The door slammed in their faces with a bang so sharp that Klara nearly flinched.
Nearly.
Instead, she just tilted her head, stared at the freshly shut wooden surface, and burst out laughing. The sound rolled off her tongue like champagne fizz, airy and amused.
"Did you see his face?" she muttered, swinging on her heel with a grin. "I swear, he'll probably forget to eat tonight—too busy kissing his screws and bolts. What a funny little man…"
Her laugh softened into a hum as she crossed her arms and tapped her chin. The glimmer in her eyes wasn't just amusement anymore. It was calculation. "Still, I'll admit, I like his type. Visionaries. They burn themselves hollow chasing dreams. Which means…" She let the thought dangle, her lips curling. "Which means I get to be rich, very, very rich, while he forgets the meaning of money."
She patted the purse at her hip with smug satisfaction. "And you," she said, tossing a sidelong look at Adrian, "you really don't know how good you are to me sometimes, Bellacorte. Pouring five hundred pounds into an excitable squirrel like that? I can already taste the dividends."
But Adrian wasn't listening.
Not to her voice, not to her smug little lampoons. His attention was fixed farther down the street, toward the bend where carriages rumbled in a line and the drizzle's mist smeared all sharp outlines. His left eye was faintly… off. At first glance it looked like nothing—glassiness, perhaps the side-effect of some old wound—but Klara had learned to read him. The blur, the faint shimmer. He wasn't staring blankly. He was seeing.
Scrying.
That realization made her grin widen. Oh, so he wasn't ignoring her after all. He was busy.
"Well, well, look at you." She teased, walking a little closer, trying to peer at the glassy sheen in his eye. "Don't tell me you're daydreaming about the investment too? It's alright, you can admit you're a little excited, I won't—"
"Coffee?"
The word cut through her like a blade across silk. Abrupt. Cool. Final.
Klara blinked once. Then twice. Her eyes narrowed, catching the faint undertone in his voice, the measured cadence. Not a real invitation. A warning, disguised in civility.
Her gaze locked with his, reading him the way a gambler reads a deck. And then she saw it: the subtle aura around that blurred eye, the faint shimmer that wasn't water or weariness.
Something was wrong.
"...ah," she breathed softly. Then her lips parted into a sly smile, the kind that made people underestimate how fast her mind spun. "Well then." She winked, all playfulness on the outside, all razor sharpness underneath. "If it's your treat, I don't see why not."
Without giving him a chance to argue, she slipped her hand into his and tugged, weaving them both into the busy tide of East Borough's streets.
The crowd was thick here—factory workers on their breaks, children darting between skirts and trouser legs, hawkers shouting over each other like crows around carrion. Normally, Klara hated this kind of crush. Too many bodies pressing in, too many eyes, too much stink of oil and sweat. But something strange happened as she walked with Adrian.
The people… parted.
Not drastically. Not like in some storybook where peasants bow to a king's carriage. But they shifted, hesitated, moved aside just enough that Klara and Adrian never had to squeeze. His presence hung heavy and invisible, the way fog changes the air. Subtle, commanding. And with her hand in his, she walked the street as if it belonged to them alone.
She almost forgot to tease him. Almost.
Her mouth opened—ready to quip about how even the crowd couldn't resist his brooding charm—but then she felt it. A faint pressure on her palm. A tap.
Once. Twice. Rhythmic.
Her eyes flicked up at him, startled. But Adrian's face was as calm as ever, eyes half-lidded, fixed straight ahead. He gave no outward sign. Only the tapping continued, deliberate, calculated.
She caught on quick. Morse.
Her lips twitched, her free hand adjusting her coat as if nothing had happened, but under the tension of their clasped palms, she tapped back.
"Are we being chased?"
A beat later, his answer pressed into her skin.
"Three people. I'll deal with two."
Her brows arched. "I can deal with one," she tapped back, firm.
The reply was almost immediate, as if he'd expected her stubbornness.
"No. You go get information from Meursault."
She faltered. Just slightly. Her stride didn't break, her smirk didn't waver, but her tapping paused.
"...I'll try then."
A low vibration of amusement pressed back into her palm.
"Good luck on your 'deductions,' detective."
She nearly laughed out loud. Instead, she squeezed his hand sharply and tapped furiously.
