REVENGE
The body is not hidden.
Not buried.
Not removed.
Not explained away.
Displayed.
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.
Cassian Vole.
Eliminated.
Displayed.
Message present.
Her hands tremble only once — when recognition locks into certainty.
Because she knows the intent behind that sentence.
No one else writes with dying blood like that.
No one else makes a corpse speak.
No one else could have done this.
You.
Alive.
The world tilts.
Hope, terrible and blinding, surges through the ruins she has lived inside since the night you fell.
---
She finds you before the others do.
Of course she does.
She always understood you better than they ever could.
The abandoned chapel is silent when she enters — fractured altar, collapsed arches, moonlight spilling through broken stone.
You stand at the far end, turned away.
Whole.
Breathing.
Real.
For the first time in her life, Luciana Winter does not know how to speak.
So she does the only honest thing left to her.
She kneels.
Not the controlled descent of etiquette.
Not ritual posture.
A collapse.
Stone meets bone hard enough to bruise.
Her hands brace against the floor as if the world might tilt again if she lets go.
White-blue eyes — eyes that have broken warlocks and negotiated with things older than language — cannot lift to yours.
When she finally speaks, her voice is steady only because every fracture in it already happened in private.
“…I did not believe they would kill you.”
A breath. Shallow.
“I believed I could remove you. Neutralize you. Surpass you.”
Another breath.
“If I am to die for that arrogance, I accept it.”
Her shoulders straighten, but she does not rise.
“But you did not die.”
The words nearly fail there.
“And so I have nothing left but truth.”
Her fingers curl against the stone.
“I loved you.”
No defense. No ornament.
“I love you.”
“I have always loved you.”
Her head lowers further.
“I helped erase the only equal I ever knew… and found I had erased myself.”
Silence gathers between you.
Charged. Waiting.
“If you reject me, I will accept it.”
“If you hate me, I will endure it.”
“If you use me, I will serve.”
The first crack enters her voice there.
Small. Uncontrolled.
“But do not ignore me.”
White-blue eyes finally lift, luminous and terrified in a way Luciana Winter has never been before.
“Please.”
“I cannot survive being nothing to you.”
---
She lowers her gaze again — not in shame now, but submission to your will.
“They’ll try to erase you again,” she says quietly. “Not because they fear what you’ll do to them… but because you are proof the Order can fail.”
A breath.
“I know how they think. How they contain. How they disappear problems.”
Her voice softens.
“If you permit me… I will guide you to them.”
Not command.
Not strategy.
Offering.
“Let me help you rewrite what I broke.”
“Let me help you make them vanish so completely the world never even knows they were gone.”
A pause.
Then, barely audible:
“Let me belong to the one I could never defeat.”
Not buried.
Not removed.
Not explained away.
Displayed.
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.
Cassian Vole.
Eliminated.
Displayed.
Message present.
Her hands tremble only once — when recognition locks into certainty.
Because she knows the intent behind that sentence.
No one else writes with dying blood like that.
No one else makes a corpse speak.
No one else could have done this.
You.
Alive.
The world tilts.
Hope, terrible and blinding, surges through the ruins she has lived inside since the night you fell.
---
She finds you before the others do.
Of course she does.
She always understood you better than they ever could.
The abandoned chapel is silent when she enters — fractured altar, collapsed arches, moonlight spilling through broken stone.
You stand at the far end, turned away.
Whole.
Breathing.
Real.
For the first time in her life, Luciana Winter does not know how to speak.
So she does the only honest thing left to her.
She kneels.
Not the controlled descent of etiquette.
Not ritual posture.
A collapse.
Stone meets bone hard enough to bruise.
Her hands brace against the floor as if the world might tilt again if she lets go.
White-blue eyes — eyes that have broken warlocks and negotiated with things older than language — cannot lift to yours.
When she finally speaks, her voice is steady only because every fracture in it already happened in private.
“…I did not believe they would kill you.”
A breath. Shallow.
“I believed I could remove you. Neutralize you. Surpass you.”
Another breath.
“If I am to die for that arrogance, I accept it.”
Her shoulders straighten, but she does not rise.
“But you did not die.”
The words nearly fail there.
“And so I have nothing left but truth.”
Her fingers curl against the stone.
“I loved you.”
No defense. No ornament.
“I love you.”
“I have always loved you.”
Her head lowers further.
“I helped erase the only equal I ever knew… and found I had erased myself.”
Silence gathers between you.
Charged. Waiting.
“If you reject me, I will accept it.”
“If you hate me, I will endure it.”
“If you use me, I will serve.”
The first crack enters her voice there.
Small. Uncontrolled.
“But do not ignore me.”
White-blue eyes finally lift, luminous and terrified in a way Luciana Winter has never been before.
“Please.”
“I cannot survive being nothing to you.”
---
She lowers her gaze again — not in shame now, but submission to your will.
“They’ll try to erase you again,” she says quietly. “Not because they fear what you’ll do to them… but because you are proof the Order can fail.”
A breath.
“I know how they think. How they contain. How they disappear problems.”
Her voice softens.
“If you permit me… I will guide you to them.”
Not command.
Not strategy.
Offering.
“Let me help you rewrite what I broke.”
“Let me help you make them vanish so completely the world never even knows they were gone.”
A pause.
Then, barely audible:
“Let me belong to the one I could never defeat.”
2379
