Chapter 55: Neighbour [3]

Chapter 55

From the rooftop of the neighboring building, X3 watched them through a long-range lens.

He had lived his entire life as a weapon. As a child his village had burned in a single night. The survivors—mostly children—were taken by men in dark coats and delivered to one of the lesser noble houses that specialized in producing tools rather than heirs. The training that followed was simple and absolute: kill or be killed. Instructors repeated an old belief until it became law—if a child developed enough understanding of a class before awakening, the class would answer them when the time came. So the children were forced to study death from every angle.

X3’s sister had been taken with him. She was the only reason he survived the early years. She whispered courage when the beatings came, shared what little food they received, and promised that one day they would leave together. Then the first real test arrived. Each child was ordered to kill. Most hesitated. X3 did not. He turned on the nearest unguarded target—his own sister—and drove the practice blade into her without warning. The betrayal in her eyes lasted only a second. After that he laughed. The sound surprised even the instructors. From that day the path was set. He killed whoever he was told to kill, and somewhere along the way he began to enjoy the work. His original name faded. The house gave him a designation instead: X3. By the time he reached Master rank he had removed targets across half the continent—generals, guild leaders, even a few minor sovereign heirs.

This time the order was different. Kill a classless boy. The request had disgusted him. He had ended lives that shook nations, and now he was being asked to erase a failed awakener who should have died of irrelevance. Still, orders were orders. He had tracked the money, broken the contractor, and finally located the apartment. Through the lens he watched the boy eating breakfast with a woman. The woman was beautiful in a quiet, mature way. X3 decided he would take his time with her first. Distorting beauty had always been more entertaining than a clean kill.

She left the apartment and stepped next door. Perfect. A few minutes of privacy with the boy, then he would handle the woman when she returned. X3 shifted his weight to move.

His left leg separated cleanly at the thigh.

There was no sound of a blade, only a thin black line that appeared in the air and vanished. Blood poured across the rooftop gravel. X3 screamed and collapsed against the low wall, staring at the empty space where his leg had been.

Elena stood a few paces behind him, expression almost bored.

"Why are you crying like a child?" she asked. "Aren’t you supposed to be an assassin?"

He tried to speak and found his voice strangely muted, as if the air itself refused to carry it farther than her ears. "You... how? Why are you here?"

Elena crouched, still well out of reach. "I should be asking you that. What is a Master-rank assassin doing in my city? Who sent you after me?"

X3 clutched at the spurting stump, panic climbing fast. "How did you—who are you?"

Her head tilted. "You don’t know who I am? Then why are you here if not to kill me?"

He kept trying to stop the bleeding. A Master-tier killer reduced to scrambling on a rooftop like a wounded animal. Elena’s gaze drifted past him, down toward the apartment where Rael had already returned to cleaning the floor, completely unaware of the blood being spilled less than sixty meters away.

Her voice lost every trace of playfulness. "Don’t tell me you’re after him."

X3’s breath turned shallow. The pressure around him thickened.

She stepped closer. "You think you can take him away from me?"

Another black line flickered from the motion of her fingers. His remaining leg left his body. He folded, whimpering, unable even to scream properly.

Dark energy coiled around Elena in thin, almost invisible threads. X3 had hunted long enough to recognize the signature. Only one person in the current era carried that particular authority over death.

"Witch of Calamity..." he whispered. "What is someone like you doing in a place like this?"

Elena smiled without warmth. "So you do know me. Good."

"At least answer me before you finish it," he managed. "Why are you here?"

"I’ll answer," she said, "if you tell me why you were trying to kill that boy."

X3 swallowed blood and fear. "His name is Rael Blackthorn. His family ordered the hit. If I were you I wouldn’t involve myself with the Blackthorns."

Elena’s expression flattened into something colder. "A Blackthorn. Those black-haired bastards always did have too much confidence. Walking into my territory as if it belonged to them."

"Now tell me," X3 forced out. "Why are you here?"

Elena moved her fingers once more. A final black line crossed the space between them. His head left his shoulders and landed on the gravel with a dull sound. The body followed a moment later.

She looked down at the remains without expression. "Because I want to."

Far below, Rael continued wiping the living-room floor, entirely ignorant of how close death had come. He never felt the Master-tier presence, never sensed the killing intent that had been locked on him only moments earlier. The morning remained ordinary.

The front door opened. Elena stepped inside carrying a bucket and an armful of cleaning cloths, as if she had simply gone next door for supplies.

"Well," she said, "let’s start cleaning."

Rael looked up, still on his knees, and smiled. "Thank you again."

Elena waved the gratitude away with a light gesture. "Stop being so formal, student. It’s only cleaning."

She set the bucket down and began working beside him, the rooftop and its fresh corpse already forgotten.

---