The next time Elsa saw Vin Aldreth, he wasn't in the boardroom.He was standing on the rooftop of Jefferson Tower, a glass of aged scotch in one hand, the wind pulling at his designer coat.
The city sparkled beneath them — like a mirage. Or a trap.
"You called this meeting?" Elsa asked, walking toward him.
Vin turned slowly, his smile both charming and dangerous."I did. Thought you deserved to hear it face-to-face, not filtered through twenty layers of PR fog."
"Hear what?"
"That you're being set up."
Elsa's eyes narrowed.
Vin took a slow sip, then held out a flash drive. "Everything I could recover. Memos. Account movements. Encrypted comms between Chess and a ghost shell company linked to Yurei."
Elsa didn't reach for it.
"You don't even like him," she said. "Why help?"
Vin smirked. "Because I like you. And because I know how people like Chess work. Brilliant, mysterious, emotionally sealed-off…"
He took a step closer.
"…and always hiding something."
What Elsa didn't know was that Chess had been on the rooftop minutes before her.
He'd traced the encrypted email's signal. Disabled two Yurei bugs. Silently stepped out of frame just before she arrived.
Now, from the next building, Lance stood with a pair of binoculars.
"He's pushing her," Lance muttered. "Should I drop him?"
"No," Chess said quietly over comms. "Let the wolf play a little longer."
"You sure?"
"I want to see what story he weaves."
Vin's voice was low now. Intimate.
"I know what it feels like, Elsa. To carry a family on your back. To be the one everyone looks at, but no one listens to. We're the same."
"No," she said carefully. "We're not."
But her voice had lost its edge.
Vin smiled wider.
"Let me help you. I can clean this mess. Clear your name. But you have to let me in."
Elsa looked away.
Her marriage with Chess — if you could call it that — had always been enigmatic. Full of unsaid things, ghosts in the room, feelings too big to be spoken.
Vin was offering something different.
Clear. Direct. Safe.
Or so it seemed.
That night, Elsa didn't go home.
She sat alone in her private suite at the Solvane Grand, staring at the flash drive Vin gave her.
She hadn't plugged it in yet.
Didn't want to believe it.
Chess's absence… it hurt. Not because he was gone, but because she didn't know why.
Who was he, really?
She remembered his eyes — deep, cold, sometimes ancient.
Like he'd lived through things no man should have survived.
At the same moment, in an underground lab hidden below Seradine's skyline, a Yurei technician screamed.
The files Vin Aldreth had assembled?
They'd been traced.
One by one, the servers began to crash.
Then a single message appeared across every screen:
"I see you. I warned you. You fed the wolves. Now they'll bite."– C.G.
Back in his hidden suite, Chess stood before a mirror — shirtless, ancient scars across his chest glowing faintly.
Each one… a story. A war.
He lit a single incense stick, whispering a phrase in an old dialect:
"Balance the blade. Silence the storm."
Behind him, the Fang of Joriath — a legendary weapon from the Celestial Fang Sect — shimmered into existence.
Lance's voice crackled through comms.
"Vin's making his next move."
"Good," Chess said softly. "Let him."