August 6th, 2026
9th District, Cremont City
3:05 AM
The 9th District exhaled smoke and iron.
Where fire had been a bright, furious mouth only an hour ago, now it smoldered into coal and ember. The rain had started, light at first, a smear of cold on the skin, then heavier, hissing as it hit hot metal and fresh blood.
Steam rose from puddles like ghosts, and the air tasted of burnt rubber, copper, and something older: the stench of lives undone. Sirens screamed somewhere far away, impotent against the magnitude of what had happened here.
Bodies lay in disordered bouquets across the asphalt, Cartel men whose faces had been torn and drained of recognition, Castellan soldiers folded awkwardly over shattered shields, the cracked shell of a van still leaking fuel like a wounded animal. The street itself stunk of oil and hell, its gutters running dark with the work of too many hands. One or two rats skittered between boots and corpses, indifferent, survivors to the end.
Alessandra Castellan walked through it like a woman in a monastery: precise, ritualistic, and with the air of someone carrying out a late sacrament. Her dress, once silk and lordly in its cut, hung torn around her hips; the hem flapped in the damp wind. The fabric clung to her like a second skin, ruined and red-streaked now, revealing the hard planes of a torso honed by discipline and war, abs that flexed when she moved, breasts that rose and fell with each breath. Cuts scored her arms; a dark line of dried blood traced a fine path from her temple down her neck.
Every step she took left a print of ash on her heel. She moved with the measured arrogance of someone who had always expected the world to obey her and had only just now taught it to do so. There was dirt under her nails, grit in the corner of both eyes, and on the gunmetal of the twins at her hips, the Castellan sigil glinted like a small, obscene crown.
Ursula came after her, moving the way she always did, deliberate, heavy, and efficient. The giantess's silk dress had been riven and stained; the savage motifs of the fight had not softened her. Her arms were a map of bruises and blood, muscles still taut from throwing men through hoods of cars and dragging bodies from smoking rubble. She walked past corpses without looking, scanning, checking, accounting. Where Alessandra's movements were aesthetic, Ursula's were work.
"Anything left?" Alessandra asked, voice low, clean as glass.
Ursula sucked air through her teeth, her deep green eyes on the horizon where the last pools of smoke curled into the sky. "The men counted. The cartels broke. They ran like dogs. A few stragglers scattered into the alleys. Nothing organized. We should..." she paused, then amended, "...we should rake the block and check the cellars. But for now, the street's clear of enemy formations."
Alessandra's grin spread slow across her face: brief and terrible, a smile that did not fit the geometry of kindness. It was a grin that belonged in nightmares. "Good," she said, and the single syllable sounded more like benediction than victory. "They deserved the lesson."
Ursula stood beside her, scanning the wreckage. "They're getting bolder and crazier," she added grimly. "This is the third time the Los Cazadores attacked us in two weeks. It's been a long time since they gave us this much trouble."
She turned and scanned the avenue with a practiced eye: bodies, limbs, the jagged silhouettes of boots and uniforms. The mutilated faces of some Castellan men glimmered ghastly in puddles. Flesh had been torn, fingers severed, blood poured and coagulated like black varnish. The road looked like a map of retribution; each pool a punctuation mark.
Ursula crouched to check one of the castellans who had been propped against a busted barrier. "Too many lost," she murmured. "We held, but it cost us."
Alessandra's hand hovered near her holster; a tremor passed briefly across her jaw, then smoothed. She watched a crow peck at a torn boot and felt a small pleasure go through her, as if even animals were returning to acknowledge the work they'd done. She laughed, once, not in relief, but in an ecstasy edged with something close to worship. It sounded mad when it left her throat.
Then a sound, soft and almost private, escaped her. "Rio," she whispered. The name did something inside her, like a pebble dropped in dark water: ripples.
Without warning, she was moving. Not walking. Running.
She cut through the bodies, her boots slapping on the wet tar, water flicking from the double pistols at her hips. She moved like someone who'd been held in stillness too long and had been released. The van they'd used, one of many armored beasts, sat a block beyond, its hatch open, a half-empty interior smoking and wet. The ropes used to bind, the straps burned and frayed, the impressions of life that had been there an hour before. She shoved in, scanning the seat, the straps, the floor.
