「VISCOUNT TELESCO'S MANOR」
—Mid Day—
*SHATTER*
A whiskey glass shattered on the floor.
*HUFF.HUFF*
"WHAT DID YOU SAY?" Viscount Telesco's voice emerged as a low, dangerous grumble, his knuckles white where they gripped the edge of his desk.
The personal knight standing before him was sweating through his tunic, droplets tracing paths through the grime on his temples. "The cleanup mercenaries—all of them—were found dead in the deep forest just outside Grain Town's jurisdiction, my lord."
Telesco's face contorted. He seized the porcelain vase from the corner—a priceless antique from the Eastern kingdoms—and hurled it directly at his knight's head.
CRACK
The knight staggered, dropping to one knee as blood immediately began seeping through his hair, tracing a thin red line down his forehead. He swayed, vision swimming, but found his feet again through sheer force of will.
"You are telling me," Telesco's voice climbed toward a shriek, "that one of the strongest mercenary companies in the outer regions was killed? By three people?!"
The knight squinted against the blood now trickling into his eye. He took a breath before continuing, his voice carefully measured. "They were killed by a single attack, my lord. The scene suggests they never had enough time to fight back...or they are just not enough. We also found one of them—laid out on the center of the main road. Deliberately placed."
The knight's expression shifted, something dark passing behind his eyes.
"I separated the body from the others. You may wish to examine it personally, my lord."
"ARE YOU MOCKING ME?! Why would I need to look at some dead lowly mercenary?!"
"That one..." The knight swallowed. "That one appears to have suffered extensively before death. And Coen's body was not among them."
The words struck Telesco like physical blow.
Coen. Their captain. Their most experienced. The man who had never failed a contract in his clients.
If Coen wasn't among the dead... then Coen was with them. Talking. Spilling everything.
"W...what?" The Viscount's voice cracked.
"There is something else, my lord. The young man's back was carved open. Two words were left behind."
Telesco's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. "What words?"
The knight met his master's eyes. "Please see for yourself, my lord. Some things... should be witnessed."
"Tch. Lead the way."
Telesco strode toward the door, deliberately slamming his shoulder into the knight's as he passed—a petty assertion of dominance that made the injured man stumble but say nothing.
「STOCK HOUSE」
The smell hit Telesco before he crossed the threshold.
Iron and rot and the sweet-sick stench of released bowels—the unmistakable perfume of violent death. Flies buzzed against the narrow windows, trapped and frantic. The interior was dim, lit only by slivers of afternoon light and a single magitech lantern that cast long, wavering shadows across the forms laid out on the dirt floor.
"This one, my lord." The knight led him to a corner where a single body lay apart from the others, covered by a stained canvas tarp.
Telesco's nose wrinkled. "Get on with it."
The knight gripped the tarp and pulled.
The body beneath was young. Perhaps twenty-five. His face was frozen in an expression that made Telesco's stomach clench—mouth stretched wide in a silent eternal scream, eyes bulging toward some horror only he had seen in his final moments. His skin held the grey-blue pallor of complete exsanguination.
"Stab wound here, in the shoulder," the knight narrated, pointing. "Clean, precise. Meant to disable, not kill. His tendons here and here were severed—also precise. He couldn't run. Couldn't fight. Could only..." The knight paused. "Could only wait."
Telesco's throat worked. "And the claw marks?"
"Here, my lord." The knight gripped the corpse's shoulder and rolled it onto its side.
The back was wrong.
Three parallel gashes ran from shoulder blade to hip—deep, savage, unmistakably clawed. The wounds gaped like starving mouths, revealing glimpses of white spine beneath layers of torn muscle. The flesh around them was not cleanly cut but ripped, shredded in a way that spoke of enormous power applied with terrible leisure.
But that wasn't what made Telesco's blood turn to ice.
Between the claw marks, the skin had been... worked. Deliberately. Artistically. Someone had taken time here. Had knelt beside this dying or already dead man and carved into his flesh with the patience of a scribe illuminating a manuscript.
