The scream of steel against stone echoed down the narrow corridor as Jian pulled Giselle behind a collapsed pillar. The torchlight danced frantically on the soot-streaked walls, illuminating the assassin's dark silhouette stalking after them, blade still dripping with blood from a failed strike.
"Move," Giselle hissed, yanking Jian to his feet. Her breath was sharp, but her grip steady. She wasn't new to this.
Jian didn't protest. They sprinted deeper into the catacombs, their footfalls swallowed by damp earth and layers of dust. The assassin's footsteps followed like a metronome of death measured, patient, unrelenting.
They ducked into a side tunnel, one of many veins in this maze of forgotten passageways beneath the city. Jian pressed his back to the wall, heart pounding.
"Who sent him?" he whispered.
Giselle shook her head. "You think I know? I've been in the capital three days. But that mask Red Lantern style. And this place... we were lured."
A clatter echoed from behind a subtle shift in the air. Jian crouched low, eyes darting. Then he saw it: a tripwire, so thin it shimmered only when the torch caught it just right.
"A trap."
He yanked Giselle back. A breath later, a cascade of dart needles launched from the ceiling, riddling the empty corridor ahead. If they'd taken one more step
"Impressive," Giselle muttered. "You've been reading more than poetry, I see."
Jian didn't answer. His mind churned. This wasn't random violence. Someone had known he would come. The path, the assassin, the traps it was all too methodical. The Syndicate wasn't just hunting; they were sending a message.
"Come," he said. "We need to double back."
They ran again, but this time more carefully. Jian took the lead, mapping the ancient route with quick, sharp eyes, noting where erosion hinted at structural instability, where spiderwebs hadn't been disturbed safe, unused paths.
Then: a glow ahead. Not firelight, but a cold, unnatural blue.
Jian slowed. "What is that?"
Giselle crept beside him. Her voice dropped. "Power core residue. A generator. Someone's here."
They advanced cautiously. The tunnel opened into a small underground chamber, filled with crates and strange devices humming faintly contraband, tools, maps. Symbols unfamiliar to Jian lined the crates some Western, others he couldn't decipher.
"An old outpost," Giselle murmured. "Black market staging point."
Jian stepped toward a crate and pried it open. Inside vials, sealed and labeled with characters from a foreign tongue. He held one up. The liquid inside shimmered silver.
"What is this?"
"Alchemic serum," Giselle said after a glance. "Enhancement. Illegal. Very illegal."
A sharp clack echoed from behind. They turned. The assassin had found them.
He didn't speak. Just lunged, twin blades flashing.
Jian ducked instinctively. Giselle met the strike with a dagger she drew from her boot, steel on steel ringing in the chamber. Jian scrambled for a weapon found only a broken spearshaft near the crates and swung wildly to give Giselle space.
The assassin blocked both effortlessly, sending Jian stumbling back. But Giselle moved like flame fast, unpredictable. She fought not to kill but to survive, her strikes defensive, her footwork precise.
Still, the assassin pressed harder, sensing fatigue.
Jian saw an opening. He flanked behind the crates, grabbed a vial of the shimmering serum, and hurled it at the assassin's feet.
A burst of light blinding, volatile.
The assassin recoiled, momentarily stunned. Giselle didn't waste the chance. She delivered a powerful elbow to his throat and kicked him backward into a stack of crates. Wood splintered, the vials shattered, and the assassin collapsed amid the debris, unconscious or worse.
They didn't wait to find out.
"This place is compromised," Giselle said, grabbing Jian's arm. "There's a ladder this way."
They climbed through a narrow shaft, emerging inside a rusted stone building half-hidden in the slums near the outer district. A hidden entry point, long forgotten.
Giselle slammed the trapdoor shut and threw a rusted cabinet over it. Her chest heaved. Jian leaned against the cracked wall, silent.
"You handled yourself better than I expected," she said eventually.
Jian looked at her. Sweat beaded his brow, but his voice was calm. "What would've happened if I hadn't come looking for answers?"
She gave a tired smile. "You'd be dead. They'd frame it as an accident. Maybe even make it look like a suicide, a prince ashamed of investigating his own failures."
Jian stiffened. "They wouldn't dare."
"They already have. The question is who gave the order?"
That question hung in the air like smoke.
Jian looked out the shattered window. The city stretched beneath them beautiful, diseased. Somewhere within those alleys and towers, someone was pulling strings.
"This isn't just about the plague anymore," he said. "It's about control. Censorship. Power."
Giselle nodded. "And you've just been marked as a threat."
Jian turned to her. "Then let them know: I'm not afraid."
For a moment, Giselle studied him, her face unreadable. "You'll need allies."
"I have one," Jian said, with the faintest trace of a smile.
A knock. Three sharp raps at the broken door.
Both froze.
Giselle reached for her blade.
But the door creaked open. A woman in rough traveling robes stepped inside older, with eyes that glinted like frost. She spoke a name neither Jian nor Giselle recognized.
"You're early," she said in Western tongue.
Giselle stiffened. "You weren't supposed to come yet."
Jian turned to her. "Who is she?"
Giselle hesitated, then answered, her tone guarded. "An emissary. From the Syndicate's rival faction."
The woman gave a thin smile. "We heard someone in the palace was asking too many questions. We came to help."
Jian stepped forward. "Why?"
"Because the Red Lanterns are just one serpent. The empire," she said, "is full of vipers."