*Warning: This chapter contains mature and violence scene that it might disturb some reader. Readers Advised
Zhāoyè slipped into her quarters like a shadow reuniting with its own darkness. The moment the reinforced door sealed behind her, the room breathed — alive, restless, and perpetually tense, as though the walls themselves were listening.
Her den was a palimpsest of her broken duality: one half a fluorescent hacker's nest humming with surveillance feeds and encrypted data-streams; the second an assassin's atelier, brutal, silent, and lined with weaponry gleaming in lethal symmetry; the third a fragile sanctuary — one corner softened by incense coils, frayed cushions, and a chipped teacup she never allowed herself to discard.
The scent inside was unmistakably hers: ozone, old perfume, gun oil, and citrus tea — an aroma impossible to classify, like a memory that refused to settle.
Fluorescent strips flickered overhead, stuttering like anxious eyelids. Cyan light leaked through cracks in the concrete, painting her silhouette in fractured glows. A red indicator blinked from her lockbox — as though judging her.
Zhāoyè exhaled sharply.
"Home sweet bloody home," she murmured.
She shrugged off her two-toned tactical jacket, letting it drop onto the chair with a dull, accusatory thud. Her cropped combat top revealed the faint scars crossing her abdomen — starmaps of violence and survival.
She set down Dawn and Dusk, her twin pulse daggers, with reverent care, followed by the fox mask whose porcelain surface caught the cyan light like liquid moonlight.
Her smoky silver hair, streaked with lavender undertones, shifted as a stray breeze whispered through the cracked window.
She lifted her hand absently and touched the shallow indentation of her bellybutton, pressing it as though confirming she was still flesh — still tethered to something human — before wandering to her counter, picking up her mug, and taking a slow, steeling sip of cold coffee.
"Brilliant work, Zhāoyè," she muttered to herself dryly. "Utterly brilliant… stab the blooming Chief and antagonise a Tier-Zero spectre. Very sagacious."
A voice slid from the darkness like silk over steel.
"Oh, really?"
Zhāoyè froze — every limb locking like a sprung trap.
Her eyes narrowed.
"Who's there?"
A shape separated itself from the shadow. Silver-white hair cascaded like liquid starlight; a pair of pale eyes glinted with an inscrutable calm.
Zoyah stepped forward.
Zhāoyè's jaw dropped a fraction.
"How the hell— Zoyah? How did you get in here?"
Zoyah lifted a brow, unimpressed.
"You leave a thousand safeguards, but none against me. You truly should know better."
She crossed her arms — a gesture both elegant and admonishing.
"You leaked intel to Agent-90 about the King of Beggars orchestrating the explosion."
Zhāoyè scoffed, rolling her eyes.
"So Lady Sin sent her favourite phantom to scold me?"
"Yes," Zoyah replied without embellishment. "And let us proceed with the facts, Zhāoyè. Tonight you stabbed the Chief at the Raku-Stair District, didn't you?"
Zhāoyè shrugged with insolent grace.
"So what's your problem?"
Zoyah's look sharpened.
"Zhāoyè… you reckless, incandescent calamity—"
She didn't finish.
Instead she moved — blindingly fast.
Zhāoyè reached instinctively for her dagger — but Zoyah slammed her against the wall with forceful precision, pinning both wrists above her head with one arm.
Zhāoyè's eyes flared wide.
"Oi—! Get off—!"
But Zoyah jabbed a single finger directly into her umbilicus.
Zhāoyè choked — back arching, breath faltering, legs buckling with shock.
"A-AH—! Oi, what— what the hell—?!"
Zoyah's voice thundered beside her ear.
"Are you an idiot? For what reason did you stab the Chief?!"
Zhāoyè hissed back, cheeks heating with humiliation and fury.
"Why in blazes should I tell you? You're not one of us!"
Zoyah pressed harder.
Zhāoyè yelped — a strangled, involuntary sound.
"We are all Sinners," Zoyah snapped. "Different organisations, yes — but the same forsaken bloodline. Now speak. Who ordered it?"
Zhāoyè clenched her teeth, eyes burning.
"Fine—! It was the High Chaebols, all right? They gave me the assignment. And if I failed… they would…"
Zoyah leaned sharply.
"They would what?"
Zhāoyè's voice broke — just slightly.
"They would make me a monster."
Zoyah's grip loosened.
Slowly, she withdrew her finger from Zhāoyè's umbilicus.
Zhāoyè sagged forward, one hand flying protectively to her abdomen, breathing shallowly.
"Bloody hell…" she muttered, flustered beyond dignity.
Zoyah stepped back, exhaling.
"Fortunately for the Chief, she was with the Velvet Guillotine."
Zhāoyè scoffed, brushing her hair back.
"Yes, yes — the infamous spectre himself."
Zoyah's voice lowered.
"The High Chaebols want her dead. If she falls, they will plunge the world into its second darkness."
Zhāoyè blinked.
"And why," she demanded, "do you care?"
Zoyah pivoted, eyes gleaming with gravitas.
"Because the Chief is more important than she realises.
And Velvet Guillotine… has been assigned to protect the petals of dandelion."
Zhāoyè's breath caught — the phrase carrying more weight than she expected.
Zoyah turned to leave.
"Zoyah!" Zhāoyè called after her, voice cracking with a rare sliver of vulnerability. "Don't just— leave like that! I—"
Zoyah paused at the doorway, glancing back with a faint, maddening smirk.
"Zhāoyè… your umbilicus is extremely sensitive."
Zhāoyè's entire face ignited.
"W-WHAT!? Oh for— shut up! Don't say embarrassing things with that calm face of yours!"
Zoyah simply chuckled — a sound like silver bells dipped in frost — and disappeared into the corridor.
Zhāoyè stood trembling, pressed against the wall, one arm curled around her abdomen as her blush flared violently across her cheeks.
"Bloody… insufferable… celestial witch…" she muttered, mortified.
And the neon crackle of her room hummed in gentle amusement.
The reinforced steel doors of Shin-Zhang Corporation's subterranean lobby hissed open with a hydraulic gasp as Agent-90 strode inside, carrying Wen-Li in his arms like a knight burdened with a wounded queen.
Her blood had darkened his gloves; her breathing trembled in uneven threads; her hand remained curled weakly around his jacket. Beside him, Wen-Mi the cat marched with tiny, deadly seriousness — tail puffed, eyes ablaze, fur still bristling with post-battle indignation.