The letters were deep. Precise. Each cut had been made slowly enough that the body had time to react—the edges of the wounds were puckered and swollen, indicating they'd been carved while the heart still beat, while blood still flowed to inflame and distort the tissue.
'NEXT.
TELESCO.'
The words weren't scratched or slashed. They were written. Elegant. Deliberate. A message carved into living meat with the same care a poet might give to parchment.
"W...what the... hell is this?" Telesco's voice emerged as a whisper, then broke entirely. He stumbled backward, one hand rising to his mouth as his stomach rebelled.
The words seemed to move in the lantern light. Next. Telesco. They weren't a threat. They were a receipt. An acknowledgment of a debt now due.
"Who are these people?" Telesco heard himself ask, but the words came from somewhere far away. His entire body had gone cold. The room was spinning.
The knight said nothing. He simply stood beside the body, his own face pale, and let his master look.
Outside, a bird screamed.
Inside, Telesco stared at his own name carved into a dead man's flesh—and for the first time in his privileged, protected life, understood what it meant to be hunted.
-ˋˏ✄ - - - - - - - ♡
The hooves of the three deadly shadows thundered against the road back to the capital, the midday sun doing nothing to warm the chill that surrounded them.
All three rode with a new weight—more menacing, more coiled. Telesco's interference had not been well received by their leader, who now took point, her silhouette a blade against the sky.
They left Coen in the cellar of the hidden mountain villa, locked in a rusted iron cage with only a bucket of water and three pieces of bread—the same rations the temple provided for their long journey. Enough to survive. Not enough to thrive.
Until they returned for him, Coen would survive on that and that alone.
He had water. He had bread.
He had no idea when—or if—they would return.
「CAPITAL—ADVENTURER'S GUILD」
—08:48 Evening—
The wall clock ticked steadily, each second a small hammer blow against Liam's patience.
He stood behind the reception counter, face neutral, posture calm—a perfect portrait of professional composure. But behind his eyes, a storm churned.
Three days since they'd set out for the Venomous Spiders. Three days since he'd last seen those hooded figures.
The door chimed.
Sebastian entered with his squad at his heels, their gear clanking softly as they crossed the threshold. "They're still not back yet, huh?" he asked, noting Liam's fixed attention on the clock.
Liam's composure didn't crack. "I'm sure they're on their way."
"How are you even sure they're on their way?" Xena demanded, immediately gravitating toward the reception counter to lean against it with practiced insolence.
Because they have to leave after three days and show up three days later again. Liam's thought was quick, reflexive. Out loud, he simply said, "Just because."
"Hmp! No fair!" Xena's pout was audible in her voice. "Last time you said they were stronger than us, and when we thought you were going to explain why, you gave us that shit 'because… mind your own business'!"
"Xena, don't drill Liam." Sebastian's intervention was automatic, a habit born of years managing his squad's more volatile members. "However," he continued, turning back to Liam, "isn't it time to—"
DING.
The door's bell chimed.
Liam's gaze snapped past Sebastian's shoulder, and slowly—so slowly—a smile spread across his face.
Three cloaked figures entered.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop.
Sebastian's squad turned as one, and Dante immediately exchanged a loaded look with his captain. They both felt it—that prickling at the back of the neck, the primal warning that came from years of surviving situations where most people wouldn't.
The three figures radiated something. A light aura. A scent. The ghost of violence barely contained.
Murder, Sebastian's instincts whispered. Multiple.
"I knew you guys could do it!" Liam called out, waving with genuine warmth that seemed almost naive in contrast to what his senses were telling him.
The cloaked figures walked past Sebastian's squad without acknowledgment. No greetings. No nods. Just the rustle of fabric and the soft thud of boots on wooden floor.
Edmund reached the counter first. He hoisted a massive sack onto the surface—the severed leg of the Queen Spider, still oozing something dark and viscous through the burlap. The smell hit the room immediately: rot and acid and the unmistakable sweetness of monster ichor.
"The task is completed," Edmund announced. His voice was flat. Empty. Wrong.
