A cold blue glow bathed the obsidian chamber. The crescent table sat like a black scythe under the soft hum of holographic projectors. Silent—yet thick with the weight of what they were watching.
Five figures leaned forward.
On the central screen: Phantom's POV.
The footage was raw, real, and haunting.
From the flicker of metal boots descending sterile stairs, to the growing stench of rot and blood creeping in with every step—everything had been recorded through a micro lens embedded in Phantom's suit collar.
Installed by GMU protocol. As fail-safe. In case he didn't come back.
They were watching it live… or what was being transmitted up until that last moment.
Thalassa Wynne, ever-calm, clutched her cane just a little tighter.
Julius Treign hadn't blinked in two minutes. His fingers were curled like talons.
Rovan Dusk's lips were sealed in a tight line, jaw flexing like a vice.
Sorin Veltre had that same unreadable look. But his knuckles were white.
And Mavran D'Sael? He was standing. Arms crossed. Eyes glowing faintly. Watching… like he was witnessing the rise of a storm he couldn't leash.
They saw the corridor of horrors. The cages. The half-dead children. The twisted limbs of failed chimeras, twitching in unnatural spasms. The soft whispers of broken minds, begging for mercy that never came.
Then… they saw Phantom walk.
No hesitation. No sound.
Just daggers floating mid-air like orbiting stars. And what followed… was not just violence.
It was retribution.
One by one, the cloaked scientists and operatives in the hidden chamber were cut down—sliced, impaled, dismembered. Painfully. Slowly. Like a monster returned to punish gods.
Blood misted the camera lens.
Yet Phantom's breathing remained even.
They saw him pause. Look up.
A single word escaped his lips.
"It's done."
Silence.
And then—it happened.
From the footage's edge, a shift.
Killing intent. The kind that crashes through steel walls.
The screen blurs as Phantom turns, and suddenly—
Three bullets.
Mid-air.
Inches from his face.
And then—
The feed cuts to black.
No one speaks.
Just that hum of the projectors… and the echo of a devil's broadcast.
The air behind Phantom crackled.
Not with sound.
Not with movement.
But with intent.
That ancient, spine-chilling kind—the kind beasts feel seconds before death.
Phantom spun.
Three bullets.
Polished. Fast. Lethal.
A breath away from his skull.
Time slowed.
And then—something moved.
A pulse in the floor. A whisper in the shadows.
His own shadow… rose.
Like ink come to life, it twisted upward—took shape.
And from it emerged a clawed hand, sleek and black, fingers wrapped in flickers of red mist.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
Three bullets. Caught mid-air.
Held between fingers that weren't flesh… but something far older.
The figure stepped forward. Out of Phantom's shadow.
Tall. Cloaked. Drenched in silence.
A half-mask covered the top of his face, its sharp edges gleaming beneath the flickering red lights. Beneath the hood, only darkness. The bottom half of his face was unseen—swallowed in the abyss of his cape.
But Phantom didn't flinch.
He whispered, barely audible:
"Raven."
The figure didn't respond.
Instead, he turned his head toward the attacker. Slowly. Like a wolf locking eyes with a rival alpha.
And then—flick—Raven threw the bullet back.
Not fast. Not furious.
Just… casual.
But when it hit the far wall beside the enemy—it buried three inches deep in reinforced steel.
That man—standing in the shadows, firearm still smoking—tensed. No longer just a hunter. Now... prey.
His gaze met Raven's.
Two predators.One silent. One unknown.And the air between them screamed with unspoken killing intent.
It was no longer just Phantom's infiltration.
It was Raven's hunt now.
Glitch floated just behind Phantom, flickering with a blue static hum. His voice was low, but sharp.
"Wait a sec..." he muttered, narrowing his glowing eyes at the man still locked in a silent death-glare with Raven. "I've seen that guy before."
Phantom didn't reply, but his inner radar sharpened. Glitch's tone wasn't casual.
"Yeah..." Glitch's circuits pulsed as the memory clicked into place. "He was there. One of the shadow associates of an Aspen executive. Day of the auction. Kept to the corners, but he was there."