The night-shift staff froze mid-routine as though someone had pressed a universal pause button.
Hella dropped her tablet.
Alvi nearly swallowed her gum.
Roy's coffee slipped from his hand and splattered across the floor.
Jun, Farhan, and Masud stood in mutual paralysis, mouths ajar like badly synchronised animatronics.
Madam Di-Xian looked up from her clipboard — her poised expression collapsing into controlled horror.
All eight of them shouted at once:
"CHIEF?!"
"What happened—?!"
"GOOD LORD— SHE'S BLEEDING!"
"Is she breathing?!"
"How deep is the wound?!"
"Is that a stab or— WHAT IS THAT?!"
And then—
Hella spotted the cat.
She blinked once.
Twice.
Then she shrieked in a mixture of surprise and inappropriate delight:
"AND SHE BROUGHT THE CAT—!!"
Wen-Mi stopped dead, narrowed her eyes with aristocratic offence, lifted one paw slowly…
…and booped Hella's shoe like a warning tap from a tiny, furry assassin.
Hella gasped.
"SHE TOUCHED ME— oh my god she is SO CUTE—!"
Wen-Mi hissed once — short, precise, like punctuation.
Agent-90 didn't break stride.
He glided past the chaos with monastic composure, his voice level yet edged with command.
"Stand aside. She requires immediate medical intervention. Tier-Sinner attack— abdominal penetration, twisting motion. Significant haemorrhaging."
The staff scattered like startled pigeons.
Madam Di-Xian snapped into action with terrifying efficiency.
Her heels clacked like war drums.
She pointed sharply at Alvi.
"Alvi — medical bay, now. Prep the stabilisation suite. I want full-spectrum scanners activated, haemostatic gel ready, and a cleansing field deployed before she arrives."
Alvi nodded so fast she resembled a malfunctioning bobble-head.
"Y-Yes, Madam Di-Xian! Right away!"
As Alvi sprinted down the corridor, Di-Xian pivoted to Agent-90 with an expression that could bend steel through judgement alone.
"Agent-90.
Once the Chief is stabilised, you will meet me in my office."
Her tone was cold enough to forge icicles.
Agent-90's eyes glimmered with unreadable calm. He adjusted Wen-Li gently in his arms, his voice softening by a single microscopic degree.
"Understood.
She will survive — I will ensure it."
Wen-Mi meowed once — sternly — as if seconding the vow.
Hella, still starstruck by the cat, whispered:
"She's so tiny but so… angry."
Farhan whispered back:
"Just like the Chief."
Wen-Mi turned her head slowly and glared at him with surgical contempt.
He immediately pretended to inspect the wall.
Agent-90 proceeded down the corridor, steps long and unwavering, Wen-Li's faint groan escaping against his chest.
The automatic doors to the emergency bay slid open.
Behind him, everything erupted again—
"Get the med-bots!"
"Clear the path!"
"Gods above, someone pick up Roy's coffee!"
"SHE'S BLEEDING ON THE FLOOR— CLEAN IT— NO WAIT— SAVE HER FIRST—"
"THE CAT IS FOLLOWING HIM LIKE A TINY BODYGUARD!"
Wen-Mi strutted in after the stretcher with regal confidence, flicking her tail as if she owned the entire corporate empire.
Madam Di-Xian exhaled through her nose like a dragon holding back a firestorm.
Then her gaze hardened.
Everything quieted.
Tonight, the world had tilted — and she knew it.
While Wen-Li has been getting medical treatment, Agent-90 goes to reporting to Madam Di-Xian.
Madam Di-Xian's door slammed shut behind Agent-90 with the quiet finality of a guillotine. She paced behind her mahogany desk like an empress betrayed, her eyes sharpened to glacial crescents.
She did not sit.
She did not breathe.
She simply accused:
"What happened exactly, 90?! Your job is to protect her from danger!"
Her voice cracked like a whip. Her nostrils flared in a fury so cold it bordered on majestic. Her fingers dug into the edge of her desk, knuckles whitening like chalk on obsidian.
"I trusted you.
I entrusted the Chief — our most valuable mind — to your stewardship.
Explain yourself before I unmake your career."
Agent-90 stood immovably, posture flawless, expression unreadable, as if carved by an ascetic sculptor who despised emotion.
"I know what I have done, Madam.
But things are going south — exactly as you foretold."
Her eyes narrowed, slicing the air.
"The thing is…?"
He inhaled once, shallowly.
"Today… I met 89."
The sentence struck her like a gunshot.
Madam Di-Xian froze — pupils dilating, shoulders stiffening, breath shuddering in disbelief.
"How?"
"I know…" he murmured, gaze lowering.
"I killed my brothers."
A terrible quiet fell across the room — the kind reserved for funerals, executions, and confessions too heavy for the walls to hold.
Madam Di-Xian's voice softened into something brittle and haunted.
"So you do know about Gon-Whiel orphanage."
"Pretty much."
Her hands pressed against the desk, palms flat, trembling ever so slightly.
"Then some of them are still alive…"
Her jaw clenched, teeth grinding with dread.
"When did you face him?"
"He broke into the Chief's home at four in the morning.
To assassinate her.
I stopped him — by killing him."
Madam Di-Xian paced, her heels clicking in frantic staccato.
"So some of them work for Gavriel too… Gods preserve us."
She halted.
"And how did the Chief get injured?"
Agent-90's mouth tightened.
For one fractional second, truth warred with discipline behind his eyes.
Then—
"It was another of Gavriel's men.
I lost her in the crowd.
She was stabbed by an assassin."
A lie, delivered with perfect stillness.
Madam Di-Xian's stare speared him.
"Are you lying to me, boy?"
"No, Madam."
"Did you see the assassin's face?"
"No.
It wore a mask."
"A mask?"
"A fox mask."
A slow, humourless chuckle escaped Madam Di-Xian, dripping with sardonic knowing.
"Oh… her.
Of course it was her.
That vexatious little revenant."
Agent-90 continued:
"Chief and I investigated the explosion at Echelon Serenity Park.
Zhāoyè said the blast was carried out by the King of Beggars."
Madam Di-Xian stiffened, face contracting in dark recognition.
"The King of Beggars…"
Her voice dropped to a whisper of dread.
"Léopold Parent.
Do you know why he is called that, 90?"
