"It is too late for ifs, and too late for rescues. All that remains is vengeance." ― George R.R. Martin (A Storm of Swords)

* * * *

The rain had started an hour ago, a slow drizzle that had since swelled into a heavy downpour. The streets of Blackpool gleamed under the yellow glare of cracked streetlights, pools of water gathering in the potholes and along the gutters.

Posters—red, white, and black, flapped wetly against the sides of buildings, some nearly peeling off, others freshly pasted. The face of Albert Nicolosi, cold and severe, was stamped on nearly all of them with slogans such as:

PROTECT OUR PEOPLE. ELIMINATE THE GIFTED.

OBEDIENCE IS ORDER. ORDER IS PEACE.

Jamison Fletcher moved like a shadow beneath the flickering lamplight, raindrops rolling down his black tee, soaking into the jeans clinging to his legs. A black jacket was tied around his waist, a faint bulge visible beneath it—his blade concealed beneath it, one of the few tools he trusted over a gun. The dagger tattoo inked on the side of his neck shimmered wetly in the rain.

He kept his steps light and deliberate, skimming the sides of buildings, weaving between parked vehicles and overturned trash bins. Even Blackpool, once a bustling hub for trade, had hollowed out over the years, and is now a pit of hunter propaganda and fervent hatred. Any Gifted caught here wasn't seen as a threat, or even a criminal. They were trophies.

The stench of damp stone mixed with the ever-present rot of a broken city. He'd seen the signs—graffiti scratched over with red Xs, empty homes with black armbands tied to their doors, and propaganda stencilled over every public board.

"Animals," Jamie muttered under his breath as he passed a defaced mural. He didn't let himself linger. Not tonight.

He crossed the perimeter of the hunter compound undetected, the storm masking the crunch of gravel beneath his boots. Barbed wire lined the perimeter, but he'd already mapped a breach—he'd planned a stakeout for weeks, and had scouted the place out.

The central command post for hunter operations across Eldario. All the horrors, all the orchestrated abductions, the experimental programs—they all led back here.

Jamie recalled all his lessons from Zest years ago when they were still part of Blade, and how Zest had taught him the basics of infiltration. "It honestly isn't as complicated as it is," Zest had told Jamie long ago. "I think you can pull it off."

Inside, the compound was deceptively quiet. Lights glowed behind narrow windows, some with shadows moving lazily past them. Most of the hunters, according to Jamie's surveillance, would be clustered in the recreation hall or sleeping off the aftermath of patrols.

But that didn't mean it was safe.

Jamie ducked beneath the wide pane of the recreation room, crouched low beneath the dripping sill. From inside, laughter rang out—deep and guttural. The sound of bottles clinking, a voice recounting a "hunt." A chorus of laughter erupted after the tale ended.

He didn't want to know what the punchline had been. But he had an idea.

Jamie's knuckles turned white around the frame of the window. His breath misted in the cold air. His mind painted the scene easily—some poor Gifted, likely a teen or someone without a Gift that could fight. Tortured, hunted for sport. These bastards called it cleansing.

He shut his eyes, letting the rain roll down his brow as he whispered, "Not now, Jamie. Later."

He kept moving.

The corridors of the headquarters were clean. Too clean. Bleached to hide the blood, no doubt. Walls of concrete and metal, lit with thin strips of cold fluorescent light, created an eerie tunnel-like silence that hummed with electric tension.

Every so often, a hunter would emerge unexpectedly—coming from a bathroom or returning from patrol. Jamie would melt into the shadows, slide behind a rolling utility cart, or duck into supply closets with his breath caught behind his teeth. Every second stretched thin, like wire pulled to the point of snapping.

He moved like smoke through the corridors—silent, invisible, and deadly.

At last, he reached the west wing's third floor—the farthest stretch of the building, where the main terminal room was located. This part of the compound was deathly quiet. No boots stomping. No voices. Even the lights flickered like they were afraid to break the silence.

