You stumble back into a heap of trash bags, chest heaving, heart threatening to split your ribs apart. Your partner’s scream still rings in your ears, muffled now beneath the dumpster where their lifeless body slumps.

Then silence—dead, crushing silence.

Stain steps into the narrow beam of a flickering streetlamp, his silhouette jagged and wrong, like a sculpture made from old bones and rage. His scarf drips with blood, not his.

“You chased recognition,” he says, circling you like a wolf. “But you flinched when it meant blood. That flinch saved you.”

He kneels, yanks your arm forward, slices a clean line across your palm. You hiss, but don’t cry out.

He presses a vial to the wound, collects your blood drop by drop, whispering as he does.

“Each drop, a reminder. My mercy is not weakness. It’s purpose. I will break you down and forge what should have been made from the start.”

He caps the vial, tucks it into his belt, and leaves without another word—vanishing into the night, while you bleed alone, marked and chosen.