"Empty!" Ursula came over the hatch as well, breath visible in the cooling air. "He's not here." Her voice was even, but there was something, an undercurrent of warning, threaded through it.
Alessandra's hand clenched on leather. She touched the marks where rope had bitten into skin, inspected the cuff impressions on the bolt. The fibers were ragged, snapped like thin ice. A coil of rope lay on the floor of the street where the guards had dropped trying to defend the van; black with blood and mud and torn like a severed ligament.
"He must have escaped," Ursula suggested, but the word came with slots of worry under it. "He broke free, or someone cut him out."
"No." The word was quick, abrupt. Alessandra's eyes were flat and cold. For a beat, denial lived in her features; then something else slithered in, possibility hardening into accusation. "Taken. The cartels took him."
Ursula looked up sharply. "Taken? There's no sign of a skirmish beyond the ones we cleared. If cartels moved him, it would be messy. There would be tracks, a drag or..."
Alessandra stood with the weight of someone hearing the world tilting. She had the feel of a statue struck by lightning: still, then sizzling into motionless heat. Her lips parted. "Search it. Sweep every alley. Call everyone in. Sweep the cellars. Put men on the perimeter." Her voice had found the soft, commanding edge again, authority threaded with rawness. "If they took him, if anyone took him from me, find them. Now!"
Ursula barked orders, crisp and practiced. "Put teams on the east block, now!" She turned to a battered radio and keyed it. "This is Ursula. Sweep and cordon the inner nine. No looting. Keep RTO posted." She moved like an anchor, coldly efficient at the logistics. Her face did not break.
The remaining Castellan men moved in order with hesitation.
Alessandra kept looking at the empty seat as if it should speak to her. Her chest heaved in a breath that smelled of wet leather and blood. The world contracted around that absence. She felt, thin and venomous, the raw possibility that he had chosen to leave, or worse, that someone had taken Rio from her. The idea of abandonment and possession looped together and twisted like barbed wire in her chest.
Ursula stepped closer; she had found the rope and held it now, fingers wrapped around the wet fibers. "This was cut from the inside. He got loose, or someone cut him loose." Her voice tried to be the calm of analysis; the implication hung like a blade: either he escaped, or someone liberated him.
Alessandra's laugh came out, small and deranged. "Escape." She let the word roll, taste it. Escape. As if the idea of freedom for him were an affront. "Or they took him. Whoever has him will regret it."
Elsewhere in the street the men did their work, bodies were covered, preliminary counts given, ragged radios hissing as men spoke in clipped language. Boots pounded in alleys, men checked basements and doors. The city around them seemed to inhale and hold itself.
That's when the shadow of two white shapes cut across the horizon.
They weren't the grimy black of civilian trucks or the armored gray of the Castellan convoy. They were clean, pristine in a landscape of soot and blood. White SUVs glided as if someone had scrubbed lines against the ruin. They rolled to a soft stop a block away, their engines quiet as a door.
Ursula's eyes narrowed. "Who called them in?" she muttered, cautious; she knew enough to know vehicles that pristine didn't belong to the street. Her boots found purchase in the slick of the road and she stepped to block, practiced posture between disinterest and readiness.
The SUVs' doors unlatched with a synchronized click. A measured choreography rather than the clumsy scramble of men who'd been fighting. Seven pairs of boots, black, high-heeled boots, touched the asphalt in precise beats. The heels tapped the ground like a ritual, each step exact, like a metronome beating out something sinister.
The sight of heels amid ruin felt absurd and devastating all at once, an immaculate fashion stepped over bodies without a speck of soot. The women who'd stepped out moved like a perfected mirror of menace, not in uniform but in couture; their presence was as much announcement as promise.
Then a soft, broken sound cut through the dripping quiet, half-groan, half-breath. Ursula's instincts sharpened. She drew her pistol and advanced, stepping over a dead Cartel's torso. The sound came again, weaker this time, from beside a burned-out car. It was the gothic female goon whom Rio saved.