"Was it necessary to morse-code those air quotes?"
"Yes. Now enjoy your drink."
The exchange ended there, their palms slowly loosening as if nothing had been hidden between them at all. Klara shook her head, still smiling, though her thoughts ran a little heavier.
They turned three corners, circled a few streets as if idly wandering, then ducked into a narrow lane choked with ivy and rainwater drains. At its end, almost invisible between two dull brick walls, stood a café. No signboard, no hawkers. Just the faint scent of roasted beans curling out a narrow chimney.
Secluded. Hidden. The kind of place you'd only know if you'd been told.
Adrian pushed open the door for her with a calmness that made it look routine. Klara swept in, shaking a few drops of rain from her hat, her smile returning in full force.
The inside was small, barely more than ten tables, most of them empty. Dark wood, heavy curtains, and the faint sound of a phonograph playing some quiet string melody. The only other patrons were an older man dozing over a newspaper and a young couple whispering too closely in the corner.
Perfect.
Adrian chose a table near the window, sat with that infuriating composure of his, and picked up the menu as if nothing were amiss. "The coffee here is one of my favorites," he said casually, scanning the card. "Seldom have a chance to indulge with how hidden it is."
Klara slipped into the chair beside him, not opposite—beside. Close enough that their elbows brushed. She rested her chin on her hand, smiling wide. "Really now? Then what do you recommend, oh refined one?"
He didn't answer immediately. He seemed more interested in the glass of water the waiter had just set down, watching the surface ripple faintly as if it were more than water.
But outwardly, their play continued.
Idle chatter, soft enough to sound like harmless banter.
Her laugh came at the right times. His smile, faint and amused, timed perfectly.
To anyone else, they were friends sharing coffee on a drizzly Backlund afternoon.
But under the table, their palms touched again, brief and sharp.
Taps carried meaning.
"Stay alert."
Her lips parted in a laugh at some nonsense she herself invented aloud, but her palm answered steady.
"I'm not the one spacing out, darling."
He didn't bother to tap back. Instead, as the waiter poured their drinks, Adrian shifted his glass slightly. Just enough to catch the reflection of the café's door. His blurred left eye stayed fixed on it, glasslike, scrying not just here but somewhere else entirely.
Klara caught it out of the corner of her eye, and despite herself, her smirk softened. A strange picture they made: a dangerous judge hiding his blade behind a gentleman's cane, and a sharp-tongued detective playing at lightness while the storm gathered at their backs.
She reached for her cup and sipped, the steam fogging her lashes.
Adrian did the same, eyes still focused on the glassy reflection, watching an event unfold somewhere far from this quiet little café.
The alley stank of piss and rot.
Jonas crouched in the shadow between two leaning brick walls, his back pressed to one, knees coiled, cane resting across them like a rifle at ease. Around him, glass bottles clinked softly whenever his weight shifted, relics of some drunkard's night forgotten. He adjusted one with a fingertip, stopping it from rolling, and let out a long rasping sigh through his crooked smile.
"Bloody hell," he muttered, voice carrying that scratchy rasp of whiskey and smoke that never left him. "Job pays handsome, sure. Girl's not much of a problem either—quick hands, sharper tongue, but manageable."
He spat into the dirt. His eyes, muddy hazel, narrowed on the glow spilling from the café down the street. His smile twitched, faltered. "But him…" His whisper dropped low. "The judge. That man's presence alone…"
Jonas's scarred hand flexed against the wood of his cane. His instincts screamed at him, louder than they ever had in back-alley ambushes or botched smuggling runs. Not warning of danger—no, warning of inevitability. A weight like the air itself bending around a storm front. Every inch of his body begged him to run.
He almost did. Almost.
And then the air shifted.
Jonas felt it in his teeth before his eyes caught it—the sudden cut of movement. He rolled instinctively, cane scraping against the ground. A split second later, a booted foot slammed into the cobblestones where he'd been crouched. The stone cracked, spiderwebbing outward, chips flying like teeth knocked loose.
Jonas's crooked grin returned. "Well then," he drawled, rising into a half-crouch, cane leveled. "Looks like the fun's found me first."
