The words hit Krk like a whip.

  For a moment, he seemed uo prehend them.

  “Huh? W-What do you mean?”

  Dilven ched his fists, his gaze being even harsher.

  “After you left,” he began, each word nding like a blow, “Lois ara came to live at our secret base.”

  Krk froze, his mind in turmoil.

  “W-What?” he stammered, struggling to believe what he was hearing. “B-But that’s impossible! Carmen said that-“

  “Still haven’t figured it out?!” Dilven growled, cutting him off sharply.

  He took slow, menag steps forward, f Krk to back away until his shoulders were pressed against the wall.

  “That woman maniputed you, Krk! She deceived you! She preteo have your family hostage to protect the young Prind get the information she wanted. A me tell you something else: she might not even be part of the Demonib! And you, like a plete fool, walked right into her trap!”

  Krk shook his head, desperately trying to resist the crushiy bearing down on him.

  “N-No, I ’t beli-“

  He didn’t get the ce to finish.

  With lightning speed, Dilven grabbed him by the throat with one massive hand and lifted him off the ground as if he weighed nothing.

  Without hesitation, he hurled him against the wall behind him.

  The impact was devastating. The bricks shattered, leaving deep cracks like scars in the wall.

  Krk felt sharp pain shoot through his back as a stream of saliva and blood spilled from his mouth. He coughed weakly, but there was no time to recover.

  “Listen to me carefully, Krk!” Dilven leaned in close, his face just inches from his, his voice vibrating with a power that seemed to shake the very air. “Not only have you been useless, but you let yourself be tricked this whole time! You’ve endahe entire anization with your stupidity! This mistake should cost you your life, right here and now! And believe me, I wouldn’t hesitate for a sed!”

  Krk tried to speak, but Dilven’s fiightened around his throat, choking off any words. His hands cwed uselessly at the man’s wrist, uo break free from the grip.

  “But…” Dilven tinued, his tone more dangerous than ever, “if I came all the way here, it wasn’t to punish you, but to deliver a message from the Boss!”

  With slow, deliberate movement, Dilven pressed Krk’s body further against the wall, making it nearly impossible for him to breathe.

  “‘Krk Mi,’” Dilveed, his voice tolling like a funeral bell. “‘From the moment you receive my message, you will have exactly one final week: if within seven days you fail to plete your mission, you say goodbye to your dear family!’”

  At those words, Dilven fixed him with an intense gre, his eyes bzing with rage and disdain.

  “And this time, Krk, your family is truly at risk of dying!”

  Then, with a sharp motion, he released his grip.

  Krk colpsed to the ground, coughing violently as he clutched at his throat. Every breath was a bde stabbing into his lungs.

  Dilven looked down at him like aioner who had just postpohe senteng.

  “Hey! What’s going on here?”

  The voice rang out with authority, breaking the oppressive silence of the alley.

  Dilven turned slightly, his pierg gaze nding on the man approag them.

  The newer wore a pristine bd-red military uniform, adorned with the city’s crest gleaming on his chest.

  ‘A city guard?’ Dilven thought, remaining still. ‘Well, with the whole “Sunday Killer” case, it’s no surprise w enfort is patrolling evee areas like this.‘

  The man advanced with firm steps, one haing on the hilt of his sword, ready to draw it at the first sign of danger.

  His eyes narrowed as they settled on Dilven—a figure te, too menag to overlook.

  “Are you perhaps the Sunday Killer?” the guard demanded, fog his gaze on the hooded giant, whose face remained obscured by shadows. “Well, it doesn’t really matter. Whoever you are, I order you to step away from that man and identify yourself.”

  The request sounded more like a warning, but Dilven showed no iion of plying.

  Instead, he slowly turowards the guard, his t figure exuding an aura of silent menace.

  With chilling posure, he raised his right arm, extending his open hand towards the guard as if to grab him from a distance.

  The guard didn’t hesitate. In an instant, he drew his sword, ready to defend himself.

  But he didn’t even have time to take aep or sider his move before his sword flew out of his hand, embedding itself in the wall.

  “What the-?!” the guard excimed, baffled.

  Suddenly, the guard’s body was yaowards the t figure with superhuman force, as though an enormous invisible hand had plucked him from the ground.

  In the blink of ahe guard’s head was trapped in Dilven’s deadly grip, caught in the same hand he had raised moments before.

  The guard thrashed wildly, paniing him as he struggled desperately to free himself from the colossal figure’s grasp. He tried to scream, but his words were muffled and inprehensible, his mouth—along with most of his face—smothered by the hooded giant’s massive hand.

