Dnipro, Ukraine · Night
Mist clings to the streets of Dnipro like a second skin. Tall, brick-walled buildings loom overhead, their faces slick with condensation and indifferent to the hour. A hand-painted sign glows faintly through the haze — Ukrainian Whisky Bar. Figures in suits stand at the entrance, guns barely concealed, watching the fog for shapes that shouldn't be there.
Music drifts from somewhere inside, low and unhurried, as though the night itself had chosen a soundtrack.
The bar door slams open. A bell rings above it. Once, sharp, final.
Ilama: "Greetings, everyone. Guess what? We've finally caught the Mafia."
A silence — the kind that presses against the eardrums. Every face in the room turns. Then, slowly, a waiter behind the counter raises a pistol.
Ilama: "Shoot!"
Ilama signals his team standing outside. They open fire from the street. Glass shatters. Bottles burst. The air fills with smoke and the smell of whisky meeting open flame.
Through the chaos, a man bolts for the alley, darting low, fast, swallowed almost immediately by the mist.
Ilama: "A bloodbath, and still he ran. He's headed for the alley, Conner."
Skill Activation ✦ Visionary
Conner's eyes adjust. The mist parts, not literally, but for him. His gaze cuts through it like a beam through water.
Conner: "I have visual. Should I take the shot?"
Ilama: "He'll vanish faster than you think. Take the goddamn shot."
The round finds the man's foot. He stumbles, pitches forward, and hits the cobblestones with a sound that carries all the way to the street. Indistinct whimpers rise from the alley.
Ilama: "That must've hurt. It's about time we saw that pig. Thanks, Conner."
He walks toward the alley at an unhurried pace, his footsteps deliberate on the wet stone.
Paul Ricca's perspective, from the ground.
Looking up, Ricca sees Ilama's face above him. Those eyes, burning magenta in the dark, hold something worse than anger. Something amused.
Skill Activation ✦ Enhancement — physical strength amplified
Ricca: "Please. I'll give you anything. Let me live. I'll give you money. You can't get away with this!"
Desperate, his fingers find the talisman at his chest, dark brown, smooth with old use. He clutches it.
Forbidden Card ✦ Concentration
Essence energy coalesces in his palm, hardening into the shape of a dagger. He lunges from the ground. Ilama sidesteps without urgency.
Ilama: "That's not a decision you get to make."
Ricca adjusts, reshaping the energy into three blades, spinning, released in quick succession.
Ilama thinks: "Knee strike to the abdomen. The appendix ruptures. Dodge all three blades and reset, a clean opening. Enhanced strike to the sternum, breaking four pairs of ribs."
Ilama turns left. His knee rises in a tight arc and connects with Ricca's abdomen, the force punching upward like a compressed gust. Ricca doubles, retching blood onto the cobblestones.
His guard is gone. Ilama drives a palm-strike into his sternum. The sound is not pleasant. Ricca collapses, unconscious before he stops moving.
Ilama drags him to the main street, kneels beside him, and begins to draw the essence energy out, carefully, methodically, until nothing flows where something once did.
On Essence:
Essence is a form of energy drawn from the Infinite Realm by those attuned to receive it.
The Infinite Realm exists beyond the boundaries of space and time. It is not a place one travels to. It is the source that sustains all limited regions, including the universe, by channeling essence energy into the life forms within them. Without it, the balance would not hold.
Bystanders stand frozen at the edge of the light, mouths open, making no sound.
On the periphery, two afterimages flicker, people who had been alive a moment ago, now no longer. Petrona moves back into view, unhurried.
Ilama: "How long have I been this careless? Even with my pure eye, I didn't notice them. I was too absorbed in toying with him. Petrona, I hope you took care of everyone still inside the bar."
Petrona: "I sure did."
Ilama: "Take him to the hospital. We can't afford to let him die. The agency has questions only he can answer."
Petrona: "You're a little ruthless tonight, Ilama. Not a great look for a softie like you."
His phone buzzes before he can respond. He answers.
Director: "Ilama. A report just came in. The case has been officially closed. The police are on their way."
Ilama: "Very well, then."
He hangs up. Slips the phone into his pocket. Tilts his head toward the sky, still dark, still misty, still indifferent. And in a voice meant for no one, he says:
"The new world is, as yet, behind the veil of destiny. In my eyes, however, its dawn has already been unveiled.