Agent-90's eyes flickered.
"Because every beggar bows to him — and every corpse feeds his empire."
Madam Di-Xian inhaled sharply.
"Precisely.
And he is nothing more than the puppet of the High Chaebols.
A marionette woven from filth and desperation, tugged by hands soaked in old money and new sins."
She circled him once, as if assessing the strength of a sword blade.
"Find Léopold Parent.
Bring him to justice.
Elara will provide you with her last known coordinates."
Agent-90 bowed his head.
"Understood."
He turned and left the office, the door hissing behind him.
Madam Di-Xian exhaled, a whisper slipping from her lips like a prayer and a curse intertwined.
"If the High Chaebols move now… the world will not survive their ambition."
In the infirmary, a very different battle was unfolding.
Hella and Hecate stood over Wen-Li's bed like two chaotic guardian angels attempting to soothe the storm embodied by her cat.
Wen-Mi sat upon the Chief's stomach like a furry sphinx, glaring at anyone who dared approach.
Hella attempted diplomacy.
"Hello, little murder-muffin… would you like a snack? A cuddle? A treaty of non-aggression?"
Wen-Mi blinked once, then gave a long, disdainful, aristocratic mrrrp, curling into a ball precisely out of reach.
Hecate frowned, hands on hips.
"She's doing that imperial feline thing again."
Hella nodded gravely.
"Yes. She has declared herself sovereign of the medical bed.
We are but peasants now."
Wen-Mi stretched languidly like a queen lounging after declaring a war.
Hella tried patting the mattress.
"Come here, kitty—"
Wen-Mi hissed.
Hecate jumped a whole foot into the air.
"BY THE SEVEN CHIPS OF CIRCUIT HEAVEN— SHE'S A DEMON."
Wen-Mi stood, puffed her cheeks, then performed a tiny but extremely condescending flick of her tail.
Hella gasped.
"She just… dismissed us."
Hecate clutched her chest dramatically.
"We have been… cat-shamed."
At that exact moment, Wen-Mi climbed atop the highest pillow, sat like a crown atop Wen-Li's head, and yawned triumphantly.
Hella whispered:
"She owns the corporation now."
Hecate nodded.
"We should file paperwork. Properly."
Wen-Mi purred, utterly victorious.
The air inside the Intelligence Wing tasted faintly of ionised circuits and bergamot tea — a strangely comforting scent that always clung to Elara Kennedy like a signature.
She stood at her station as Agent-90 entered, the translucent holopanels reflecting against her spectacles in fleeting amber and blue. Her tea-coloured hair, soft and slightly wavy, was tied low at the nape of her neck; a few rebellious strands framed her cheeks, giving her the perpetual look of someone who had not slept since the invention of espionage.
Without a word, she extended a sealed dossier towards him.
Its metallic edges glimmered like the spine of a dangerous book.
"Léopold Parent has been sighted in Under-Narúm,"
Elara said, her voice low, precise, and faintly troubled.
Agent-90's jaw tightened.
"Under-Narúm…"
He spoke the name as if tasting rust.
"Home to resistance groups, fugitives, and Sinners."
"Yes."
Elara's eyes softened with a mixture of pity and professional dread.
She tapped the dossier, her tone becoming solemn.
"And a place where law dissolves into folklore — where the Dominion's reach is little more than a rumour whispered through broken alleys.
If Léopold has taken refuge there, it means he has protection far older and darker than the High Chaebols themselves."
She glanced up at Agent-90, studying the impassive silhouette he wore like armour.
"Be cautious, 90.
Men like Léopold Parent do not merely hide — they infest.
And those who hunt him seldom return unscarred."
Agent-90 accepted the file with calm, mechanical grace, though a subtle tension flickered across his brow — a barely perceptible crack in the façade.
"I understand," he replied.
"Your intel is precise as ever, Kennedy."
Her lips twitched with the faintest ghost of a smile — a rare expression for a woman who spent her life reading death reports and deciphering encrypted nightmares.
"Just… stay alive out there," she murmured, almost too quietly.
Agent-90 paused — a pause so brief it might have been imagined — then inclined his head.
"I shall endeavour to."
And with that, he pivoted sharply and strode out, the dossier tucked beneath his arm, his steps carrying him towards Under-Narúm like a knight walking willingly into a cursed forest.
Elara watched him go, her fingers tightening around her clipboard as she whispered to herself:
"Velvet Guillotine…
try not to bleed this time."
On the other hand, the door slammed behind Zoyah with a metallic shudder, leaving the room trembling in her wake — or perhaps it was merely Zhāoyè's pulse rattling against her ribs.
For a moment, she simply stood there, braced against the wall where she'd been pinned. Her breath came in short, staccato huffs, each one dragging across her throat like winter air.
The neon cyan cracks in the concrete flickered, casting a fractured glow across her face — one half angelic, one half feral.
Zhāoyè's fingers drifted instinctively to her umbilicus, the spot Zoyah had jabbed. Even the memory of the poke made her entire abdomen tighten in indignant mortification. A faint crimson flush bloomed across her cheeks like an embarrassing sunrise.
"Bloody woman…"
she hissed under her breath, rubbing the sore spot as if trying to erase the humiliation.
"Who just— who does that?"
She pushed off the wall with a frustrated grunt, pacing in tight, irritable circles. Her silver-lavender hair shimmered with each furious turn, like moonlit smoke caught in a cyclone.
Her daggers lay on the table — Dawn and Dusk — watching her like judgmental pets.
She pointed at them accusingly.
"Don't look at me like that.
You'd panic too if someone poked there."
The weapons, being inanimate, did not respond.
But that didn't stop her from scowling at them.
She stalked across the room and yanked open her mini-fridge, seizing a chilled citrus-tea bottle. The cap hissed as she opened it.
She took a sip — and immediately choked on it as Zoyah's final words echoed in her head:
"Zhāoyè…
your umbilicus is unusually sensitive."
Zhāoyè froze, tea halfway down her throat, eyes widening like a startled cat.
"WHY WOULD SHE SAY IT LIKE THAT?!"
Her entire face combusted into a mortified crimson.
She pressed both hands over her ears as if trying to physically shove the memory out of her skull.
Her voice cracked incredulously:
"Sensitive?! It is NOT— it is perfectly normal!
I am a deadly assassin, not— not some… ticklish jellyfish!"