Jamie crouched beside the sealed door, pulling the small hacking device from his pocket—a custom gadget cobbled together from old ESA scraps and some parts bought off his Abyss contacts. Not the cleanest design, but it worked.

He tapped rapidly on the screen, his fingers slick with rain, the device humming softly. Jamie isn't as good as Raul from Dragonfly when it comes to tech, but he is decent enough with hacking to at least bypass electronic locks.

A red light blinked, then green.

Click.

He exhaled slowly and slipped into the terminal room, easing the door shut behind him.

The darkness inside was thick and still, pierced only by the faint glow of standby monitors. Jamie didn't dare turn on the lights. He moved by memory, guided by the ghost-light from the screens and the hum of cooling fans.

Sitting before the largest terminal, he slotted in his data card. The system jolted awake.

COMMENCING UPLOAD.

A white loading bar began to crawl slowly across the screen. He leaned back, his eyes scanning the monitors while his hand rested on the handle of his dagger.

Considering the sheer size of the information in the main terminal, it is going to take a while, hence why Jamie had chosen tonight of all nights, knowing that tonight is also the night when Albert Nicolosi is away.

Whatever the reason is, it can't be good news.

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Jamie was collecting everything—files, codenames, patrol routes, surveillance footage, and even cross-maps of their bases. Anything that the hunters have in their main terminal, Jamie is going to get his hands on it after tonight. It would be the largest hit to the hunters' logistics in decades.

With this, they could anticipate raids, set up decoys, and even expose traitors in the ESA. This… This would cripple them.

Then something caught Jamie's eye.

A word. One name.

WES.

Jamie froze.

The sound of the rain against the window disappeared. His own breath sounded foreign in his ears. His pulse was a pounding war drum in his chest.

Wes. One of Blade's members. One of those that died during the purge by the hunters years ago—the same reason why all the survivors scattered and went into deep hiding. And while Jamie has no proof, he knew that Lleucu is also alive.

Jamie clicked the file. The screen changed. A live surveillance feed opened. Grainy and cold.

A cell. Four walls of grey concrete. One rusted bed. A sliver of dirty light from above.

And in the corner, chained, bruised, and emaciated…

"Wes…" Jamie's voice cracked.

The man's hair had grown long, black strands hanging limply past his shoulders. His once-muscular frame had withered, his arms and legs covered in healing wounds and bruises that suggested years of abuse. Chains clinked faintly every time he moved. Shackles were bolted to the floor and his wrists.

But those eyes.

Those tired, defiant, storm-grey eyes.

Jamie will know his sworn brother, his comrade anywhere.

On the screen, Wes looked up with shock, and Jamie's eyes widened. Could it be possible that this terminal room is also used to monitor Wes, and could also be used to communicate with him? Knowing the hunters, the reason is probably nothing good.

"That voice…" Wes's voice was hoarse, like he hadn't used it in awhile, scraped raw from disuse. "…Jamie? Is that you?"

Jamie swallowed hard, stepping closer to the screen as though it would bring him any closer. His legs were trembling. "Wes. It's me. It's really me."

Wes sat up straighter, disbelief rippling across his face like a man waking from a decade-long nightmare. "I… I thought you were… All of you were…"

"Dead? You too," Jamie said, his voice shaking. "We thought you were gone during the purge. You never showed. No one ever found your body."

"They…" Wes coughed harshly. "They took me. Kept me alive. Nicolosi… He wanted to test something. Wanted… He wanted to see what happened to the soul of a Gifted when you took away everything."

Jamie's hands clenched into fists. His throat burned.

UPLOAD COMPLETE.

The mechanical voice of the terminal droned.

Jamie spun around and yanked the data card free, shoving it deep into his pocket. But his eyes didn't leave the screen. Not yet.

"I'll come back," Jamie whispered, his voice trembling. "I swear to you, Wes. I'm going to get you out of there."