The figure standing in the alley grinned like a wolf pup who'd just found a toy. Ronan, lean and sharp-eyed, adjusted the fall of his sleeves, knives glinting faintly where they were strapped like hidden bones. He pouted, voice playful and sing-song.
"Mr. Criminal, you shouldn't have dodged, you know?" He flexed his knuckles, shaking off the impact of stone. "Now be a good lad and knock yourself out on my fist."
He extended one hand, fist outstretched, the knuckle presented like an offering. His smile widened, teeth flashing. "Come on. Nice and easy."
Jonas tilted his head, scars tugging his mouth sideways in something between amusement and scorn. His hazel eyes glinted beneath messy black hair streaked with grey.
"You're a cocky bastard, aren't you?" He rose fully, leaning on his cane with deceptive ease. "Fine. Let's dance."
Ronan moved first, as Jonas expected. Always moving, darting forward like a knife thrown by the world itself. His speed was blinding—too fast for Jonas's limp to look anything but pathetic. A flash of steel came from Ronan's sleeve, arcing toward Jonas's chest.
But Jonas didn't block. He stumbled.
A real stagger, cane dragging, weight buckling as though his leg had failed him. Ronan's knife thrust slid too far, missing the heart. Jonas twisted with the stumble, cane whipping up like a club. The iron-reinforced tip smacked against Ronan's forearm with a crack, numbing the limb.
Ronan hissed, grinned wider. "Cheating already. I like you."
He dropped the knife—not because he had to, but because he had three more already in his grip. They flashed in the alley's thin light, one coming from his belt, another from his boot, a third tossed lazily up and caught mid-spin.
Jonas cursed under his breath. "Figures."
The next flurry came harder, knives snapping in like a storm of wings. Jonas blocked with his cane, the metal ringing sharp as it deflected steel. His limp became rhythm, staggering him unpredictably so Ronan's precision whistled past by inches. Still, a shallow cut traced his cheek, another sliced his sleeve open.
Jonas spat blood and laughed low. "That all you got, boy?"
He needed space. A fair fight would kill him.
So he cheated.
With one swing, Jonas shattered a bottle against the wall, glass spraying. He flung the jagged neck at Ronan's face. Ronan twisted, but a shard caught his cheek, leaving a thin red line.
"Good lad," Jonas rasped, already ducking low, cane sweeping out. Ronan leapt over the swing, twisting midair, knife angled downward—
But Jonas was ready. His cane clicked, a hidden mechanism snapping open. From its side, a short barrel extended with a metallic hiss.
The cane-gun roared.
The blast tore chunks from the wall where Ronan had been. Only his speed saved him, twisting aside at the last second, coat whipping. He landed in a crouch, laughing breathlessly.
"Oh, you're fun." His voice was hungry now, wild. He licked the blood from his cheek like a wolf tasting prey.
Ronan darted along the walls, climbing with impossible agility, knives raining down like sleet. Jonas ducked under a crate, rolling behind trash barrels, smashing them into Ronan's path. Bottles shattered, rats squealed, steel clanged against stone.
Everywhere Jonas moved, he left traps. A tossed chain to snare ankles. Dirt flung into eyes. A sudden kick that knocked loose a rain gutter, clattering down like a blade.
He fought ugly, vicious. His limp was bait, his weakness turned into feints that drew Ronan in before snapping out with a gunshot or a blade hidden in the cane's tip.
And for a moment—just a moment—Jonas gained the upper hand.
Ronan misjudged a feint, lunged, and Jonas twisted into him. His cane hooked behind Ronan's knee, yanking hard. At the same time, Jonas slammed the jagged glass neck of a bottle against Ronan's throat.
The younger man froze, knife poised but halted, Adam's apple pressing against broken glass.
Jonas's breath came ragged, eyes wild, grin sharp with triumph. "Got you, pup." His voice rasped with savage glee. "Sequence or not, a throat's still a throat."
For a heartbeat, the alley was his. Victory was his.
Then Ronan laughed.
Not nervous, not panicked. Genuine, delighted laughter.
"You almost had me." His eyes gleamed with manic light. "Almost."
Jonas's gut twisted. Instinct screamed again—louder than before.