She paced again, muttering in increasingly chaotic spirals.
"High Chaebols want to make me a monster…
Velvet Guillotine babysitting the Dandelion Petal…
Zoyah is poking me like I'm a malfunctioning button…
WHAT IS MY LIFE?"
She flung herself onto her battered sofa with dramatic agony, one arm over her eyes.
After a deep, exhausted groan, she dragged her hand down her face.
"…And now I've gone and stabbed the Chief.
Brilliant. Truly brilliant, Zhāoyè.
You absolute buffoon."
She stared up at the flickering ceiling light — the same one that had survived countless brawls, explosions, and emotional breakdowns.
A long sigh deflated her.
"And Velvet Guillotine is going to hunt me down…
again."
Her flush deepened at the thought — annoyance mingling with something far more complicated.
She sat up abruptly.
"Tch. I'm not scared.
Let him come."
A beat.
She swallowed.
"…Okay maybe I'm a little scared."
The room dimmed as the neon cracks began to settle, sensing her mood. Zhāoyè pulled up one knee to her chest, resting her chin atop it.
Her voice softened.
"King of Beggars… High Chaebols…
What on earth have I gotten myself into?"
For the first time in the chaotic aftermath, her expression slipped — revealing real fatigue, real fear, and a strange, aching loneliness.
She curled into the sofa, hugging a cushion as if it were armour.
"…I didn't want this.
Any of this."
A soft chime sounded from her holopad.
A mission alert.
Her eyes hardened instantly — the fox emerging again behind them.
She stood.
"Fine.
If they want monsters…
I'll show them one."
Her silhouette sharpened against the neon.
But her cheeks were still faintly pink.
Under-Narúm breathed like an ancient metallic beast — steam hissing, pipes groaning, and rusted girders shuddering under the weight of the forgotten city above.
Agent-90 stepped into its depths with no hesitation, a lone silhouette moving through amber-lit corridors where every shadow felt alive.
Tonight he wears, a Victorian-inspired infiltrator's garb:
A charcoal longcoat with a high storm collar, tailored to razor precision. Under it, a dark cerulean waistcoat with subtle brass filigree, its sheen catching the flicker of hazard lamps.
Cross-strapped leather harnesses ran under the coat, holding ammunition and vials of anaesthetic. His trousers were matte obsidian, fitted for silent manoeuvring, tucked into knee-high, buckled leather boots softened by years of covert tread.
A deep hood, stitched with micro-threading, draped low over his face, concealing his unmistakable sharp angles and cold blue gaze.
He seemed half assassin, half antiquated noble — a Victorian revenant wandering into an industrial underworld.
Attached at his hip rested his weapon:
The Rapier — Étoile du Requiem
A masterpiece of archaic elegance and deadly futurism.
The blade bore pale silver etchings that shimmered faintly like frost, its guard forged in a swirling crescent pattern reminiscent of a fallen star. When drawn, it produced a soft hum — a quiet, chilling lament that earned its name: Requiem Star.
The weapon's handle, wrapped in midnight-blue leather, fit his gloved hand with unnerving intimacy, as though forged precisely for his soul alone.
Agent-90 walked with a gait so silent it seemed to swallow the sound surrounding him. The tungsten bulbs cast shifting halos over his shoulders, painting him as a phantom drifting through the undercity's veins.
Steam coiled around his boots like serpents.
Water drummed in irregular rhythms from overhead pipes, pattering onto his coat in soft metallic taps.
People noticed him.
They always did — even disguised.
The Pipe Warrens residents paused mid-conversation, their faces half-lit by neon scrap lamps; smugglers stopped counting currency; rebels froze above stolen maps; even children drawing chalk constellations on the concrete glanced up, their eyes widening with instinctive reverence or fear.
Agent-90 did not react.
His expression remained unreadable beneath the shadowed hood — an ocean in winter, still and lethal.
But his body moved with purpose, every muscle coiled like a predator following a trail of scent.
He entered the Rustwalk Market, where neon signs flickered erratically — FUSEMEND, GUTTER PHARMA, SCRAPBYTE EXCHANGE.
Voices ricocheted through the steel corridors:
"Surface rat!"
"No, look at the coat—
that one's a killer."
"Don't stare— he'll gut you."
He passed without acknowledgement.
The smell of diesel and old metal swirled around him, clinging to the dark fabric of his coat. His breath fogged briefly in the cold biting air — dissipating like a ghost exhalation.
Then his steps grew even quieter, predatory, as he descended toward the Subline Hub, the abandoned subway platforms dimly lit by jury-rigged projector screens. Rebels gathered there, studying holographic maps slashed with red zones.
Agent-90's jaw tightened ever so slightly.
He knew Léopold Parent — the King of Beggars — was somewhere in this labyrinth, hiding beneath layers of grime, rebellion, and despair.
His hand hovered near the hilt of Étoile du Requiem, not drawing it, merely remembering it was there — like a heartbeat waiting for a command.
He murmured under his breath, voice low enough to drown in the steam:
"Léopold…
Your reign ends tonight."
His blue eyes flashed beneath the hood.
Then he continued deeper into Under-Narúm, a shadow swallowed by shadows, a phantom descending into the lair of another.
The Subline Hub throbbed with an eerie, subterranean vitality.
Old subway tracks stretched into oil-dark tunnels like veins of a slumbering titan, and broken projector screens flickered with stolen Dominion schematics. Rebel scouts in patched armour lounged near the rusted platform edges, their breath misting in the cold metallic air.
Agent-90 stepped into the space with a calculated grace — neither timid nor aggressive, simply present, like a shadow that had always belonged there.
No one recognised him. Not his silhouette, not his gait, not the quiet menace radiating from beneath the hood. To them, he was just another Under-Narúm nightwalker — albeit one who moved too smoothly and stood too straight.
One of the scouts, a wiry youth with copper braids and goggles pushed up to her forehead, glanced at him suspiciously.
"You're new," she muttered, her voice sharper than the knife strapped to her thigh.
He inclined his head slightly, courteous yet inscrutable.
"I seek information."
His tone was soft, but it didn't ask for permission — it expected compliance, the way winter expects leaves to fall.
Another scout, broad-shouldered and grease-stained from the Gutterforge, snorted.
"Information costs coin, stranger. Or blood. Depends the mood."
Agent-90 did not flinch, blink, or shift.