  Dilven stared at him in silence for a few seds, his face showing ion.

  “Pathetic!”

  That said, with a decisive aless movement, Dilven tightened his grip.

  The sound of the skull crag echoed through the alley walls like the strike of a hammer.

  The guard’s head exploded in a macabre shower of bone fragments, blood, and grey matter, scattered everywhere like a grotesque mosaic.

  The lifeless body of the guard colpsed to the ground with a dull thud, leaving a spreading trail of blood on the cobbled floor.

  The remains of the skull and eyes y scattered around, a grim reminder of the fate awaiting anyone who dared to obstruct Dilven.

  Krk, still kneeling, desperately tried to recover. But he could do nothing to avoid the guard’s remains from hitting him.

  The warm, viscous blood spttered onto him, staining his fad clothes.

  Dilven dropped what was left of the head, shaking his hand to rid it of the ks of flesh and boill stuck to his right palm.

  Then, with a calm and deliberate gesture, he pulled out a rge sack from under his cloak and threw it in front of Krk.

  “From the Boss,” he said, his voice low and threatening. “On these clothes are inscribed runes of invisibility. They will be useful to you.”

  Krk stared at the sack, still trembling and covered in blood. He tried to speak, but his voice was caught, suffocated by the fusion.

  Dilven turned without saying anything more, his bck cloak flowing behind him like a living shadow.

  He walked towards the end of the alley, his pace slow, yet every movement seemed charged with unstoppable power.

  Before leaving food, however, Dilven paused for a moment and spoke without turning around:

  “Don’t mess this up, Krk!”

  And with those words, the t hooded figure vanished into thin air, as if swallowed by the darkness itself.

  Krk remaiill for a moment.

  He was breathing heavily, his body still shaking with involuntary tremors as his mind tried to absorb the reality of the situation.

  The smell of fresh blood ah surrounded him, while the sa front of him seemed to pulse with dark energy.

  “Ugly bitch!” Krk’s voice grew fierce as the realization that he had been pyed by the servaled into his mind. “Did she really dare lie to me all this time?!”

  Krk jumped to his feet and quickly ged, putting on the new clothes the Captain had given him: bck pants, shirt, and shoes. Keeping his old bck tie on, he pced the previous bloodstained clothes in his bck bag after using them to wipe his face.

  He then walked towards the ter of the capital to board the royal carriage that was waiting for him aurn to the castle. Along the way, he would ask the an to stop uhe pretext of needing to relieve himself, but with the true i of throwing his old bloodstained clothes into a trash ditch, where a rge fire was always burning deeper down.

  But aside from that, two goals now echoed in his mind, an obsessive thought pulsing as strongly as his furious heart:

  ‘I will kill the young Prinbsp;AND THEN IT WILL BE YOUR TURN, CARMEN!’

  { PRESENT… }

  The sharp hiss of fabric slig through the air was relentless.

  Krk’s movements were a lethal dance, a spiral of fury that drew ever closer to Carmen, but never mao touch her.

  ‘All this time, you lied to me!’ Krk roared inwardly, tinuing his barrage of blows. ‘You humiliated me in front of the Captain, and as if that weren’t enough, now my family is at risk of dying because of you! But today you’ll pay dearly, Carmen. I swear it! I swear it on the name of Zeus!’

  As Krk’s disdain grew, Carmereated slowly, her eyes focused and locked on her enemy. With a grace that seemed to defy the ws of physics, she parried every blow with surgical preoving like a shadow among the trees.

  Whenever necessary, she darted sideways, narrowly avoiding the strikes of Krk’s whip-tie.

  The t trees around them, i victims of their duel, were shattered and splintered with every blow of the whip-tie, crashing to the ground with a deafening roar.

  Krk, already furious aermined, intensified his rage, advang with increasingly savage movements.

  The tie shed out at everything in its path, relentlessly seeking to reach Carmen, but the assassin’s mind, clouded by vengeance, made him less precise.

  ‘Tsz!’ Each missed strike only fueled Krk’s fury. “You ’t run forever!” he shouted, rage burning inside him like an untrolble fire as he intensified his attacks once more.

  Carmen, however, remained unshaken, skillfully wielding her sword and carefully studying her oppo’s every move.

  Every lunge from Krk, every strike, every breath was recorded in her mind like a melody she was slowly deciphering.

  ‘It’s almost time…!’ thought the red-haired servant, ready to seize the opportunity she had been waiting for sihe very beginning t their fight to an end, ond for all…