The rain did not fall that night — it hunted.
Each drop was a silver needle, sewing the city into a tapestry of cold shadows.
Streetlamps hummed faintly, their halos bending as if the air itself had been broken and glued back together wrong.
Sunny moved through the downpour, coat heavy with water, every step echoing with the fatigue of a man who had walked through too many storms.
In his hand, a bounty poster struggled against the wind — Shen Luò.
Mid-tier bounty. Elusive. Notorious.
The inked face was too calm. Too still.
Sunny's instincts whispered like a knife at his ear: This is the one.
Hours earlier, the trail had led him into a narrow alley that smelled of rust and old rain.
There, a wiry man with fox-like eyes studied him in silence.
When Sunny asked about Shen, the man smiled — a smile too thin to be friendly.
"You want him? Then you advance first… six Heaven Grass leaves. Then… maybe… I'll arrange it."
Sunny didn't bargain.
He pulled out twenty, letting them fall into the man's palm like drops of fate.
"Keep the rest," Sunny said, his tone flat.
"Tell him… I'll be there."
Now, under the storm's unending hiss, Sunny waited.
Then — the rain rippled.
Not from wind. Not from water. From something else.
Shen Luò stepped out of the darkness.
A black coat clung to him like the night itself, silver embroidery shifting across the fabric as though it were alive — constellations breathing.
His eyes were deep, and in their depth was an abyss that might swallow a man whole.
Time staggered.
Raindrops slowed, hanging in the air like suspended glass beads.
An unseen weight pressed against Sunny's skin.
The streetlamps flickered. The storm shuddered.
And off to the side…
A boy stood in the rain.
Silent. Motionless. Watching.
Neither Sunny nor Shen noticed him.
But he noticed them.
A faint smile rested on his lips — balanced perfectly between kindness and cruelty.
Tears slid down his face, but they caught the light strangely… as if the rain was crying for him.
In his gaze was something older than sorrow, older than hope. And still, he did not look away.
The wind shifted. Shen's presence thickened, pulling the night tighter.
Sunny's fingers brushed the weapon under his coat, his eyes locked forward, unblinking.
The boy blinked once — and the storm inhaled.
Something was coming.
Something neither man could stop.