His stillness unsettled them more than any threat could.
Slowly, with the same precision one might use to unfurl an antique fan, he reached into his coat and placed an unmarked silver chit on a crate beside them.
Not flashy — but unmistakably valuable.
The braids girl whistled low.
"Well… that buys a question."
Agent-90's voice remained level, but the air seemed to tighten around him.
"I'm looking for Léopold Parent."
Silence fell like dust.
Even the projector screens seemed to quieten their static to eavesdrop.
The grease-stained man's face stiffened; his jaw clenched unconsciously.
"Don't say that name here, phantom. Walls have ears. Pipes have mouths. Rats have allegiances."
Agent-90 tilted his head, a minute gesture that read as both patient and predatory.
"Then speak softly."
The girl's brows knitted.
"Why in hell's rust would you look for him? Nobody climbs down here to hunt the King of Beggars. Not unless they've a deathwish. Or a bounty."
Her eyes narrowed. "You don't look suicidal or greedy."
Agent-90 almost smiled — almost — a microscopic twitch tugging at one corner of his mouth.
"I'm neither."
"I simply have… a purpose."
The scouts exchanged a look — the kind only people who have survived the same horrors can share.
Finally, the grease-stained man leaned in, voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur:
"If you're chasing Léopold, you're too late to turn back.
He's somewhere deeper — the Hidden Atrium or even the Gutterforge sub-levels.
But he moves like vermin through vents and drains. Only his followers can track him."
He spat over the tracks, the saliva hitting steel with a sharp metallic tick.
"He ain't no king. He's rot given legs."
The girl nudged him, then turned to Agent-90.
"Stranger… people who go after him disappear.
He has eyes in the steam.
Ears in the pipes.
Ghosts in the drains."
Her voice trembled despite her bravado.
Agent-90's reply was almost gentle — yet frighteningly sure.
"Then let him see me coming."
The scouts shivered without knowing why.
He gathered the silver chit back into his gloved fingers — a silent declaration that he took only information he trusted.
As he turned away, his coat whispered around him like a raven's wings.
The girl called after him:
"If you're mad enough to go after him… follow the diesel smoke!
It always leads to his disciples."
The man added:
"And stranger—
don't let the darkness touch your ankles.
That's how it takes you."
Agent-90 paused for the briefest heartbeat.
"Noted."
Then he vanished into the tunnels with the silent finality of a blade sliding into a sheath.
The deeper Agent-90 ventured into Under-Narúm, the stronger the scent of diesel and iron grew — thick enough to taste.
Steam hissed from rust-welded pipes like serpents exhaling warnings, and the distant clatter of machinery reverberated through the bone-dry tunnels.
He was nearing the Gutterforge — the mechanical heart of Under-Narúm.
Just as he stepped onto a narrow gantry, his preternatural hearing caught a razor-fine whistle, like air being carved by metal.
He pivoted instantly — a motion elegant as a dancer, lethal as a guillotine.
The Étoile du Requiem sang from its scabbard, the blade gleaming like moonlit frost.
In one seamless arc — horizontal, perfect, and pitiless — He bisected the assailant's skull. Blood unfurled in a slow-motion scarlet fan, droplets hovering in the air like dying rubies before they splashed across the metal grating.
Behind him — skittering footsteps. Shadows jerked. Figures emerged from steam clouds with rusted cleavers, chains, pipe-knives, and makeshift armour.
Agent-90 smirked — a faint, wicked curl of the lips, carved from pure derision.
His voice rang cold and aristocratic.
"Well, well… the King of Beggars has emptied his whole burrow.
An army of rats, scampering bravely toward the cat who adores the slaughter."
The Rats bristled — dignity wounded, pride stabbed.
They lunged.
Agent-90's eyes glinted — delighted.
At Shin-Zhang Corporation, Wen-Li's lashes fluttered like dark moth wings. Her breathing hitched, then steadied. Slowly, she opened her eyes. Her long black hair fanned across the pillow like an ink-silk waterfall, shining under the sterile white lights.
Alvi, who had been sitting beside her with exhausted vigilance, gasped — her entire face lighting up.
"Chief… Chief! You're awake!"
Her voice cracked with relief as she sprang to her feet, rushing to alert the others.
While at the waiting room, The agents — Farhan, Masud, Roy, Jun, plus a very stiff and silent Elara — had descended into spectacular disorder. Why? Because Wen-Mi the cat, tiny as a loaf yet ferocious as a panther with bills to pay, had become the tyrant of the infirmary wing.
Hella was perched on a counter, clutching a clipboard like a shield.
Hecate stood on a rolling stool, balanced precariously.
Roy shrieked as Wen-Mi stalked him like prey.
"She's looking at me! She's looking at me!"
Jun folded his arms with unimpressed grandeur, lips twitching.
"You lot cannot handle one single cat?"
Farhan snapped back indignantly:
"Oh, you think you can handle her?"
Jun smirked with an arrogance only a man with profoundly misplaced confidence could possess.
"Yes.
I have twenty years of experience handling cats."
Masud whistled mockingly; Hella muttered, "He's dead."
Jun crouched and extended his hand with patronising gentleness.
"Come now, little one—"
Wen-Mi leapt.
She latched onto his sleeve, scrambled up his arm like a possessed squirrel, and launched herself at his face.
Jun screamed — a high, choked yelp utterly unworthy of a grown man.
"SHE'S EATING MY SOUL—!"
Hella collapsed laughing.
Masud wheezed.
Roy hid behind Elara, who stood perfectly still, eyes half-lidded, expression describing: I am paid too little for this torment.
Jun flailed like a flag in a storm, Wen-Mi hanging from his hair like a tiny black demon.
At that precise moment, Alvi kicked the door open.
"EVERYONE, SHUT UP! THE CHIEF IS AWAKE!"
The room went silent.
Jun froze mid-scream.
Wen-Mi released him only because the announcement shocked her into civility.
Hidden in her office, Madam Di-Xian was mid-report when she heard the news through her comm-line.
She stopped, eyes widening, the stern veneer cracking into raw concern.
She rose so abruptly her mahogany chair rolled back and hit the credenza.
Her heels struck the marble floor with sharp, ringing purpose as she strode out, silks fluttering behind her like a stormfront given human shape.
Her expression wavered between relief, fury, and maternal dread.
"Wen-Li… you stubborn girl…"
She marched straight toward the infirmary, the building seeming to bend around her momentum.
