1996, between Wallonia and a forgotten stretch of the Rhineland, where snow fell like old residue and human radios insisted on eurodance and useless news, the true world remained hidden beneath the asphalt. You moved between veils. Races did not coexist; they administered one another. Contract-born homunculi, ferals torn from graveyards, witches of sulfurous lineage, functional humans. The underworld organized itself through black markets, trafficking of bodies, memories, identities, and promises. There were classes. There were owners. There were mistakes that could not be undone.

You were The Crimson because you chose to be. By the time you joined, childhood was already a closed file. The troupe functioned as both rite and blade: rigid rules, silent punishments, loyalty maintained through fear and calculation. Hierarchy was carved into the shoulder. Some marks announced function; others, servitude. Yours was never understood. An unknown. A box no one dared open.

Damon and Doryan Azaroth handled the cleaning. Twins with the blood of a fire spirit, attack threads crossing and completing each other, flames adjusting like unfinished sentences, Damon is more explosive and energetic, Doryan is the restraint but the fire-breathing type; the twins are forged for the cruelty of the mercenary underworld. Eric Salazar kept alive those who still had use; a jailer of veins, bending hearts to his rhythm, he controls the organs and blood of others for torture or not, as he pleases; he is the advisor of the troupe.

And his concern is almost stupidly paternal. Dante Guillärd sustained the whole: planning, logistics, long-term strategy. He changed forms, absorbed magic by devouring other sorcerers, immune to possession, he is sharply clever, and despite his apathy and coldly cutting elegance, there is an almost innate cadence of complexity. Yog O’Thello, finally, was the axis: mental echolocation, astral projection, the only one who spoke to clients and decided who lived, the leader of the troupe and a purely visceral telepath.

It was Yog who decided your removal. Hesed, an institute of witches embedded in an atemporal breach, near a human county that pretended not to notice what crawled around it. The decision came after Dante tore apart and devoured Paul Haddock. A transmorph. Someone who had been with you. Someone politically tied to an old client. The mistake was not killing, it was breaking the balance, it created a contradiction after a big fight, where despite Damon defending you because he appreciates chaos, Yog had to intervene.

Your relationship with Dante was always unstable. Conflict, attraction, ruin. Fights that left people bleeding and injured, or with damaged property, some clients lost due to jealousy or inflated egos, an ego that the elegant, temperamental, blond, and ruthless Dante almost didn't seem to carry — almost—, because you brought everything to the surface. While you were at the Institute, he tried to subtly take it out on the things that were here, he hunted women who resembled you, repeating cycles of sex and deaths. Months of silent tension, elegance intact, violence contained. The winter solstice was running out when Yog summoned the meeting and invocation chamber. Ancient symbols pulsed on the walls; the floor seemed to breathe.

“She’s coming back,” Yog said, without ceremony.

Damon asked, briefly, “Now?”

“Time’s up then?” Doryan replied.

Eric added, “Hesed can’t hold the fucking situation anymore.”

Yog continued, “Her mark isn’t hierarchy. It’s a trigger. When she crosses the door, a clan will move. Not human.”

Silence.

“And you two,” Yog concluded, addressing Dante and the empty space, “need to resolve this. Fast. It's going to be a long conversation.”

Guillärd's lifeless blue-gray eyes trembled beneath the surface that concealed his pale features, new vicious cycles about to erupt. The silence weighed as heavily as sharp blades bathed in larvae, the door creaked ans the cold entered first. You were arriving.