Ronan's hand moved. Not the one holding a knife. The other. The one Jonas hadn't watched closely enough. It flicked, and from his sleeve dropped a blade so small, so perfectly hidden in the seam of cloth, Jonas hadn't accounted for it.
The knife slashed upward, grazing Jonas's wrist. His grip faltered, glass slipping. Ronan surged forward, body colliding with Jonas's, momentum a weapon in itself.
They crashed into the wall. Jonas felt the wind rip from his chest. His cane clattered away.
Pinned, Jonas clawed, bit, snarled like a dog in a corner. His fist smashed into Ronan's jaw, his knee drove upward. Ronan only laughed, slipping every blow just barely, his knives dancing at Jonas's ribs without striking deep. Toying with him.
Jonas's survival instincts shrieked. He twisted, slammed his prosthetic leg upward. The scarred wood and iron caught Ronan's side with a crunch. Ronan staggered, real pain flashing in his grin.
Jonas dove for his cane, rolling across broken bottles, blood dripping from cuts across his arms. His fingers closed around it. He whirled, aimed the barrel.
Ronan was already charging, knives out.
Jonas pulled the trigger.
Click.
Empty.
"Shit—"
Ronan's fist slammed into his jaw, stars bursting across his vision. He reeled, tasted copper. The second strike never came.
Because the sound of footsteps broke through the alley's chaos.
Slow. Heavy. Deliberate.
Both combatants froze, panting, bleeding, glaring. Jonas blinked blood from his eyes, Ronan's grin faltered slightly.
Adrian stepped into view.
Tall, coat darkened with rain and streaked with blood. His gloves dripped red, and in each hand he dragged an unconscious man by the collar—broken, battered, their faces swollen beyond recognition. The bodies scraped against cobblestones like sacks of meat.
Adrian's expression was calm. Too calm. His blurred eye glimmered faintly, like glass under moonlight.
He let the men drop, the thud echoing like a gavel's strike.
"Enough."
The word wasn't shouted. It didn't need to be. It settled over the alley like judgment itself, crushing, inescapable.
Ronan exhaled, wiped blood from his lip, and chuckled sheepishly.
Jonas didn't think. He moved.
The instant Adrian's calm voice settled over the alley, the outlaw's instincts detonated like dynamite in his chest. His cane rattled against the stones as he shoved off, scattering glass bottles in every direction. They shattered under his boots, jagged edges singing through the rain as shards skittered across stone.
Jonas kicked at the puddles as he bolted, sending dirty rainwater sluicing back behind him in sheets. The water mixed with the broken glass, turning the alley floor into a slick, glittering death trap for anyone giving chase.
"Try stepping on that, you bastard," he rasped, though the words were drowned under his wheezing breaths. His teeth showed in a grin that was all desperation, no humor.
Behind him came the sound of laughter, high-pitched, wild, uncontainable. Ronan. That feral boy's cackle echoed through the wet brick corridors as though the walls themselves mocked him.
Adrian didn't laugh. Adrian's boots struck the cobbles in slow, steady cadence. Each step carried inevitability, the kind of rhythm you couldn't outpace no matter how fast you ran.
"Ronan," Adrian's voice carried, quiet but inescapable. "The two are yours. Don't disappoint me."
"Yes, judge," Ronan crooned, laughter dripping between the words. Then the sound of knives kissing their sheaths broke through the rain.
Jonas didn't wait to hear more.
His limp was gone. No pretense, no swagger. He didn't dare. The prosthetic leg was too slow, too heavy, too loud. So he abandoned rhythm entirely—leaning into the walls, clawing at them with scarred fingers, launching himself forward like an animal scrambling through a burning cage.
He looked ridiculous. Desperate. Ungraceful. And he didn't care.
Every leap cracked his ribs against brick, every slide tore skin from his palms, every vault left blood and splinters streaking down walls. He gasped through it, sucking in the sour stink of Backlund's gutters until his lungs felt carved out with glass.
Just live. That was all. Don't look back. Just live.
His mind repeated it in rhythm with his pounding heart.
The alley stretched long before him, the pale light of streetlamps promising escape. Jonas skidded on the wet stones, teeth bared in a grin. He'd made it. He—
And there he was.
Adrian.
At the far end of the alley, framed by the fog. His tall figure was unmistakable, that glassy eye catching the faint light and throwing it back in a dead shimmer.