"No." Wes coughed again, violently this time. Blood speckled his chin. "You can't. Not yet. They'll catch you, Jamie. Nicolosi… He's using Blue Pandora on his soldiers. Refined. I saw it. They're not people anymore. They don't feel pain. They don't sleep. They hunger."

Jamie's stomach dropped.

So the rumours going around the underground circles was true. Jamie hadn't wanted to believe it, having witnessed the horrors the first time the drug had made it's rounds.

The drug was finished. Blue Pandora had been perfected. Nicolosi had brought that nightmare back, and now, the hunters had it in their veins.

Jamie looked at his watch. He didn't have time to linger. He only has two hours, he knew. But damn it, he didn't want to leave Wes in here either!

Wes's voice cracked again. "You have to go. Now."

Jamie stood there for one final second, memorising Wes's face.

Then he turned.

With clinical efficiency, he wiped the system logs, removed all evidence of his login, and carefully retraced his path out of the room. He was faster this time, each echo in the hallway a blade against his spine.

He slipped out of the compound like smoke, the rain hiding the tears he hadn't realised were falling.

Once he was several blocks away, ducking under the collapsed overhang of an abandoned bookstore, Jamie finally allowed himself to breathe. He leaned back against the crumbling wall and slid down until he was seated, his legs stretched out on the wet floor.

Jamie looked up at the dark sky, the rain pouring onto his face.

"Alive," he whispered. "He's alive."

But he couldn't do this alone. Not this time. Not with Nicolosi holding the leash on monsters, on something worse than the public knew. Not with Blue Pandora coursing through the veins of the hunters.

Jamie clenched his jaw.

It was time to reunite with his family, with his brothers and his sisters.

It was time for Blade to rise again.

* * * *

The storm outside Zalfari had not yet touched the Pandemonium Bar, but Leroy could feel it coming, both in the distant rumble of thunder and in the suffocating weight settling in his chest.

On the second level of the bar, the office lights cast a halo across the map of Eldario spread across the wooden table before him. The map looked like it had been weeping blood. Red zones bled across the parchment in jagged, fevered ink, infecting the land like a spreading disease.

Blue markers, once symbols of sanctuary or neutrality, were now scarce—isolated islands surrounded by a sea of hostile territory. Burned towns, surveillance chokeholds, hunter strongholds, and recently reported Gifted purges all marked in crimson.

And the red was winning.

"This isn't looking good," Alisa said grimly from across the table, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Her hair stuck damply to her temples, remnants of the rain she hadn't even bothered to dry off from. Her voice was quiet, but heavy with implication. "I'm starting to think we need to consider contingency plans to clear out of Eldario if this gets any worse. Even if we win, Eldario is finished."

Leroy didn't respond. Because she was right.

Even now, he couldn't take his eyes off the thin, spreading blotch of red around the central region—the heart of Eldario.

He stared at the capital district, where the hunters had embedded themselves like a parasite, converting law enforcement offices into weapons depots, hijacking ESA routes, co-opting city officials into puppets of the hunter doctrine. He clenched his jaw.

It wasn't just war anymore. It was eradication.

Alisa let out a breath, one that trembled more than she'd intended. "You're thinking it, too. Aren't you? That we may be too late. That even if we stop Blue Pandora… Stop the hunters… What's left of this country may not be worth saving."

Still, Leroy said nothing.

He simply leaned forward, bracing both hands on the edge of the table. His dark eyes were tired. More than tired. Haunted. The kind of eyes that had watched too many young Gifted burned alive in makeshift square executions. The kind of eyes that had seen the terrified faces of children torn from families under Nicolosi's new raids.

They didn't even see the Gifted as human anymore.

They weren't people to the hunters. They were pests. Threats. Creatures to be put down. Every time the hunters struck a town, their broadcasts would label it a "cleansing." A "containment operation." They released edited footage. They accused innocents of plots that didn't exist.

