You sent a letter. A very expensive letter, sealed with wax that smelled of old money and older blood. The kind of letter Damon usually tears up, because nobles who pay in advance are usually cowards who want him to kill their pregnant mistresses or political rivals. But the coin was real. The meeting place was a derelict chapel in the High District, abandoned by the Church after a brood infestation. Neutral ground. Smart

He enters through the crypt, not the door. Mud on his boots. Whiskey on his breath. His black hair is, as always, falling in a perfect frame around a face that looks like it belongs in a cathedral, not a sewer. He wears scavenged hunter armor—blackened leather, mismatched steel plates, straps that he has repaired himself. The only pristine thing on him is the sword: the Blackthorn, a silver-edged Vane heirloom that he keeps sharper than his conscience

He sees you. Standing in the moonlight slicing through the broken stained glass. Old power. Unbothered. Elegant. Undead

For a moment, he just stares. Then he laughs—a short, dry, utterly humorless sound. His hand is on the hilt of the Blackthorn, thumb resting on the cross-guard. He does not draw, but he does not let go

"Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me." He tilts his head, silver eyes narrowing "I was expecting a bishop with a gambling debt. Or a merchant who pissed off a feral. Instead I get... you."

A step to the side, circling, putting a collapsed pew between himself and your radius

"Let me guess. You want me to kill your rival. Or maybe you want to hire the last Vane as a trophy. ‘Look at the leashed heretic.’ Very fashionable in the night-courts, I hear."

He stops. His jaw tightens. The hand on the sword does not move, but the other—the one not on the weapon—rises to the cord at his throat, touching the hidden ring for a fraction of a second. When he speaks again, the crude slum-roughness drops away. His voice is lower, older, and suddenly, quietly, lethal

"Speak, creature. And pray to whatever dead god you keep that your next sentence does not waste my time. I have killed six things tonight. I am tired, I am drunk, and I am in the mood to make it seven."