Jonas froze, his heart seizing. It wasn't possible. He hadn't heard him pass. He hadn't seen him cut through. He—
"Fuck!" Jonas spat, spinning, darting left into a side alley so narrow his shoulder scraped brick.
He ran. Turned right. Leapt a barrel. Slid under a broken cart. Another left, then a jagged path between rotting fences and sagging sheds. His body blurred with motion, every scar screaming, every joint flaring fire.
Adrian was there again. At the end. Just standing. Just waiting.
Jonas swore, slammed a shoulder into a door, crashed through. He tumbled into another alley, bones aching, scrambled up before thought could catch him. Another left. Another right. His palms slick with blood and rain.
Adrian.
Waiting.
Closer this time.
Jonas's grin split wider, manic, his laughter bubbling up even through the bile. "No, no, no, you bastard, you don't get me, not like this—"
He hurled himself through another turn, teeth rattling in his skull. He tried to trick the pattern, zigging where instinct screamed zag. Tried to double back, loop sideways.
But every alley ended the same. The man in the fog. The glass eye. The inevitability.
By the tenth alley, Jonas's chest felt like it would cave. His vision swam, dark edges crowding in. His grin was still plastered on his bloodied face, half-snarl, half-laugh.
And then he hit something that wasn't wall.
The breath was torn out of him.
Jonas stumbled back, clutching his chest. Adrian stood there. Not at the end of the alley this time. Here. Before him. His broad chest solid, unyielding, cold even through the wet fabric. Jonas had run straight into him.
"No…" Jonas rasped, staggering back until his spine struck brick. No more alleys left. No more tricks. The rat had run every path in the maze, and here stood the trap.
His scarred hands clawed for anything—bottles, mud, nails in the wall. His fingers closed around a pouch at his belt. With a feral grin, he snapped it open.
Sand. Coarse, dirty, stolen from a site weeks back. He clenched it in his fist, ready to fling it into the judge's eyes.
"Take this, you glass-eyed son of a—"
But he didn't throw.
Because Adrian's hand closed around his throat.
It wasn't violent. It wasn't frantic.
It simply happened..
Jonas's body slammed back into the wall as though he weighed nothing. His feet dangled inches above the slick stones, prosthetic leg scraping. His hands clawed at the grip around his neck, nails tearing at leather gloves that didn't budge.
And then Adrian leaned in.
That eye.
Up close, it wasn't glass. It wasn't human. It was a mirror, a depthless pane reflecting light wrong. Jonas tried not to look, tried to twist his head away, but the judge's grip forced his gaze forward.
"Let's take a look at your soul," Adrian murmured. The words weren't loud, but they burrowed into Jonas's marrow like nails. "Criminal."
Jonas's grin faltered. For the first time in years, it faltered.
The world tilted.
He wasn't in the alley anymore. Not entirely.
He was falling. Pulled through his own reflection in that eye, dragged screaming down a glass tunnel that shattered behind him as he passed. Each shard cut deeper—not flesh, but memory, thought, will.
And what lay beyond wasn't dark.
It was worse.
Images burst around him—every theft, every killing, every betrayal he'd laughed through. They replayed in grotesque clarity, but not as he remembered. Faces twisted toward him, mouths open in silent accusation. Men he'd shot gurgling blood, women he'd robbed clawing for bread, comrades he'd abandoned staring through hollow sockets.
He felt them. Every wound. Every hunger. Every ounce of pain he'd caused, pressed back into him tenfold.
"Stop!" Jonas rasped, thrashing, though his body didn't move. "I didn't—I just had to—"
The abyss laughed. Not Ronan's laugh. Adrian's voice, hollow, calm, echoing in endless hallways of his skull.
"You had to survive. And so did they."
The faces swarmed him, pressing, suffocating. His grin stretched too wide, cracked at the edges, blood leaking from the corners of his mouth in the vision. His hands clawed at nothing, nails ripping to the quick.
He couldn't wake. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't run.
And Adrian's glass eye kept looking.
Jonas didn't scream. Not out loud. His throat was too tight in Adrian's grip. But inside, in that mirrored abyss, his soul howled until the sound broke apart into silence.
"... Interesting." And for once, the judge smiled.