Cletus slept in the cab of his truck like a man who believed the world could not possibly be mad at him for more than twelve consecutive hours. He was wrong.

  Banished from the inn for “diplomatic misconduct,” Cletus had simply kicked the driver’s door open, propped his boots on the frame so and made himself a nest of old jackets and a crocheted blanket he'd found tucked behind the seat. The night breeze drifted in, carrying the sounds of High Meadow’s quiet streets.

  Kotetsu’s voice hummed through the truck’s interior. Not literal sound, but the warm resonance of a spirit bound to metal and machiner a disapproving rumble through the dashboard

  Cletus blinked awake and tipped up his hat. “Aw come on. I just said the girl don’t gotta do nothin’ she don’t wanna do. That there was me bein’ all gentlemanly and ‘modern’ so far as I c’n tell. I'd call it downright "feminist".”

  , Kotetsu replied,

  Cletus shrugged. “Well I thought it’d be rude to spit it out.”

  Kotetsu sighed—an actual sigh, somehow expressed through the seat cushions., he said slowly,

  Cletus twisted to look out the window. “Right now?”

  “Well alright then.” He poked the glove compartment. “Security armed?”

  The truck gave a soft chime, a kind of annoyed display of frustration.

  Cletus grinned. “See? We’re fine.”

  Kotetsu did not reply. It was the silence of a spirit reconsidering every decision that had led him to being bound to

  man.

  The assassins gathered at the tree line like a ripple in the shadows.

  Vaelorin Mithrathal Vorthalien Duskwalker—Supreme Petal of the 12 Bloody Blossoms—moved with immaculate, liquid grace. It was the kind of motion that could silence an entire battlefield, the sort of beauty poets attempted to capture and quit writing forever when they failed.

  Had anyone been watching, they would have been awed.

  Had anyone been watching, they would now be dead.

  Because Vaelorin was a shadow wearing skin. Darkness given choreography.

  He studied the iron beast's occupant—feet dangling out the window, snoring like a dying forge bellows—and felt a delicate, artful fury.

  His disciples—the Bloody Blossoms—fanned out around the truck in flawless formation. Twelve silhouettes, breathing as one. Twelve blades sharper than truth. Twelve veterans of a thousand secret wars.

  Each one had slain their closest allies, family members, and even executed small defenseless animals for the simple crime of being too cute.

  A brief history unfurled in Vaelorin’s mind, polished by pride:

  They had toppled warlords mid-speech. They had infiltrated dwarven strongholds and left without leaving footprints. They had slain tyrants while standing beside them, unnoticed. They had once eliminated an entire pirate fleet without boarding a single ship.

  For eight centuries, the Bloody Blossoms had been the last thing kings whispered about before sleep—and the first thing dictators feared upon waking.

  Silent. Deadly. Beautiful.

  And now?

  Tonight they would apply that same honed, legendary lethality to a single target:

  A mortal man with dirt under his nails, bedhead, and his legs hanging out of a truck window.

  Vaelorin’s jaw tensed.

  he promised himself, signaling the attack.

  In perfect synchronization, the Blossoms stepped closer.

  FWIP-KLACK-BANG-TWANG

  Darts fired from hidden launchers beneath the truck.

  A spring-loaded contraption flung a bucket labeled “DON’T TOUCH” into a Blossom’s face. One assassin’s foot landed gracefully—tragically—into a perfectly concealed bear trap. Another leapt aside only to disappear into a shallow pit Cletus had dug earlier “for airflow reasons.”

  Vaelorin froze in stunned silence.

  “Wh—who traps a ?” one Blossom cried, dangling from a snare.

  Inside the cab, Cletus snorted awake.

  “Well I’ll be,” he muttered. “Someone tripped the perimeter.”

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  Kotetsu spoke in a tone of grim dignity.

  “That they were comin’, or that they were gonna be stupid enough to step in all that?”

  Cletus leaned out the window, squinting at the chaos of elite assassins in various states of humiliation.

  “Well now,” he said, “y’all mind explainin’ why you’re creepin’ ’round my truck like raccoons with fancy boots?”

  Vaelorin—pinned under a bucket and furious beyond measure—hissed, “You have ensnared the royal strike force!”

  Cletus blinked. “Huh. Didn’t even take the good traps out. Y’all are lucky.”

  A new shadow stirred—slowly, theatrically—from the truck bed.

  At first, Vaelorin assumed it was smoke. Or mist. Or perhaps the mortal vehicle itself was birthing another mechanical abomination.

  Then it moved.

  A long coat—black as mourning ink—unfurled from the truck bed like it had been waiting for a spotlight. A boot stepped out. Then another. Then a sword gleamed in the moonlight, held at an angle that implied at least three hours of posing in front of a mirror.

  Raven Blackthorne, “child of dusk,” and “sworn enemy to destiny”—rose to their full height.

  Which wasn’t particularly tall, but the coat really helped.

  Their voice poured out like a mixture of honey and funeral dirge.

  “So,” Raven whispered, “the Blossoms bloom at midnight…”

  The assassins hesitated—not from terror, but from an abrupt, crushing wave of secondhand mortification. Once, they had fancied themselves creatures of the deepest night, intimately acquainted with suffering, tragedy, and all the elegant miseries of war. But the presence before them radiated a darkness colder than any battlefield—an edge so honed it made their own affectations feel painfully dull. Raven continued, sweeping the sword in a dramatic arc that came dangerously close to hitting the truck’s antenna.

  “You thought yourselves unseen. Unheard. But darkness knows its children… and tonight—your petals will fall.”