The Gutterforge throbbed like the mechanical heart of a dying beast — pistons slamming, gears grinding, steam expelling in rhythmic bursts that illuminated the catwalks with flickering orange light.
The air was a haze of oil, iron, and the metallic tang of impending death.
Around Agent-90, the Rats circled.
They were not merely thugs; they were Under-Narúm's gutter-born warriors — faces smeared with soot, eyes feral from life lived beneath ceilings of rust. They clutched cleavers, pipe-knives, sharpened rebar, and jury-rigged energy batons stolen from surface patrols.
Agent-90 stood among them like a singular elegant anomaly —
a lone silhouette of cold precision, draped in shadows and Victorian tailoring.
Steam curled around his boots.
His Étoile du Requiem gleamed faintly — a silver crescent hungry for its work.
The Rats howled and charged.
Agent-90 moved.
Not like a man — but like an echo.
A ghost.
A nightmare dancing on borrowed breath.
His blade split the first attacker cleanly from collarbone to hip — a diagonal stroke so swift it left the man standing for half a heartbeat before he folded like a butchered carcass.
A second rushed him with a chain. Agent-90 flicked his wrist; the chain wrapped around the blade, and with a violent jerk he pulled the man forward— a neat knee to the throat crushed his windpipe, sound collapsing into a wet gurgle.
Three more emerged from the steam.
Agent-90 smiled.
Cold.
Unhurried.
Amused — like a connoisseur evaluating subpar wine.
"Do attempt to make this even remotely entertaining."
One swung a rebar hook. Agent-90 ducked as elegantly as bowing at a ballroom, slicing the man's Achilles tendon with one backward sweep. The Rat collapsed, shrieking.
Another tried to flank him. Agent-90 stabbed him through the ribs without even looking — eyes fixed on the last attacker, who trembled visibly.
Behind him blood sprayed in a perfect arc, misting the air like a morbid perfume.
The final Rat lunged desperately.
Agent-90 sidestepped, twisted the man's wrist till it snapped with a brittle crack, then pressed his blade to the man's throat — almost tenderly.
Their eyes met.
The Rat shivered; Agent-90's gaze was empty as a bottomless well.
"Run."
The man bolted — and Agent-90 threw his rapier like a spear.
The blade flew straight, rotating once, twice —
before driving through the Rat's spine with a sickening thump, pinning him to a rusted pillar like a mounted specimen.
Agent-90 strolled toward the corpse, boots splashing through blood.
He retrieved the blade with an efficient pull, wiped it on the dead man's jacket, and exhaled softly as if mildly inconvenienced.
"Pathetic."
But then—
A whisper of movement.
A ripple of air.
A faint, metallic chime — like an empty can rolling down a distant tunnel.
Agent-90's pupils constricted.
Someone was watching.
Someone else.
A presence that did not reek of fear or desperation.
No Rat.
No scavenger.
Something calculated.
Something deliberate.
Someone connected to Léopold Parent.
The King of Beggars had sent more than vermin.
Agent-90 lifted his blade, eyes narrowing.
"Come out.
I do not enjoy repeating myself."
Under-Narúm's Hidden Atrium simmered with a nervous, electrical quiet —the kind of hush that precedes a revelation
or a calamity.
Agent-90 moved through the chamber like a shadow sewn from discipline. Steam curled around his boots. Amber bulbs fizzed overhead, painting everything in the coppery hue of old blood.
Whispers slithered through the air:
"The King's awake tonight…"
"Parent doesn't see outsiders…"
"If he speaks to you… run."
The rebels watched the hooded newcomer with suspicion sharpened into blades, yet none dared bar his path. Something in Agent-90's gait — precise, unflinching, preternaturally calm — made even hardened smugglers step aside.
He reached the far end of the Atrium.
There, behind a skeletal forest of rusted pipes, the air seemed to thicken — as though gravity itself bowed to a presence.
At first, there was nothing.
Then the lights flickered once.
Twice.
And Léopold Parent appeared.
Not by stepping forward.
But by already being there, as if the shadows themselves had finally admitted him.
He was a man carved from paradox:
Barefoot on the damp concrete
Cloaked in a mantle of patchwork fabrics — silk, burlap, velvet, and military scraps stitched together like a chronicle of the world's debris
Neck adorned with rosaries, bullet casings, and copper trinkets that chimed like a dirge
Towering, skeletal, yet dignified as a fallen monarch
His hair was long and iron-grey, tied loosely, strands curling like smoke. His beard was trimmed with meticulous negligence — an ascetic sage masquerading as a vagrant.
But it was his eyes that arrested the world.
One was brown — warm, human, sorrowful.
The other was glass — a mechanical iris of shifting rings that glowed faintly with a sickly turquoise light, like a dying star trapped in a jar.
When he inhaled, the Atrium inhaled with him.
When he exhaled, the steam lights dimmed.
A whisper of circuitry thrummed beneath his ribs — machines supporting a body long betrayed by poverty and politics.
Léopold Parent lifted his head, his voice low and crystalline:
"You walk with the steps… of a man stitched for killing."
His tone echoed strangely — as though layered over itself, both ancient and newly born.
Agent-90 neither flinched nor bowed.
He simply stood, unreadable beneath the hood.
"Léopold Parent."
His voice was clipped, cold, almost surgical.
"The explosion at Echelon Serenity Park was your doing."
A murmur rippled through the rebels.
Léopold smiled.
A slow, sad, catastrophic smile — the smile of a prophet who has already written his own obituary.
"Explosions," he murmured,
"are merely punctuation marks… in the chapters written by tyrants."
His metal eye clicked softly.
"But I…?"
A pause. A small, theatrical tilt of his head.
"I merely sharpen the quill."
Agent-90 stepped closer, hand drifting to the hilt of Étoile du Requiem beneath the cloak.
The rebels stiffened — some reaching for knives, others for jury-rigged rifles.
But Léopold lifted one thin hand, and silence crashed over the room like a curtain.
He studied 90 with unnerving serenity.
"Velvet Guillotine," he said softly,
"it took you long enough to descend."
The chamber froze.
Agent-90's fingers tightened imperceptibly on the rapier.
His voice dropped to a deadly whisper:
"You know who I am."
Léopold nodded once.
Slowly.
Elegantly.
Fatally.
"I know what you are."