Phantom's jaw clenched slightly. If Glitch remembered him, that meant the guy wasn't some random guard dog—they were dealing with another piece of Aspen's upper crust filth.
Cut to the council chamber, where the VVIPs watched from the obsidian conference hall. Rovan Dusk's brows furrowed as he leaned closer to the screen.
"That man... wasn't he the one who greeted Ascan Treign's team that morning?" he said coldly.
Thalassa nodded, lips thinning. Julius merely exhaled.
"Looks like this infiltration's dragged out more cockroaches than we expected," he muttered. "Let's see how many survive the purge."
The man finally broke the silence, his voice smooth like poisoned silk.
"Tsk. More rats sneaking into my garden lately..." he muttered, flicking invisible dust off his coat. "Seems I'll have to tighten security protocols. Can't have uninvited guests crawling about."
He tilted his head slightly, gaze shifting between Phantom and Raven. Then, he smiled — wide and charming, the kind that usually came before someone bled.
"Oh right, where are my manners?" he said theatrically, spreading his arms slightly."Velstrak, Executive Enforcer, Department of Experimental Resources." A mock bow followed."A pleasure… to end your lives."
Without warning, thin silver projectiles—shaped like elongated shards—launched from his sleeves.
They weren't shot—they were willed forward, slicing through the air, carrying killing intent sharp enough to chill bone.
Raven's head tilted, upper mask glinting under the pale light. He raised his arm casually to intercept—
—but the moment his motion began, the projectiles curved, twisting mid-air like serpents, veering towards Phantom.
A flicker.
Raven spun backwards in a seamless full-body rotation, his cloak swirling like liquid shadow.Twin claws flashed—tink!tink!—as the projectiles were deflected back with reverse momentum.
But even before the last shard fully left Raven's hand, Velstrak fired again—this time, straight at Raven's back, aiming for the kill.
Another rotation. One fluid dance.
Raven flowed through the motion like water made of blades. His body moved with an eerie grace, deflecting both the aftershock barrage and redirecting them again mid-spin—his movement perfect, feral, and calculated.
The shards screamed through the air, returning to sender with doubled velocity.
But Velstrak was already moving.
In one burst of speed, he shot forward, slicing down all the projectiles with crescent arcs of his bare hands—revealing claws laced with tech and alchemy.
"Let's cut the warm-up," he snarled, dashing straight for Raven with a grin of a man born to kill.
Velstrak blurred, vanishing from view in a flicker. His footsteps echoed erratically—zip, dash, zip, bouncing across walls and ceiling like a glitch in gravity.
He reappeared an inch away from Raven.
His clawed hand arced forward, deadly, silent—
—and stopped. Cold.
Raven hadn't moved.
His masked face tilted ever so slightly.
"You're this slow?" he muttered, as if disappointed.
Velstrak's eyes widened. He hadn't just been countered. He'd been read.
With zero wasted motion, Raven's hand snapped forward, clutching the man's neck mid-lunge.
A brutal knee to the ribs shattered something inside, followed by a roundhouse kick to the skull that flung him sideways like a ragdoll—
—but before he could even hit the ground—
TWANG.
From the shadows behind, Phantom had already drawn his colossal adamantium war bow, nearly 2.5 meters long, its black limbs pulsing with a crimson hue.
Five arrows loosed in a single breath.
They weren't arrows.
They were judgements.
One for each limb. One for the head.
Schlick. Crack. Tear. Thunk. Pop.
Velstrak's body fell in pieces before it even touched the ground.
Raven exhaled quietly."It's done."He turned to walk back—
"WAIT!" Glitch's voice shattered the stillness like thunder."WATCH OUT!"
Before Raven could even fully turn—A monstrous fist, larger than any normal limb, came out of nowhere—
—and SLAMMED into Raven's face with the force of a meteor strike.
BOOOOOOM!!!
The ground cracked. The air screamed.Dust exploded outward like a sandstorm birthed from hell.
The screen blurred.
Council members watching through Phantom's bodycam stood up in shock, mouths agape.
The impact echoed across the chamber.
And then—
Black.