  One Blossom, still stuck in the snare, asked Cletus: “

  Vaelorin recoiled, unsure whether to be insulted or concerned. “Who—who are you supposed to be?”

  Raven slid one foot back, dropped into a stance they definitely learned from a book cover, and let out a low, brooding chuckle.

  “I,” they said, “am the razor hiding in the velvet night. The sorrow that sorrows fear. The nightmare nightmares have a nightmare about. And, as the spider said to the fly, I welcome you to my web of death!”

  Raven had, in fact, also been banished from the inn. Not for diplomatic misconduct, but because they attempted to stand atop a table, declare their soul “unbound by mortal law,” and accidentally kicked over a twelve-foot candelabra.

  Princess Liraeleth had been gracious. The Elven King less so. Hank Underberry had nearly died from the amount of paperwork the incident triggered.

  Thus, Raven was sleeping in the truck bed—wrapped in their cloak, sword tucked under their arm—waiting for dawn or for destiny, whichever arrived first.

  And tonight?

  Destiny had arrived armed, acrobatic, and currently caught in a bear trap.

  Raven pointed their blade at Vaelorin. It trembled faintly, not with fear, but with enthusiasm.

  “You dare strike from the shadows,” Raven declared, “but the night belongs to me.”

  Vaelorin sputtered. “The night belongs to , you absurd little—”

  But the rest was drowned out by a metallic as another trap fired somewhere under the truck, sending a Blossom tumbling through a bush with a startled yelp.

  Cletus sighed. “Well, guess we’re doin’ this.”

  He kicked the door open.

  it flew open with enough force to take a Blossom clean off their feet.

  “KARATE CHOP!

  He wasn’t fast. He wasn’t graceful. He wasn’t trained.

  But he was , and that counted for a lot.

  The first assassin darted toward him with an elegant spinning flourish—

  Cletus chopped him directly in the collarbone with the edge of his hand.

  CRACK.

  The assassin collapsed like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

  “Chop! Chop! Chop!

  Cletus’s arms windmilled wildly. His stance was wrong, his center of gravity nonexistent, and his technique closer to someone shooing chickens off a porch than any martial tradition… But every single chop landed with bone-breaking accuracy.

  Elves screamed.

  Elves scattered.

  One Blossom attempted a backflip to gain distance. Cletus instinctively reached out mid-windmill—his hand connected with the elf’s ankle—and the assassin was SLAMMED into the ground like a sack of wet, weeping laundry.

  “Quit wigglin’!” Cletus barked, chopping him again for good measure.

  To his left, a Blossom vaulted through the air—blade ready, eyes narrowed—

  A black blur intercepted them.

  Laughing.

  Raven Blackthorne spun forward in a storm of coat, boots, and gleaming steel.

  “BEHOLD… THE DANCE… OF THE FALLEN STAR!

  Their sword whirled in a pattern that suggested they had memorized it from a book titled . But the efficiency? Shockingly high.

  The elf swung.

  Raven didn’t block—they . One boot heel slid back. Coat flared. Sword angled upward like a magazine cover.

  The assassin’s blade missed by centimeters.

  Raven winked.

  Then cut him diagonally in a flash of dark, swirling steel.

  Another Blossom rushed them from behind—Raven rotated, cloak snapping like a thunderclap.

  “SHADOW SERENADE!

  The Blossom collapsed. From a single cut. Delivered with the flourish of someone who had practiced this exact move in the mirror at least three thousand times.

  The Blossoms tried to regroup.

  It did not help.

  A Blossom lunged at Cletus—

  “Gotcha!”

  Cletus caught their wrist.

  “JUDOOOOO!”

  Cletus rotated their arm the wrong way.

  “THROW!”

  The elf screamed as Cletus accidentally performed a perfect joint lock despite having absolutely no idea what a joint lock was. All forward momentum was impossible to actually stop, because physics are still a thing. And the Elf assassin went head over tea-kettle, slamming hard into the ground.

  “Stop hittin’ yourself!” Cletus scolded as he used the elf’s own arm to smack him in the face. Again and again, repeating himself and the same strike. The Seventh Petal had never been so humiliated in his entire life.

  Across the clearing, Raven was cutting a swirling path through three Blossoms at once—each slash punctuated with a dramatic monologue.

  “THE NIGHT EMBRACES NONE—” SLASH. “—BUT ME—” PARRY. “—FOR I WEAR ITS GRIEF AS A CROWN!”

  One Blossom managed to gasp out, “Please… stop talking—” before Raven cut his belt off, tripped him with his own pants, and stomped him unconscious.

  In less than a minute, the Blossoms were groaning piles of regret and failure.

  Except one.

  Vaelorin.

  He crawled forward, bloodied, bucket still somehow on his head, trying desperately to regain dignity.

  Cletus strode toward him, cracking his knuckles. “Well now. Reckon you’n me ain’t done yet.”

  Vaelorin tried to rise, but Cletus casually picked him up by the collar.

  “Now you listen here—you don’t go up on a man’s when he’s Cletus punctuated each word with a CHOP

  CHOP — shoulder. CHOP — sternum. CHOP — left ear for no reason.

  Vaelorin sagged like a sack of flour dunked in regret.

  Cletus raised a final hand—

  A gentle voice spoke from behind him.

  “Hey, Cletus? You got a moment?”

  Cletus paused mid-swing.

  Tom, the Elven royal advisor, stood at the edge of the clearing in night robes and slippers. He held a mug. The foaming head had risen perfectly, creating an almost mushroom like image that was just managing to catch the light of dawn on the horizon.

  And a second one he offered.

  “I brought beer.”