There was blood on the ceiling.
It clung in high, arched splashes like a signature—abstract, obscene, wet. Fluorescent lights buzzed above, stuttering against the steel walls of the chamber. Sterile. Cold. Meant for precision. Instead, it looked like a slaughterhouse.
She didn't blink.
K-nyx, designation only. No name.
She knelt on one knee, one palm pressed to the floor, the other gripping the curve of her ribcage where a blade had cracked cartilage. She'd stitched herself up ten minutes ago, surgical glue and gauze taped over the gash. It tugged when she breathed, but the pain was clean. Manageable.
Four bodies surrounded her—agents like her. Men she'd trained with. Shared rations with. Shared blood with. Now hollow-eyed, jaw slack, guns still in hand but cooling beside them.
She had killed them all in under two minutes.
Not because she wanted to.
Because they pulled the trigger first.
She rotated her dislocated shoulder back into place with a low pop. The hum of electricity behind the walls made her jaw ache. Her gloved fingers trembled once, not from fatigue—from restraint.
The comm-link in her ear hissed to life. Static. Then a voice.
> "K-nyx. Report. Is the package neutralized?"
She answered flatly. "Target down. Interference cleared."
> "Copy. Extraction team rerouted to Warehouse Six. Confirm arrival."
No name. No apology. Not even a pause for the dead.
She stood. Blood soaked the thighs of her tactical pants. Gun holstered, knife sheathed. The tang of copper filled her mouth, even though she wasn't bleeding anymore. She crossed the room with calm, deliberate steps and looked out through the shattered window.
Rain painted the world in gray strokes. Neon from distant buildings cut across the sky like wounds. Somewhere below, sirens wailed like they were mourning something. Maybe they were.
She took out a cigarette from her front vest pocket. Not to smoke. She'd never smoked a day in her life. She liked the feel of them between her fingers—fragile, easily crushed. Like necks. Like trust.
She paused.
The silence behind her was too complete.
The second she turned, she saw the red dot bloom on her chest.
Laser-sight. Center mass. Precision kill.
The voice behind it was cold. Familiar.
> "K-nyx. You were never supposed to make it this far."
She didn't move. Didn't blink. Her lips tilted slightly, not in shock or fear—in confirmation. Of course it was him. Her handler. The only one who ever made her laugh in the middle of a desert ambush. The one who knew her kill count and never flinched.
> "You're a threat now. You know that, right?"
She tilted her head, smile fading into stillness.
"I always was."
The shot cracked through the room.
Her body hit the ground before the echo faded.
---
THE VOID
There was no pain. No body. No blood. No light.
There was only silence.
Not even the kind that rings.
This was the absence of everything.
She floated—if you could call it that. No limbs, no breath, no thought, just awareness. A lone flicker of consciousness drifting in a black ocean of unbeing.
She had expected hell. Or at least a debriefing.
Instead, there was nothing.
Time didn't move.
She didn't age. She didn't decay. She simply was.
And then—
A pull.
Sharp. Sudden. Wrong.
---
THE BODY
Her spine arched as if electrocuted.
Air rammed into her lungs like a truck. She gasped—loud, guttural. Not from pain. From the sheer violence of existence.
She opened her eyes.
Ceiling tiles. Cracked. Yellowed. Faint mold along the corners. A fan rotated overhead with a dying wheeze.
She stared for exactly four seconds, unmoving.
Then: flexed fingers. Shifted hips. Rolled her neck.
Her breathing was wrong. Too deep. Her chest didn't rise as it should.
Her center of gravity felt lower. Heavier.
She moved her hand under the waistband of her pants.
Pause.
"…Ah." A single syllable. Dry. Low,husky, Mildly annoyed.
She sat up.
The bed creaked under new weight. The mattress was thin, springs sharp against bone. A small, grimy window let in a shaft of city dusk—gray light, soft rain.
Her body felt stronger. Broader shoulders. Longer legs. Less curve, more function. She stood, naked from the waist up, and walked with bare feet across cracked tiles toward the mirror on the far wall.
And there she saw him.
Black hair, thick and unkempt, falling over dark brows.
Skin pale, soft.
Violet cat eyes—too sharp, too inhuman for this world.
Pillowy lips, unamused and parted slightly.
Three silver studs in one ear.
And stretching across his spine, visible in the mirror's broken reflection—a black Roman thorn tattoo, twisting up the vertebrae like a crown of war.
She dragged her gaze downward. Muscled torso. Lean. Sleek. A body made for speed and silence. On his lower stomach, barely visible above the loose sweatpants: a red belly-button piercing, glinting like a drop of blood.
She said the name aloud, voice now deeper, foreign:
"Nox Virelli."
---
MEMORIES
Then—like a match struck in the dark—the past flooded in.
But not hers.
— A boy unwanted.
— Raised in a slum apartment by a mother who drank until she vanished.
— Ignored by the Virelli family, labeled illegitimate, irrelevant.
— Survived public school by being invisible.
— Accepted into an elite college by sheer brainpower and zero charm.
— Dorm listed, assigned two roommates.
— One was Leo Volkov. The heir. The storm.
— The other was Ash Navarro. The peace. The foil. The slow tragedy.
She remembered reading all this. A trashy, gritty mafia romance. Bleak. Slow burn. Bittersweet.
Leo and Ash had been stars on a dying stage, circling each other until the world tore them apart.well until Ash decided the danger wasn't for him and left .
She remembered rolling her eyes at the melodrama.
She remembered liking the quiet parts—where the violence came not from bullets, but from truths too sharp to say aloud.
---
Nox stared at her reflection.
Same soul. New body. A world built out of fiction.
She didn't smile. She didn't speak.
She simply accepted.
END OF CHAPTER ONE