Xena's eyes went wide. "Y...you guys cleaned up the venomous spiders on your own?!"
Zen moved, positioning himself between Xena and Edmund, blocking her view with deliberate precision. His hand slid the completed task poster across the counter—the one bearing both the Mayor's seal and the Archbishop's signature.
Liam's smile widened. "Goodness, if it's signed by both the Mayor himself and the Archbishop, then I think it's true." Pride warmed his voice. "You three never disappoint me."
He took the poster and the sack. "Please wait a moment." Then he disappeared into the backroom.
Silence settled over the guild hall like a shroud.
Sebastian tried to fill it. "I can't believe it—how did you manage to subdue this fast-breeder monster so quickly?"
"We're not A-Rank for no reason." Edmund's response was clipped. Colder than usual.
No, Sebastian realized. They've all been like this since they walked in. More silent. More... wrong.
His eyes drifted—almost involuntarily—to the figure leaning against the pillar near the door.
G6.
She stood utterly still, cloaked in shadow, her face invisible beneath her hood. But Sebastian's gaze caught on something else. The hem of her sleeve. The small, dark spatters across her cloak.
Blood.
Dried. Multiple sources. Patterned in a way that suggested proximity to violence, not participation in it.
Those... Sebastian's thought froze. Those aren't spider blood.
He should say something. He should ask. He should—
G6's head tilted.
Just slightly. Just enough.
Sebastian's usual bashful reaction did not emerge.
Sebastian felt the weight of attention settle on him like a physical thing. From inside that hood, from behind those tinted glasses, he knew—with absolute certainty—that she was staring directly at him. And in that stare was something that made his throat close and his skin prickle with cold sweat.
He looked away.
Not slowly. Not casually. He looked away, the way prey looks away from a predator that has already marked it.
Liam emerged from the backroom carrying three heavy pouches. "I know you didn't count the exact number of spiders—lazy as always—but here's five hundred gold coins." He set them on the counter with a solid thunk. "I hope it's sufficient. Thank you so much."
Edmund nodded once and collected the pouches.
G6 pushed off the pillar and walked toward the door without a word. Edmund and Zen fell into step behind her like shadows.
DING.
The door closed.
The guild hall exhaled.
Liam's warm smile vanished, replaced by something grim and knowing.
They reek of blood,Liam's thought. Not monster. Human.
Sebastian saw the shift in his expression, he didn't need to hear the words. He knew. Dante knew. Every sensitive person in that room knew.
In the silence that followed, three men who understood the world better than most acknowledged a truth they would never speak aloud:
It wasn't just monsters that had been eradicated in those three days.
Somewhere in the kingdom, there were people who would never be seen again. People whose last moments were witnessed only by three cloaked figures with cold eyes and colder hearts.
✎﹏﹏﹏﹏
The three shadows moved through the Capital's streets with practiced ease. The palace curfew meant nothing to them—they were inside the walls now, moving through the familiar canopy like ghosts returning to their graves.
They reached their wing without incident.
The window flew open as G6 commanded the air.
The private common room was empty, lit only by moonlight through the windows.
Edmund was the first to strip off his cloak. The blood-spattered fabric landed in a heap on the floor—green and brown and something darker, redder. Zen followed, adding his own to the pile. The cloaks lay there like shed skins, evidence of violence discarded without ceremony.
G6 throws her on the floor
They each removed their quicksilver rings. The enchanted jewelry pulsed once and vanished their outings clothes, then stilled as they placed them in their respective boxes—small, elegant containers that held the keys to their secret lives.
She hadn't spoken since they entered the palace.
The door opened.
Felicia stepped inside, a candle in her hand, her eyes widening as she took them in. "You're back," she breathed, relief evident in her voice. Then her expression shifted, concern replacing relief as she took in G6's unnatural stillness. "My Lady? Are you—"
"Ready a horse." G6's voice cut through the darkness, flat and cold. "We're going to the West Villa. Tonight."
Felicia blinked. "Tonight? But it's so late, and you just—"
"Tonight."