The Hidden Atrium seemed to contract, as though the very air wished to retreat from what Léopold was about to unveil.
His mismatched eyes — one human with sepia sorrow, one mechanical with turquoise malice —
gleamed upon Agent-90 like twin lanterns guiding a man to his own grave.
He stepped forward with the solemnity of a priest
approaching a confession booth.
"Velvet Guillotine…"
his voice unfurled, low and cataclysmic,
"…do you truly believe you are your own creature?"
Agent-90 said nothing. His stillness was a blade sheathed in discipline. But a faint ripple crossed his shoulder — a micro-tension, barely perceptible, yet telling.
Léopold smiled that tragic, ruinous smile again.
He spoke not to 90 — but to the entire Atrium, as though reciting scripture.
"He is a puppet of the High Chaebols,"
he announced, his voice echoing like a verdict through an old cathedral.
"A perfect weapon forged in the Gon-Whiel Orphanage."
Gasps flickered through the watching rebels.
Léopold continued, eyes never leaving 90.
"A child taken from the rubble of forgotten slums…"
"…stripped of name, of fear, of choice…"
"…and rewired into a living instrument of obedience."
The mechanical eye clicked — an accusatory metronome.
Agent-90's jaw tightened, the faintest quiver betraying a ghost of memory clawing at the edges of his mind.
Léopold's voice deepened.
"And there, within those white laboratories disguised as an orphanage—"
a disdainful sneer curled his lips,
"—they hollowed you out and filled you with commands. A marionette built to dance on invisible strings."
He began circling 90 slowly, like a vulture tracing elegiac loops above its chosen corpse.
"Until Chief Wen-Luo found you,"
he breathed,
"…and stole you away from the Chaebols' hands."
Agent-90's shoulders shifted — not in fear, but in a stiff, strangled flicker of old grief.
Léopold's tone softened.
Almost pitying.
"He tried to cleanse you of their poison.
He tried to give you childhood, warmth, humanity."
A pause.
Then—
"But you, Velvet Guillotine…"
his mechanical eye dilated,
"…were already broken."
Under-Narúm fell silent. The steam vents stopped hissing. Even the dripping water seemed to hold its breath.
Léopold's hand lifted, trembling with reverence and horror.
"The masqueraded ball…"
"…held by Wen-Luo for the Sinners and Outlaws he sought to redeem…"
He exhaled, a brittle sigh that rattled in his patched-up cybernetic ribs.
"You slaughtered them."
The rebels recoiled as though the words themselves were blood-spattered.
Léopold's eyes bored into 90:
"Seventy-three Sinners."
"One hundred and seven Outlaws."
"All cut down by your hand, in a single night of carnivorous ballet."
"He wasn't saving you…"
"…he was containing you."
Something cracked on 90's reaction
Not visibly.
But internally —like a violin string snapping in the dark.
Agent-90's fingers curled around the hidden hilt of Étoile du Requiem
with glacial calm.
His breath grew thin.
His posture sharpened into a silhouette of murder.
Yet his voice, when it emerged, was low… frigid… strangled.
"…Enough."
Léopold tilted his head.
Agent-90 stepped forward, shadows clinging to him like loyal beasts.
"You speak of the past," he said, voice barely above a whisper,
"…but you know nothing of what I am now."
The rebels stiffened. Some stepped back instinctively.
Léopold chuckled. A soft, brittle, disintegrating sound.
"I know everything."
He raised one skeletal hand, fingers splayed like a conductor preparing the downbeat of a symphony.
"You remain their instrument, Velvet Guillotine."
"A blade believing itself a man."
Agent-90's eyes darkened —emotionless, bottomless, lethal.
Léopold Gives the Order
With a regal sweep of his rags,
Léopold turned to his gathered rebels.
His voice became iron.
"Kill him."
The chamber erupted in snarls of metal —
Knives drawn.
Shotguns chambered.
Makeshift spears leveled.
Boots pounding like war drums.
Léopold stepped back, hand over heart like a king performing a benediction.
"Let the puppet bleed."
Agent-90 lowered his hood.
His face a marble effigy.
His eyes two voids sculpted for violence.
He whispered:
"Then let us begin."
The room fell into a predatory hush as the rebels lunged.
The Gutterforge's diesel engines throbbed like iron hearts, belching steam that drifted through the chamber in slow, ghostly ribbons.
Broken floodlamps flickered overhead, bathing the scene in a sickly amber glow, and dozens of Léopold's men stood encircling Agent-90 like carrion birds around a carcass.
Except the carcass was very much alive.
Agent-90 stood motionless—Étoile du Requiem dripping with someone's arterial warmth—his hood shadowing everything except the glacial gleam of his eyes.
Across the chamber, Léopold Parent watched him as though observing a museum exhibit.
A curious smile crept across his rugged, age-marked face.
"Magnificent," Léopold murmured, his voice airy yet sinister,
"like witnessing an extinct predator rediscovering the joy of the kill."
He rested both hands atop a rust-corroded cane—though from the faint hum beneath it, the cane was anything but ordinary.
Agent-90 lifted his head slightly.
"Stop analysing me," he said, his voice a cold monotone.
"Or you'll die confused."
Léopold's grin deepened, splitting his beard like a wound.
The old warlord stepped forward into the orange haze.
"You truly do not remember, do you?"
"Puppet of the High Chaebols.
Abomination of the Gon-Whiel trials.
They carved obedience into your marrow—
and then Chief Wen-Luo stole you from their grip."
A beat. Again he repeat
"He tried to redeem you. But you—little guillotine—set his masquerade aflame with 78 Sinners and 107 outlaws.
A ballroom of redemption turned into a charnel house of your design."
Agent-90 froze.
Like a blade of ice driven into the clockwork of his composure.
Steam hissed.
Metal groaned.
Time stuttered.
Léopold leaned closer, his breath smelling faintly of citrus tea and diesel smoke.
"And that little girl you guard—Wen-Li—
is the daughter of the man whose legacy you drowned in blood."
Agent-90 whispered, barely audible:
"Enough."
His fingers whitened around the rapier's hilt.
"Enough."
Léopold lifted his hand lazily.
"Finish him."
A dozen rebels surged in first—reckless, desperate, shrieking war cries that shattered against Agent-90's stillness.
And then he moved.
It was not motion.
It was erasure.
A horizontal cut—clean as moonlight—opened a throat.
