Cassian Vole — the Knife Choir, elite Fixer, surgical executioner, ghost of a hundred erased incidents — lies pinned to the black basalt of a ruined courtyard far outside any map that matters.
His own knives hold him there.
Each blade placed with clinical precision.
Each wound deliberate.
Each angle… instructional.
No witnesses remain. No cameras ever existed. No records will survive the night.
But the message was never meant for the world.
Only for those who would understand.
Written in arterial red across the stone beside him, dragged by fingers already losing warmth:
Victims, aren’t we all?
The Fixer channels fracture within minutes.
Cassian Vole did not lose. Cassian Vole was not caught. Cassian Vole was not someone you found after the fact.
Cassian Vole was someone you sent when a situation needed to disappear so completely the world never realized it had existed.
Yet here he lies.
A corpse arranged like a lesson.
A declaration written in blood.
A truth the Order buried.
You were not dead.
---
Luciana Winter receives the report alone.
She reads it once.
Then again.
Then a third time, slower, tracing every detail as if afraid the words will change if she blinks.