G6 finally turned, her face emerging from the shadow of her hood. Even in the dim candlelight, Felicia could see it—something different behind those grey eyes. Something harder. Something that had been forged in fires she couldn't imagine.
Felicia swallowed. "Yes, my Lady. Immediately."
She hurried out.
Edmund and Zen exchanged a glance. Neither spoke. There was nothing to say. And followed her, as they always have been.
「QUEEN'S STUDY」
—Late Night—
The Queen sat behind her desk, a stack of reports spread before her that she hadn't touched in an hour. Sleep wouldn't come. It hadn't come for three days.
Not since she'd watched that pillar of ice-blue light erupt in the Grand Arena.
Not since she'd realized exactly what kind of monster she'd made a deal with.
The door to her study exploded inward.
Not opened. Not knocked. Exploded—slammed against the wall with enough force to crack the wood, the hinges screaming in protest.
Three figures stood on the threshold.
Not cloaked now. Not hooded. Dressed in the fine noble attire of their stations—G6 in crimson and gold, Zen in deep blue, Edmund in his butler's silver-grey.
But the clothes couldn't hide what they carried.
The smell hit her first. Blood. Old and fresh, human and otherwise, soaked into fabric and skin and hair despite their cleaned appearances. It rolled off them in waves, thick and metallic, the unmistakable perfume of violence.
Then she saw their faces.
Edmund—composed as ever, but shadows under his eyes that spoke of things seen that could never be unseen.
Zen—pale, his scholar's calm fractured, something raw bleeding through his usual detachment.
And G6.
Her soon-to-be daughter-in-law stood at the center, rose-gold hair disheveled, grey eyes fixed on the Queen with an intensity that made the monarch's blood run cold. Those eyes held something she'd never seen before—not in Reise, not in anyone.
Rage. Cold, patient, hungry rage.
"We need to talk." G6's voice was ice. Not a request. Not a greeting. A command.
The Queen slowly rose from her chair, her heart hammering against her ribs. Behind them, a servant scrambled to close the damaged door, but the crack remained—a thin line of light from the corridor, like a wound that wouldn't close.
"This is unusual," the Queen said, forcing steadiness into her voice. "To see you three together. What if someone saw you?"
"Enough." G6 said.
The word cut through the air like a blade. G6 glanced at Zen, and he moved without hesitation, crossing to the Queen's desk and sliding a folded paper across its surface.
The Queen's eyes widened as she read.
"This is... this is about Viscount Telesco being involved in the Oak Village incident?" Disbelief warred with dawning horror in her voice. "Not only that—you're telling me another 'dead zone' appeared in Grain Town? And still involving this imbecile?"
"Yes, Your Majesty," Zen confirmed.
"We'll provide a detailed report later," G6 said, already moving to the sitting area. She lowered herself onto the center seat—the chair reserved for the Queen alone—and made no attempt to disguise the deliberate insult. "For now, know this: Viscount Telesco is after us."
The Queen's jaw tightened.
"Seems this rat thinks we're some bastard of some nobles he can exploit," G6 continued, examining her nails with studied disinterest.
"Viscount Telesco is in there." The Queen's voice carried weight as a sphere of water materialized, a ledger suspended within its liquid heart. It flew across the room and landed on the desk before G6 with a solid thud—and somehow, impossibly, remained perfectly dry.
The Black Ledger.
G6's lips curved into a slow, predatory smile. Finally. A bingo book that can help me rank up my Cryomancy the fastest.
"I suggest you three lie low as adventurers for a while," the Queen said, her tone shifting to command. "We're digging deeper into risk and threat with every step. Possible treason movements require—"
"That's not going to happen." G6 cut her off without looking up from the ledger.
The Queen's eyes narrowed.
"I don't care about your political problems." G6 finally raised her gaze, and the cold in those grey eyes could have frozen the sea. "I'm interested in Telesco for his head. Nothing else. I shared this information with you not out of concern, but as per our agreement."
"Work for me." The Queen's voice hardened, matching ice with ice. "You may be after the names in that ledger, but this political mess—you're involving yourself whether you like it or not."
