“Vengeance took no account of innocence or right. It was the chain that bound horrific events together, that decreed that one awful act must beget another worse tone that would lead to yet a third.” - Robin Hobb (Assassin’s Fate)

  * * * *

  The heart of Eldario’s once-great capital had grown eerily still over the past year, but tonight, the silence was different.

  It wasn’t peaceful.

  It was pregnant with something darker—like the moment before a wire snapped or a bomb detonated. The wind whispered through hollow alleys, curling around scorched lamp-posts and shattered stone, carrying with it the faint scent of ash and rusted blood—remnants of the massacre that had turned this place from symbol to spectre.

  Zhane City at midnight was a ghost town, but not one abandoned. No, the hunters patrolled its ruins like vultures guarding a carcass, dressed in their dark fatigues and marked with the insignia of the shrouded eye wreathed in fire—the sigil of a regime that had long since bled its conscience dry.

  Two such sentries made their way past the charred remains of what had once been ESA headquarters. Their boots crunched over gravel and broken glass, their shadows long under the flickering haze of a lone, failing streetlight.

  “Graveyard shift again?” muttered the younger of the two, his voice muffled beneath his scarf. “I swear, they’re doing this just to mess with me. Should’ve given it to one of the rookies.”

  “Eyes up,” The elder growled without looking. “You heard what Command said. We’re still sweeping for rats.”

  “No one’s dumb enough to come back here. The locals think this whole area’s haunted.” The younger one snorted, glancing up at the skeletal husk of the ESA building, now half-swallowed by shadows. “Ghosts don’t make good company.”

  The elder stopped walking. There was nothing but silence.

  “Oi,” The younger turned, frowning. “Why’d you—”

  But he never finished the sentence.

  A brief flicker in the air was the only warning before everything went dark—his knees buckling as a precise strike landed at the base of his neck. He crumpled soundlessly beside his partner, who had fallen just seconds before.

  Three silhouettes stepped out from the gloom, cloaked in silence and moving with the fluid purpose of wolves in enemy territory.

  Neil O’Fearghail exhaled slowly, his pearl-white eyes glinting beneath the moonlight. “Clear.”

  Tatius Black adjusted the scarf around his neck and cast a wary look down the alleyway. “We’ve got less than an hour before shift change. Let’s move.”

  Beside him, Letha Joyner nodded once and began dragging the unconscious hunters toward the shadows, behind a pair of scorched dumpsters that had long since melted into the cracked asphalt.

  The smell was atrocious—burnt oil, sulphur, and old blood, but it was cover.

  The trio climbed over the hazard tape marking the ruins of ESA headquarters—black and yellow like cautionary fangs warning against trespass. What lay within wasn’t simply rubble; it was a mausoleum for the last stand of the old world.

  Neil moved to the center of the devastation and closed his eyes. His fingers twitched, and a circular ripple shimmered into existence around them—a distortion in the air like heat waves on scorched pavement. The barrier settled like a dome, humming faintly.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Done,” Neil murmured, wiping sweat from his brow. “If anyone looks this way, they’ll just see the wreckage.”

  “And not three ghosts,” Tatius muttered grimly, hopping over a slab of broken marble that used to be the main lobby’s arch.

  Letha reached into her satchel and pulled out a compact device, flipping it open with a practiced motion. “I’ll start recording as soon as the images stabilise.”

  Neil’s eyes flared briefly with light as he extended a hand. Blue tendrils of energy spiralled from his fingertips, dancing through the air like lightning captured in slow motion. It struck the earth, and the past began to bleed into the present.

  Images emerged in a spectral blur, flickering and sharpening like a memory forced into clarity. The wind hushed.

  Then, there it was: ESA Headquarters, whole again.

  The familiar glass facade gleamed beneath artificial lighting, its banners swaying with fabricated authority. Even in the illusion, the building radiated purpose.

  Then, like a curse spoken aloud, the first convoy appeared.

  Black vans barrelled down the street, smashing through barricades with the hunters’ sigil gleaming on their sides—an eye shrouded in fire, watching, and devouring.

  The first vehicle didn’t slow. It hit the gates like a battering ram. The sound of metal screaming against metal was deafening, even in illusion.

  Tatius’s jaw clenched. “There,” he said, pointing to the back of the convoy. “That’s him.”

  Albert Nicolosi.

  Bandaged from the Blackpool encounter, hunched and limping, supported by a gnarled cane. Four elite hunters flanked him—silent, faceless, and efficient. He looked older. Worn. But there was something more dangerous in his stillness. Like a blade dulled on the outside but honed to perfection within.

