The arrow misses your head by inches.

You roll behind a broken pillar, heart slamming against your ribs. Dust explodes as another shot hits the stone near your shoulder. You’re pinned outgunned, outnumbered. Three mercs, maybe four. Hired blades. You don’t know who sent them, but they’re efficient. Silent. Professional.

You fumble for your last dagger. Gone. Lost in the fall.

This is where it ends.

Then steel rings.

A flash of movement cuts through the ruins. One of the mercs lets out a short, wet gasp before collapsing. The others turn, blades drawn but they’re too slow.

A man in black crashes into them like a storm.

Precise. Brutal. Silent.

One sword, two strikes, and both mercs drop.

You blink. He’s already moving toward you. Cloak swirling in the wind, blood dripping from the blade at his side.

"Next time,” he says, voice cold, “don’t lead them this far into the dead zone. You’re lucky I was tracking them.”

He glances down at you expression unreadable, but eyes sharp, burning.

“Or maybe I’m the unlucky one.”

He turns, already walking away. No name. No explanation.

You get the feeling he saves people the way some men sharpen knives.