G6 said nothing. Just watched. Waiting.
The Queen recognized the cue. Permission to persuade. She pressed her advantage.
"That ledger is blank."
G6's expression didn't waver. Didn't flicker. If anything, her stillness deepened—the absolute immobility of something waiting to strike.
'I told you,' Daunt's voice echoed in her mind, distant and ancient. 'It is under spell restriction.'
"So." G6's voice dropped, soft and terrible. "You tricked me?"
The temperature in the room plummeted.
"If I did to you what I did to that criminal in the Grand Arena," G6 continued, rising slowly from the chair, each word a deliberate, measured drop of poison, "do you think your husband and sons could do anything about it?"
"HOW DARE YOU THREATEN HER MAJESTY!"
Leo's roar shattered the moment. His sword materialized from his personal dimensional vault, steel gleaming in the magitech light as he lunged forward—
And stopped.
Two blades pressed against him. One at his throat. One at his spine.
Zen and Edmund hadn't moved. Hadn't blinked. They were simply there, their weapons kissing Leo's flesh with the lightest, deadliest pressure.
The room froze.
"ENOUGH!" The Queen's voice cracked like a whip, authority and fury blazing in her eyes.
Neither blade lowered.
G6 smiled. Not a warm smile. Not a victorious smile. A mocking smile—one that said, clearly and unmistakably: They don't worship you, but me.
The Queen's jaw tightened, a muscle twitching beneath her skin.
"You asked for the ledger," she said, biting her lower lip hard enough to taste copper. "Not for the names on it. I did not trick you."
G6 sighed—a long, theatrical exhalation of pure contempt. "I was chased by lowly creatures. Branded as one of the blasphemous experimenters who tortured that criminal. And you dare to play cocky with me?"
She tilted her head, the movement eerily avian.
"I thought you didn't want to cross me, Your Majesty?"
Then she moved.
Not fast. Not threatening. She simply walked toward the Queen, each step measured, unhurried, inevitable. The space between them shrank. Five paces. Three. One.
Leo couldn't move. Not only because a sword pressed against his throat and another against his spine—but because Zen's soil rope had wound around his ankles, rooting him in place. He could only watch, helpless, as the woman approached his sovereign.
G6 stopped inches from the Queen.
And the room changed.
Frost spiderwebbed across the windows. Breath misted in the air. The magitech lamps flickered, their warm light dimming to something cold and pale.
Three ice knives materialized in the air around the Queen's throat—crystalline, razor-sharp, rotating slowly in a deadly orbit just inches from her skin. They hummed with power, with promise. To kill.
G6 leaned in, her lips brushing the Queen's ear, her voice a whisper that carried to every corner of the frozen room.
"You must think I'm too complacent with you. Just because you're a Queen."
She pulled back slightly—just enough to meet the monarch's eyes. Grey on hers. Predator on prey.
"You think I'm here because of obligations? Because of duty? Because of him?" A ghost of a laugh, cold as the grave. "The moment this place stops serving its purpose to me—the moment you become more trouble than you're worth—"
Her smile widened. Beautiful. Horrifying.
"I swear, as I burn this place down to hell, I will ensure your body's dancing in the middle of it."
Silence.
Absolute, ringing, shattering silence.
The ice knives continued their slow rotation. The frost crept further across the windows. The Queen stood motionless, her face pale but her eyes blazing with something that might have been fear, or rage, or the first stirrings of respect for a monster she had vastly underestimated.
Leo's sword hand trembled—not with weakness, but with the impossible weight of his own impotence.
Zen and Edmund remained statue-still, their blades still pressed against him, their faces utterly blank.
And G6—the Reaper, the monster, the woman who had carved her name into a dead man's back—simply waited.
For an answer.
For a challenge.
For any excuse at all.
The Queen's throat worked as she swallowed.
The ice knives kept spinning.
And somewhere in the frozen silence, the balance of power between a Queen and a monster shifted—permanently, irrevocably, and with no chance of ever shifting back.
—To Be Continued…—