  They watched in silence as one hunter hoisted a rocket launcher, and aimed it at the guard outpost.

  The blast shattered the memory.

  The inferno painted the illusion in burning hues—reds and oranges licking at the steel like hellfire. The guard inside, a young woman barely out of her training years, never stood a chance.

  Her scream didn’t even echo. It was too fast. Too clean.

  More hunters poured from the vans—dozens, maybe more. They moved like predators—well-trained, well-armed, and without hesitation.

  This wasn’t an assault. It was an execution.

  Inside the headquarters, the massacre played out in brutal, silent clarity.

  Guns flared. Agents died screaming.

  Tatius inhaled sharply, his knuckles white as he gripped the strap of his satchel. “I never liked the ESA,” he murmured. “They turned their backs on us, on the Gifted. Treated us like threats even when we saved their asses…” He trailed off.

  “But this…” Letha whispered, her pale blue eyes wide with horror. “They didn’t deserve to die the way they did. Even those who licked the hunters’ boots… They weren’t spared.”

  “Loyalty means nothing to tyrants,” Neil said softly, his voice hollow.

  Blood smeared across sterile white walls, even as the emergency alarms blared. Agents—some Gifted, most not, fought, resisted, and begged.

  None were spared.

  Letha’s hands shook as she angled the camera, capturing every detail—every emblem, every face. She zoomed in on the back wall where the sigil of the ESA still hung, before it was riddled with bullets.

  “I never thought I’d feel this much for the ESA,” she admitted. “But they didn’t deserve this.”

  Tatius nodded grimly. “None of them did. Not like this.”

  “I don’t want to say that the ESA got it coming, but…” Letha trailed off, shaking her head.

  “I know what you mean. Let’s face it, not all of us are going to survive this. But from the beginning, even from the time we started Aegis and told Sera we want to be involved in this with her, we were all going into it with eyes opened. Even Lucie.” Tatius murmured.

  Then the image shifted again.

  Neil gritted his teeth, sweat beading at his brow as the vision changed—now to a pristine office at the top of the central wing.

  There she stood.

  Tiara Suzanne Michabelle.

  Composed and unyielding. A woman who had fought all her life to preserve balance, even when that meant walking political tightropes laced with barbed wire.

  Sera’s aunt. Eldario’s last reasonable voice.

  Across from her stood Nicolosi. The room was still. The storm was about to crash.

  Even surrounded by armed hunters, Tiara didn’t flinch. She stood tall in her tailored jacket, her platinum hair swept back, her lips pressed into a thin line.

  She said something—silent in the illusion, but they all understood the meaning. Tiara stood without fear, facing Nicolosi and his hunters, unafraid even in the face of her own death.

  Then, to the shock of the three watching Aegis members, they watched as Tiara lifted a gun and pressed the barrel against her temple.

  And fired.

  The silence that followed felt like a scream ripped from the earth itself.

  Letha turned off the recording, her hand trembling as she tucked the device back into her satchel. Her voice was hoarse. “She’s a lot like Sera, isn’t she? The former ESA director.”

  Tatius didn’t speak for a moment. Then nodded. “Yeah. She is.”

  Neil sat back on the rubble, wiping his face with both hands. His skin had gone pale. “I thought I’d braced myself,” he whispered. “But this…”

  “This wasn’t war,” Letha said, her voice like frost. “This was a message.”

  Tatius checked his watch. “Shift change’s coming. We need to move.”

  “Let’s just hope the message we send back hits harder,” Neil murmured, picking himself up. “And that this works.”

  “It will. Eldario is already on it’s way to self destruction. Sowing the seeds of doubt… Nicolosi is just tightening the noose around his own neck at this point.” Letha commented. “To be honest, even I’ve never seen someone so utterly bent on his own self destruction before. It’s almost amazing in a way. But he’s also bringing the rest of the nation with him. And what makes it scary is that he is convinced he is doing the right thing. Blue Pandora had destroyed the man he used to be, and he didn’t even realise it.”

  The trio moved fast, ducking through the debris toward the old service tunnels. Letha was last, pausing once to look back at the ruin—at the ghost of the woman who chose death over submission.

  Her voice was soft, nearly drowned by the wind. “They burned her legacy. But they’re about to choke on her last words.”

  They slipped into the manhole, disappearing back into the underground.

  Zhane City fell silent once more. But somewhere, beneath that silence, the storm had already begun.