiness.“Cute,” he mutters, tossing his soaked jacket aside. “Another ghost.”He considers smashing the phone against the cracked pavement, but something inside him—instinct, paranoia, the part of him that survived years of contracts and ambushes—stops him. Instead, he tucks the device into his

The night is colder now—sharp, metallic, like the city itself is holding its breath.Adrian feels the shift before he hears it.The silence grows teeth.Then it breaks.A whisper of footsteps.A metallic click.A brief sting in the air, like electricity.He doesn’t have to look.His instincts scream:Ambush.And not the sloppy kind he’s survived before.This is coordinated.Professional.A synchronized hunt.Adrian whirls just as the first silenced shot hisses past his jaw, clipping a strand of his hair. The bullet buries itself into the brick behind him with a soft, deadly pfft.The second shot comes from the left.The third from above.Three shooters.Three angles.One intention:Delete him cleanly and quietly.Adrian dives into a narrow passage, rolling behind a crumbling dumpster as bullets punch holes through the metal.His phone vibrates once.A new message.MOVE. NOW.He does.The dumpster explodes inward as a blade—long, thin, thrown with impossible accuracy—pierces straight t

The warehouse rose from the darkness like a wounded relic—rusted beams, shattered windows, and old storm-battered walls leaning at angles that defied logic. Adrian pushed inside through a dented service door, wincing as a fresh wave of pain crawled up his ribs.His shoulder bled from the rooftop fight. His throat ached from the chokehold. His skin still burned where the assassin’s blade grazed him.He needed cover. He needed a second to breathe. He needed answers.The warehouse swallowed him in cold, stale air. Moonlight slashed through broken window panes, painting long, skeletal shadows across the floor. The echo of his boots bounced between metal walls like distant gunshots.He stopped in the center of the vast space.Silence.Finally.Adrian exhaled shakily and dug into a pile of fabric scraps from a fallen textile pallet. He ripped off strips and wrapped them around his shoulder. Each pull of the cloth drew a hiss from his teeth, but he tightened anyway.Pain was better than weak

The night air slaps Adrian’s face as he stumbles out of the ruined warehouse, lungs heaving, ribs screaming. The metallic tang of blood clings to his tongue. His shirt is torn, sticky, and barely holding onto his shoulder. Behind him, the warehouse burns slowly—embers crackling, shadows licking the shattered windows like hungry beasts.He doesn’t know how he’s still alive.Twenty trained killers. Twenty rings with the black-throne insignia. Twenty men and women who moved with identical precision, identical focus, identical intent.And somehow he walked out while they stayed behind, broken on steel floors, bleeding from fractured throats, twisted limbs, or gunshots deflected by sheer instinct and luck that never felt like luck at all.It felt like memory.Or something deeper.Adrian staggers across the empty yard, boots crunching broken glass and gravel. Every muscle in his body trembles. He reaches the shadowed corner of a collapsed fence and leans against it, sliding down until he’s

The storm had slowed, but the streets of the Old District still glistened like wet obsidian. Rainwater crept between the ancient cobblestones—tiny winding rivers under the dim glow of failing streetlamps. Adrian stood in the middle of the square, chest heaving, soaked in blood that wasn’t entirely his.The bodies of the assassins lay scattered around him, their black-throne rings glinting like curses abandoned in the mud.But something was wrong.Terribly wrong.He replayed the fight in his mind. They’d moved well. Their formations were tight. Their aim was deadly. Their techniques refined.But they weren't fighting to win.They were fighting to lose.Their blades hesitated by inches. Their bullets missed by fractions that felt too deliberate. Their strikes were strong—but not lethal.Like they expected him to survive.Like they needed him to.Adrian knelt beside one fallen assassin. A woman—cold, pale, eyes still open to the storm. Her hand was curled not toward a weapon, but toward