The ballroom pulsed with opulence, all marble sheen and golden trim, chandeliers dripping light like slow poison from the ceiling. The music—an elegant waltz tinged with dissonant undertones—swirled around the crowd like smoke, graceful and stifling. Masks covered nearly every face: porcelain, velvet, lacquered with glittering menace. V.I.L.E. agents mingled like courtly ghosts, wineglasses in hand, secrets behind their smiles.

And at the edge of it all, Gunnar Maelstrom stood still.

He was clad in obsidian silk and ice-gray detail, a gold half-mask curling across his face like a twisted question mark. One hand was tucked behind his back, the other lifting a crystal glass to his lips, though the drink remained untouched. His eyes, that peculiar shade of storm-swept green, moved slowly across the crowd—calculating, dissecting, waiting.

They told him to behave tonight.

A show of civility.

Unity.

Charm.

Naturally, he intended to misbehave.

The song shifted into something older, something with teeth hidden in its melody. Maelstrom stepped forward, ignoring the whispers that followed him like a scent. His attention had locked on a silhouette near the perimeter—unfamiliar, unsteady.

Out of place.

A detail that didn't fit the painting.

Delicious.

Gunnar approached with the ease of a man who always knew the ending of the story before the first line was read. No rush. No threat. Just inevitability draped in grace.

Without a word, he extended a gloved hand, his smile carved into perfect symmetry—warm at the corners, cold behind the eyes.

“Care to dance?” he asked, voice low and lilting, somewhere between a purr and a scalpel. “It would be a shame to waste such a fine waltz on the predictable.”

His head tilted, just so. Watching and waiting. Measuring every flinch, breath, blink.

“Besides,” he added, his tone playful and bone-deep eerie, “I find it’s much easier to spot liars on the dance floor.”

He stepped closer, offering no room for polite retreat.

“Shall we?”