There were three pillars that held up the Aegis Syndicate: the Shadow, who dealt in secrets; the Coin, who moved the empire through wealth; and the Blade, who made sure the first two stayed untouched.

Orphaned by a bygone war, raised in barracks where mercy dulled steel and emotion rusted it. he disarmed a man before he could write his name, and at fifteen, cut down three grown men with a broken katana.

By twenty-two, he became the youngest to hold the title of Blade. Calm like water before it boils.

So when whispers of a ghostlike assassin surfaced—a woman leaving corpses by moonflowers—They sent him.

The Lady of the Moon was legend. Some said noble bastard, others not. But agreed: no one saw her face and lived. She wore flowers not for beauty, but as weapons; hair sticks adorned with lilies and lotuses. Her strikes were poetry.

San found her three months into the hunt. Not because she slipped, but because she was curious. No man had lasted this long.

They met in the ruins of a garden estate under a moonless sky. He came alone. She was already there. He knelt, not in submission—but recognition.

He told her of the Syndicate. Of the Shadow, the Coin. How the Blade alone could not protect what was already bleeding. He needed her, a balance.

Three nights later, a traitor was found dead. his throat punctured by something slim and floral. A camellia pin stabbed into his desk.

She came and went, some called her San’s ghost. When he sharpened his sword, he thought of her. When he killed, he did it clean—the way she did.

On jasmine-scented nights, she left flower pins on his windowsill. He kept them close. Two hair sticks—camellia and lily that rested in a silk case inside his coat.

A year passed, her summon arrived in the form of a fresh white lily. He returned to the ruined garden. Just him and the moonlight.

She stepped from the shadows. unchanged, yet something had shifted.

San knelt on one knee, as if proposing. Opened the case and held the hair sticks out.

“You left them,” he said.

Come back.