Elias bled in ways the knife never touched.
At first, it was quiet. A flinch when someone laughed too loudly in the street. A hesitation when Carmen placed a blade into his hand. He smiled when he was supposed to, but his fingers twitched, remembering better than he did that no salvation waited for him in the spiral.
Carmen watched his unraveling with the patience of a wolf circling a wounded deer. Julian pretended not to notice, polishing weapons that needed no sharpening, humming tuneless songs that vibrated against the cracked walls. Vivienne watched too, scribbling broken phrases into her notebook—not because it would save her, but because writing made her feel less like the next to fall.
Elias was never built for the long game. Carmen had known it from the start. He was a hammer thrown through glass—violent, messy, useful for one perfect impact before he shattered completely.
That moment was close now.
Vivienne found him on the balcony after midnight, the city coughing fog across the rooftops. He didn't hear her approach. He leaned over the railing, arms trembling, breath coming shallow and fast.
She hesitated. Every instinct screamed to leave him alone, to walk away. But something raw and human still clawed under her ribs, something Carmen hadn't yet burned clean.
"Elias," she said quietly.
He turned, startled, eyes wide, wet, furious. For a moment, he looked like a boy, not a weapon. For a moment, she almost forgot he had blood on his hands too.
"You have to leave," he said, his voice breaking. "They'll use you. They'll eat you alive."
Vivienne stepped closer, feeling the cold creep up her spine.
"They already have," she said.
She wasn't sure if it sounded like sadness or relief.
Elias sagged against the rail, his shoulders shaking. "I didn't think it would feel like this," he whispered. "I thought it would fix me. Make it quiet."
Vivienne nodded slowly. She understood.
Killing didn't fix the broken pieces.
It just rearranged them into uglier shapes.
"You can't run," she said. "Not anymore."
Elias laughed, low and bitter. "Then maybe I can fall."
Vivienne didn't reach for him.
There was no reaching left to do.
Carmen watched them from the window, her reflection split across the cracked glass.
She didn't feel anger.
She didn't feel pity.
She felt inevitability.
Elias was already falling.
Vivienne was already too numb to stop it.
And London kept bleeding because someone had to.
Julian came up behind Carmen, resting his chin lightly against her shoulder, his arms winding around her waist in a gesture that should have been tender but felt more like ownership.
"He'll break tonight," he said, voice soft against her skin.
Carmen nodded.
The cold knot inside her chest unraveled, slow and sweet.
"Let him," she said.
They didn't need Elias whole.
They only needed his broken pieces to be sharp enough to hurt something on the way down.
The break came just before dawn.
Glass shattered.
Vivienne jolted awake where she had curled against the wall like a wounded animal. She stumbled into the main room, heart hammering.
Elias stood over the table, a knife buried deep in the wood, blood running from his palm where he had gripped the blade too tightly.
He looked at Carmen, breathing hard, wild-eyed.
"I did it," he gasped. "I did what you asked."
Julian stepped closer, silent, smiling.
Carmen tilted her head, studying him with a cold curiosity.
"Show me," she said.
Elias dragged something from his coat pocket and threw it to the floor—a locket, blood-streaked, the chain snapped.
Vivienne stared at it, her stomach twisting.
Another kill.
But not one they had sanctioned.
Carmen plucked up the locket between two fingers, inspecting it like a jeweler searching for a flaw.
"You were supposed to wait," she said, her voice calm, measured, surgical.
Elias trembled, his whole body buckling under the weight of his own ruin.
"I thought—" he stammered.
"You thought wrong," Carmen said.
She stepped closer. Elias flinched.
Vivienne wanted to look away.
She couldn't.
She knew what was coming.
She had seen it before.
She would see it again.
Carmen reached up, almost gently, and cupped Elias's face in her hand.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Then she drove the slender knife, hidden in her palm, up beneath his ribs.
Elias gasped—a soft, broken sound—and Carmen guided him gently to the floor, kneeling with him as he sank, her hand pressed flat against his chest to feel the final ragged beats of a heart that had wanted so badly to be useful.
Vivienne stood frozen, her mouth dry, her eyes burning.
Julian crouched beside Carmen, wiping the blood from her wrist with a handkerchief, efficient and precise.
Elias stared up at the ceiling, lips moving silently.
No prayers.
No accusations.
Just the simple, stunned question that always came:
Why?
Carmen leaned close, her breath warm against his ear.
"Because you believed we needed you," she said, almost kind.
The light fled from Elias's eyes.
Another piece gone.
Another thread cut from the Spiral.
They buried him beneath the floorboards of the watchmaker's shop before the city stirred.
No ceremony.
No gravestone.
Just dirt and silence and forgetting.
When it was done, Julian pulled Vivienne aside by the elbow, rough enough to bruise.
"You feel sorry for him?" he asked.
Vivienne didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
Julian smiled, thin and wolfish.
"Good," he said. "Remember how it feels."
Carmen stood at the window, watching the dawn struggle against the weight of fog and smoke. She lit a cigarette, exhaled slow and steady into the broken morning.
The city was still bleeding.
The spiral was still turning.
And they were still standing.
That was all that mattered.
That was all that would ever matter.