Danan trudged through the sewer, passing the skeletal corpse of a long-dead body, still clutching Tefira as he gripped a rust-covered iron ladder. Rust flaked off onto his gloved hand, crumbling like scraps of paper.

  “Um, Danan?” Tefira murmured.

  “What?”

  “Can we… stop for a moment?”

  “Give me a reason.”

  Tefira’s head drooped limply against his chest, her full weight sagging onto his mechanical arm. Losing balance briefly, his boot slipped on the damp, corroded ladder, but with uncanny reflexes, Danan steadied himself, clenching his teeth. “Dead?” he muttered.

  No, not dead. Her thin chest rose and fell faintly, her breath shallow. Unconscious? Asleep? Or perhaps acute disorientation from the sewer’s toxins. Hanging from the ladder, Danan hesitated, then deftly climbed, hoisting Tefira over his shoulder. He pushed open the manhole cover and scanned the surroundings.

  The pleasure district’s back alley was unchanged. Corpses of vagrants littered the ground like dust, a drug addict’s severed arm still twitching, a machine’s head blown apart, and dull, gleaming spent casings. Shooing away a six-eyed rat, Danan crawled out, tossed a child’s corpse from a trash bin into the alley, and hid with the limp Tefira.

  “Lils, you there?” he called.

  “Yeah, I hear you. Danan, how’re you getting out of the pleasure district? It’s a warzone out there.”

  “…What do you think Damocles wants?”

  “No clue. Probably unrelated to you… maybe collecting unpaid protection fees or turf dues?”

  If only. Amid the suffocating stench and filth, Danan stroked his jaw with a steel finger, pulled a cigarette from his pack, and lit it.

  The cigarette’s smell was drowned by the garbage. Smoking amid gunfire and explosions was too risky, and no one was mad enough to rummage through trash here. Still, Danan kept his finger on the assault rifle’s trigger, aiming at the bin’s lid, ready to shoot anyone who peeked inside.

  “Danan? You okay?” Lils asked.

  “…Yeah.”

  “Damocles’ EMPs might disrupt comms. Just a heads-up—avoid fighting him at all costs. Protecting your target while fighting is impossible. If that girl dies, you’ll make an enemy of the Parade of the Dead.”

  “I know…”

  Stolen story; please report.

  “And the client sent word. They’ve deployed backup, so protect her at all costs. Can you handle it?”

  “…”

  “Danan? Hey, are you listening? Danan?!”

  He hated trash bins—they stirred bad memories. In this stench, focusing only on survival, he recalled his childhood self, nearly driven mad.

  Act, achieve the goal. That was his mindset—thinking only of surviving, evading death. His consciousness blurred, his brain melting into murky chaos. Responding half-heartedly to Lils’ shouting, Danan’s gaze fixed on Tefira’s shallow breaths, her translucent, glass-like pale skin captivating him.

  Defile her—taint her purity, unleash your desires. She’s the source of your suffering, forcing you to expend needless effort. Violate her, tear her apart, kill her. Take the easy path, indulge in cruelty. You have the right—the duty—to commit sin. Yes, let your steel arm roar, claw into her pale flesh. Then—

  “—!?”

  Bile surged, burning his esophagus, the bitter, sour stench stinging his nose. Eyes wide, Danan swallowed it down, catching a sweet rot in the air. Unnoticed, the trash bin’s lid had opened, and Aeshma, the peerless beauty, gazed down with a seductive smile, surrounded by garbage.

  “Why not just defile her?” she said.

  His rifle roared, the bullet grazing Aeshma’s cheek, drawing a thin line of blood that mingled with her red lipstick.

  “No one will blame you. Sin or corruption—it’s just a reflection in others’ eyes. So it’s fine, Black Man. Even if you deny your sins, I won’t see them as such. Everyone should live as they please, do what they want. I’ll pretend I saw nothing.”

  A lotus blooming in muck, her beauty could be mistaken for an earth goddess, her filthy irresponsibility devoid of lies. Stroking Danan’s cheek, Aeshma’s black-and-white dress singed by soot, she met his pitch-black eyes with her golden ones, smiling softly.

  A star writhing in darkness. No other words fit Aeshma. Her overwhelming charisma, sweet words that turned negation into affirmation, her all-encompassing acceptance that swallowed others’ minds—without a shred of force, she bared immense fangs through presence and words alone. Danan felt a threat equal to Damocles.

  She had to die. She needed to be killed here and now. Even if it turned the entire Crucible against him, any threat to his life had to be eliminated. Switching the rifle to his mechanical arm, he aimed at Aeshma’s forehead and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

  An explosion of gunpowder and a shrill metallic screech. The rifle’s barrel bent, the jammed bullet bursting. Instinctively shielding Tefira, Danan took shrapnel deep in his back and side.

  “Why protect her? Why not kill her? It doesn’t matter, does it? She’s nothing to you—just a stranger. Oh, but that won’t do. Everyone, everyone must support each other to live. Everyone for everyone, yourself for yourself… Don’t you think human connections matter, Black Man?”

  Her words were nonsense, incoherent, infuriating in their inconsistency. Whipping his pain-wracked body, Danan caught a glint at the edge of his vision—a sniper. Moving carelessly could get him shot, and he couldn’t guarantee Tefira’s safety. Aeshma’s fingers caressed his cheek and neck, her touch repulsive, yet he was trapped in the trash bin, unable to move.

  A familiar, heavy mechanical hum resounded—the sound of the deadliest, fully mechanized entity, crushing all life. Unfazed by a hail of bullets, shrugging off missile blasts like mosquito bites, its heavy armor defied reason. The embodiment of absurd violence—Damocles—smashed, slashed, and shot through Crucible members, charging into the alley.

  “DANAAAAN!! You won’t be killed by anyone but ME!!” Damocles roared, launching a missile at the sniper’s building, shredding dozens of people in his path with rage and hatred.

  “Damocles…” Aeshma whispered, her eyes glistening with an ecstatic expression.

  “Man of recklessness… It’s been a while. You were searching for me, weren’t you?”

  She faced the raging steel with her bare flesh.