Victor glanced up at the alley walls, no way he was climbing out with slick bricks and no rope. The iron gate would be watched. That left one exit.
A rusted drain cover sat half-sunken in muck near the pit. Victor wedged his fingers under the edge and heaved. The thing came up with a wet sucking sound, revealing a yawning black tunnel reeking of spoiled meat and standing water.
"Fantastic."
He lowered himself into the hole, landing knee-deep in sludge. The stale air clung to his skin, thick with rot. Somewhere in the dark, water dripped. Something scuttled over his boot.
Victor didn't flinch. He'd crawled through worse back in Petersburg, basement heroin dens, storm drains rigged with tripwires. A little shit and rats wouldn't kill him.
The system flared blue before his eyes:
[WRATH +3] Elimination of obstacles
He paid it no mind and kept going, one hand trailing along the slick wall for balance. The tunnel dipped lower, forcing him into a crouch beneath the sagging ceiling. Now and then, pale light leaked through the street grates above, carving broken stripes over the water. He crept forward, careful, ears tuned to every sound.
Voices echoed somewhere ahead. Victor stilled.
"said it was some merc. Didn't even recognize the face."
"Yeah? Then why's the boss paying good coin for extra patrols?"
"i'm betting on paranoia "
Victor slipped behind a crumbling support pillar, pressing flat as two guards waded into view. Their torches painted the tunnel in shuddering orange. The light swept across the guards' faces, bored and careless. Victor waited until they passed his hiding spot before stepping out behind them.
The first guard barely had time to turn before the jagged bottle edge opened his throat. Blood sprayed the tunnel wall. The second man fumbled for his sword, but Victor drove the broken glass into his eye socket with a wet crunch. The body slumped into the muck.
Victor wiped his hands on the dead man's tunic and moved on.
The tunnel curved upward, ending at a rusted grate. Beyond it, cobblestones glistened under moonlight. Muffled voices drifted down, aristocratic accents, discussing tariffs and trade routes.
Victor crouched, watching shadows shift through the gaps. A pair of polished boots stopped right above him.
He lunged.
His arm shot through the grate, seizing the noble's ankle, and yanked hard. The man shrieked as he crashed onto the sewer ledge. Victor clamped a hand over his mouth before he could scream again and dragged him into the dark.
"One sound," Victor murmured, pressing the broken bottle to the man's throat, "and you drown in shit before you bleed out."
The noble's eyes bulged. He nodded frantically.
"Where does Harroway go when he's not working?"
"Th-the manse! Silvergrove district, east of the-"
Victor slit his throat mid-sentence. The body slumped into the filth.
He climbed out of the sewer, shaking sludge from his boots. The street stood empty without witnesses.
Silvergrove. East.
Victor moved through the Noble Quarter blurring with the wall. He kept to the shadows between mansions, slipping past torchlight with ease. Each estate was larger than the last. Ivy-draped walls, gold-trimmed gates, manicured hedges that whispered in the night breeze. Names gleamed on polished plaques: Vauntierre. Ruthermont. Duskhallow.
D'Argent.
The gates stood cracked open, an inch of shadow between wrought iron. Convenient. Too convenient.
Victor pressed his back to the outer wall, listening. No footsteps beyond the hedges. No unnatural stillness either, just the lazy rotation of bored guards making their rounds. No creatures lurking in corners. He gripped the broken bottle and slipped through the gap.
The gravel drive crunched faintly underfoot. Victor ghosted past sculpted fountains and topiaries shaped like rearing stallions. The main house sprawled ahead, all stained glass and marble columns. Light bled through cracks in heavy velvet drapes. Laughter drifted from somewhere inside, sharp, aristocratic, laced with wine.
A side door stood ajar near the kitchens. The hinges groaned when he nudged it wider, revealing a pantry lined with wax-sealed preserves. Voices echoed down the hallway beyond, servants gossiping in hushed tones.
Victor crept past wine racks and hanging cured meats. The corridor spilled into a servants' stairwell, narrow and unlit. He took the steps two at a time, emerging on the second-floor landing. More laughter from the left. He followed it.
The hallway ended at double doors carved with vine motifs. Muffled conversation seeped through the wood, Selene's voice, light and mocking, and a deeper tone Victor didn't recognize. He pressed his ear to the door.
Victor lingered outside the carved doors just long enough to catch Selene's laugh, the kind that curled like smoke around a man's ears. The unfamiliar voice replied, hushed and urgent. A chair scraped. Fabric rustled. He didn't need to see it. The audio painted the scene well enough, a seduction in progress.
Upstairs it was, then.
The second-floor corridor stretched dark, lined with ancestral portraits whose painted eyes followed him. At the far end, a sliver of lamplight spilled from a half-open door. Victor ghosted toward it, boots silent on the thick carpet.
Harroway's voice floated out, slurred and unsteady. "should've sent word sooner. Damned rabble making demands. Like I'm some backstreet pawnbroker." A bottle clinked against glass. "Fuck the Crown's tariffs. Fuckin'… fuck her."
Victor peered inside.
The master suite smelled like brandy and sweat. Harroway slumped in a wingback chair, doublet unlaced, hair greasy. His reflection glared back from the vanity mirror as he refilled his goblet with shaking hands. The decanter slipped, splashing liquor across his wrist. "Shit!"
The door hinges didn't make a sound.
Victor moved like liquid, three strides across the rug and he was on Harroway before the bastard could blink. His left hand clamped over the noble's mouth, fingers digging into clammy cheeks hard enough to bruise bone. Hot brandy splashed across both of them as the goblet tumbled.
Harroway's scream died against Victor's palm.
"Call your pet again," Victor hissed, bending close enough to taste the sour wine on Harroway's panicked breath. "Go on. Try."
He wrenched the man's jaw open with his free hand, fingers hooking around a flailing tongue slick with spit. The noble gagged, eyes rolling white, fingernails scraping bloody lines across Victor's wrist.
Victor twisted his grip. Harder.
Harroway's body bucked, his scream muffled to a wet gurgle. Something tore with a noise like parting meat. Victor jerked back, holding the twitching strip of muscle between them. Blood pattered across the desk, the carpet, the half-empty decanter.
The noble doubled over, coughing crimson, hands fluttering at his ruined mouth like injured birds.
Victor didn't let him fall.
He seized Harroway by the hair and slammed his face into the vanity mirror. Glass shattered. Again. Again. The man's nose flattened into a pulpy mess. Teeth skittered across the floor. Victor could feel the moment the fight left him, that drunken arrogance dissolving into pure animal terror.
There was no artistry here. No flourish.
He grabbed the shattered brandy bottle from the desk.
The first stab took Harroway through the eye. The second split his lip where his tongue had been. The third peeled skin from cheekbone like wet parchment.
By the seventh, Victor was elbow-deep in red, the bottle reduced to jagged glass strapped to his fist with strips of the noble's own doublet.
Somewhere distant, laughter still drifted up from the lower floors.