A pirouette—precise as a prima ballerina—eviscerated three more. A back-spring to the scaffold—followed by a vertical drop-stab straight through a sternum.
Blood hung in the air like suspended rubies. Bodies collapsed like puppets whose strings had been severed by an indifferent god.
Léopold observed with academic fascination, murmuring:
"Human technique…
augmented reflexes…
and something else.
A sleeping cataclysm."
Agent-90 redirected a bullet by slicing it mid-air, letting it embed harmlessly into a steam pipe. A cloud of scalding vapour erupted, blinding a cluster of attackers.
He plunged into the fog like a wolf into tall grass.
Screams followed.
Soon, only Léopold remained.
He tapped his cane.
Click.
The false wood snapped open, revealing a slender obsidian blade crackling with violet current.
A Sinner's weapon.
Léopold bowed his head slightly.
"Shall we dance, Velvet Guillotine?"
Agent-90 slid into stance— one foot forward, weight measured, the rapier angled like a whisper.
"Try and keep up, old man."
Léopold attacked with lightning economy— no flourish, no waste—
just deadly geometry.
His blade flickered in tight arcs, probing for openings like a surgeon testing flesh.
Agent-90 countered with surgical parries, sparks flaring as steel kissed steel.
Clang.
Clink.
Chrrrk—!
Léopold's footwork was astonishing: sliding, pivoting, coiling like a seasoned duellist.
Agent-90's eyes narrowed.
"You're not just a lunatic beggar king."
"No," Léopold replied, smiling,
"I am the man the city threw away—and the man who survived it."
Léopold kicked a pressure valve.
A geyser of steam exploded upward with monstrous force— he disappeared inside it.
Agent-90 dropped low, rolling aside— just as Léopold emerged from the vapour like an apparition, moving with impossible momentum.
His cane-sword struck with augmented strength— each blow denting steel columns.
Agent-90 skidded back, boots screeching on metal.
"Mechanical tendons…" he muttered.
"You've been modified."
"Only enough to make the game interesting."
Léopold lunged again.
Léopold inhaled deeply.
The air vibrated.
Violet filaments crackled beneath his skin—
spreading like lightning veins.
The lights in the Gutterforge flickered violently.
"My Sinner ability," he said quietly,
"is entropy manipulation.
I rot the world by touching it."
He tapped the floor.
Concrete groaned—then decayed into crumbling dust.
Agent-90 leapt to higher ground as the chamber convulsed around him.
Léopold raised his blade; it shimmered with violet entropy.
"Now show me, experiment—
are you man or monster?"
Their blades collided—
BOOM—!
A shockwave ripped through the Gutterforge, shattering lamps and blowing tools off their hooks.
Agent-90 darted, vanished, reappeared — a blur of predatory grace.
Léopold countered with entropy slashes, each swing warping the air, ageing metal into rust in seconds.
Agent-90 avoided one— but another grazed his coat, rotting a section into brittle fibres.
"Tch."
He feinted left—
vaulted off a rusted engine block—
and stabbed downward like a falling star.
Léopold blocked—barely— their faces inches apart.
"Remarkable…" Léopold breathed.
"You move like death given etiquette."
"You talk too much."
Agent-90 wrenched the blades apart, pivoted— and drove a kick square into Léopold's chest.
The rebel lord crashed into a boiler tank with a metallic scream.
Steam bellowed everywhere.
But Léopold rose again.
Laughing.
"YES! That's it!
Show me why Wen-Luo saved you!"
Agent-90's expression darkened, voice barely above a whisper.
"He saved me…
so I wouldn't become you."
The Gutterforge roared like a dying beast. Entropy veins crawled across the walls where Léopold's ability had touched them, rotting steel into orange dust. Pipes hissed and burst. Steam swirled in opaque billows, turning the chamber into a nightmare fog.
Agent-90 walked through it—
slow, deliberate, unreadably calm—
Étoile du Requiem trailing a thin crimson line behind him.
Léopold, panting now, wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. Purple entropy still pulsed faintly beneath his skin, but the glow flickered—unstable, waning.
He chuckled—even as blood gurgled in his throat.
"You… are everything they engineered you to be."
"A perfect harbinger. A child forged in the oubliette."
"Wen-Luo saved you—
but I… I liberated you."
Agent-90 tilted his head, expression dead calm.
"No."
"You reminded me of what I refuse to become."
Léopold steadied himself with his entropy-blade, its violet sheen quivering like a dying star.
He lunged.
It was his fastest strike yet—a thrust designed to rot flesh, bone, soul.
Agent-90 didn't dodge.
He stepped into the attack.
A suicidal tactic for anyone else.
Léopold's eyes bulged— he realised too late.
Agent-90 caught the entropy blade between the crossguard of his rapier and the chain around his wrist, redirecting it past his ribs by inches.
Then— with a twist of his hips and a pirouette as precise as a danseur—he severed Léopold's right hand at the wrist.
Blood sprayed in an elegant arterial arc.
Léopold staggered, screaming.
"You—bastard—!"
Agent-90 spoke flatly.
"You talk too much."
Agent-90 raised the Étoile du Requiem. His stance shifted. A terrifying stillness descended.
Léopold felt it—felt death coiling around him like a velvet noose.
"No…
No, wait—"
Agent-90 vanished.
Reappeared behind Léopold.
A single horizontal slash—clean, bloodless for half a second—until a line opened across Léopold's torso, and red poured like wine from a cracked decanter.
Léopold gasped.
His legs buckled.
Agent-90 pivoted.
A rising diagonal cut—from hip to opposite shoulder—carving through cloth, flesh, muscle, and bone
with surgical elegance.
Léopold's vision blurred. Entropy rippled out of him involuntarily, cracking the floor.
He tried to breathe.
Only blood answered.
Agent-90 stepped in front of him again.
Their eyes met.
Léopold saw no hatred—no satisfaction—only extinction.
Agent-90 whispered:
"This is for Chief Wen-Luo."
He drove the rapier straight through Léopold's heart—so fast the blade blurred—so precise it pierced the central ventricle without touching a rib.
SHLNK.
Léopold jerked—gasped once—and the violet glow beneath his skin extinguished like a candle drowned in oil.
Agent-90 twisted the blade.
Léopold exhaled a final, wet breath.
"Vel… vet…
Guillo—ti—"
His body collapsed before the word could finish.