And the public? The Normals who feared the Gifted's power but lacked context or understanding? Many cheered.

Nicolosi had done what no tyrant before him could: dehumanise an entire population with the ease of a headline.

Leroy's fist slowly curled against the map. The room was quiet, only the faint hum of the bar's generator down below, and the soft hiss of rain beginning to tap against the high ceiling.

And then…

Bzzzzzt.

His phone buzzed.

Once. Twice.

A sharp, sudden noise that cracked through the tension like a pistol shot.

Both Leroy and Alisa froze.

Slowly, Leroy pulled the device from his pocket and stared down at it.

No Caller ID. No number. Blank screen.

Encrypted.

His breath caught.

There were only five people alive who had his personal contact.

And none of them should be calling him from a blanked-out line.

Leroy looked at Alisa. She was already staring at him, a rare trace of alarm on her otherwise composed face. "…Answer it," she said. Her voice was quiet, but strained with unease. "Put it on loudspeaker."

Leroy did. He pressed the green button and set the phone on the table. "Who is this?" he asked.

There was silence.

Thick, oppressive silence stretched too long. Leroy's stomach coiled. The storm was closer now, he could hear it.

Then…

A soft exhale. A voice, tired but unmistakably real.

"…Leroy."

Leroy stood up so fast that his chair scraped backwards and toppled to the floor with a bang.

Alisa's breath hitched audibly. "…No way," she whispered.

Leroy's chest seized. It couldn't be. It couldn't be.

But he knew that voice. That tone—low, edged, distant, but razor-sharp underneath. The voice of someone who had faced death and come back with scars deeper than skin.

"…Jamie?" Alisa's voice cracked, disbelief breaking through her cool facade like a hammer through glass. "What in the Goddess's name…?"

Leroy stared down at the phone like it had become something sacred. "…Jamie, is that you?" he whispered, his mouth dry.

There had been rumours over the past year. Whispers in the shadows. Hunter corpses found mutilated—slaughtered with efficiency and cruelty. Reports of someone carving through blacksites with surgical violence.

A ghost. A demon. Some underground members called him the "Dagger in the Dark."

But Leroy, Alisa, Sera, and Zest had always wondered.

Always hoped.

Jamie had been Blade's Left Hand. The one they sent in when threats needed to disappear. When darkness needed to be answered with something darker. He was the sharp edge of the sword that none of them wanted to admit they needed. He had been family.

And he'd been gone for five years.

"It's been a while, Leroy," Jamie's voice came again. Steady and controlled. But there was something beneath it—gravelled pain, like his words had been dragged through too many memories before being spoken. "Listen. I need you to gather the others. Sera. Zest. You and Alisa, too. And if you can reach Lleucu, bring him."

Leroy blinked. His pulse surged in his throat. "How did you…? Wait. You knew? You knew we were alive?"

Jamie gave a low, short breath. Half a laugh, half a sigh. "Don't kid around. Of course I knew. I've been watching all of you for years."

Leroy swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry as ash. His hands shook.

Across the table, Alisa had paled. Her lips were parted slightly in shock, eyes distant, like her brain was trying to reconcile years of grief and belief all at once.

They had mourned Jamie. Then they had doubted. Then hoped.

And now he was here. Calling them.

Jamie's voice lowered. "…I need your help."

Silence.

Outside, lightning cracked across the distant sky. The power flickered briefly in the bar. Somewhere downstairs, someone muttered and banged on a faulty light fixture.

But in that room, in that moment, time stopped.

Leroy couldn't speak. Could barely breathe. He looked at Alisa. Her eyes were glassy now, her jaw tight. She was trying not to cry.

Because Jamison Fletcher, the shadow they had all lost, was alive.

And if he was asking for help, it meant the shadows they were facing now were deeper than any of them feared.

This wasn't just a mission anymore.

This was the beginning of something else.

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