Her silk uniform was torn to shreds, one sleeve missing entirely, the other clinging to her arm by a thread. Her pale skin was streaked with soot, and a deep slash ran across her side, staining the ground dark beneath her. Her breath came ragged, chest rising and falling too fast.
"Hey," Ursula muttered, crouching. She holstered her pistol, tore a strip of her own ruined dress, and pressed it to the girl's wound. "Stay with me."
Ursula tore a strip of her ruined silk and wrapped the young goon's shoulder with a rough but effective bandage, knotting where she could. The woman's breathing steadied, eyes filling with an enormous, undirected fear. "Thank you, Ursula" she whispered, voice trembling.
Ursula helped her stand with her weak feet. Then both turned back, expecting nothing, Alessandra was standing in front of them. Still like a metal pole. Her pistol was leveled at the goon's forehead, steady, lithe, and her face was a calm lake with edges of ice at the rim. The quiet in Alessandra's shoulders bled through like a blade.
"Did you see him escape?" Alessandra asked the female gothic goon.
The simple question was a crucible. The female goon's mouth worked; she swallowed. Her voice came out little more than a croak. "I… I was swarmed. They...." she pointed with a trembling finger toward the ground where Cartel men laid and dead "I don't… I don't know who helped me. I don't know who..." She looked up as if the confession itself might save her.
Alessandra's stormy-gray eyes narrowed to knives. A single, small twitch moved the machine of her face. She had the uncanny habit of noticing the smallest betrayals, an inhalation, a microturn of the eyes, the way fear leaked truth. She cocked her pistol an almost imperceptible millimeter closer.
"If you lie to me again, fool..." she said softly, far too cold, far too slow, "you won't live another day."
The woman's lips quivered into an involuntary shape. "I'm not lying, Mistress. I was being swarmed. I didn't see him nor his escape."
Suddenly, a sound of female voice cut through the tense air, a dry, clinical cough. The voice that spoke was cool, clipped, and laced with impatience.
"Can you stop trying to kill your own men, Alessandra?"
Alessandra's pistol remained fixed to the trembling forehead of the wounded goon. Ursula had one knee pressed into the girl's side, the other hand steadying a crude bandage at the wound. Around them the district breathed shallowly: smoke curled from the smoldering van, rain spat in fat drops, the distant crack of something collapsing punctuated the hush.
And there she was, Marcella Castellan, the middle sister of Castellan family.
She did not look like your typical gothic mafia queen. She did not wear armor draped in shadow or the heavy, ceremonial garb of the old families. She stepped into the smoke in a single clean line of red.
Long white hair fell down her back like a river of frost; it moved with a small, controlled breeze. The red jumpsuit hugged her frame and glinted where wet ash had landed. It was tailored sin: the cut accentuated hips, sheathed arms, a torso that could have been carved from marble. The color was wrong for this place and that wrongness was intentional, a slash of indignation against the soot. Her shoes were low-heeled yet purposeful; her gait was rehearsed, almost theatrical. Behind her, six tall women in matching dark jumpsuits and smooth black masks fell into formation, surrounding her like punctuation.
She did not hurry. She never hurried.
Ursula stood first, instinctual respect folding into a rigid bow. Her hand moved to the side of her torn silk dress more out of reflex than threat. "Mistress Marcella?" she said, sharp and immediate. "How..."
Marcella's smile cut the rest off. It was small and practiced; in it there was amusement but no warmth. Her hazel-gray eyes swept the ruined avenue, cataloging without expression the broken bodies, the pattern of the firefight, the places bullets had chewed holes in the world.
Marcella's lips curved into a faint smile. "Well," she said softly, her voice smooth yet laced with sarcasm. "It seems we're a little late for the show."
"You do make a mess though." Marcella observed, and the remark carried neither praise nor condemnation, as if she were commenting on a painting. "But the artistic chaos suits you."
Alessandra's jaw tightened. She had always been the one who commanded, who measured out authority in a steady, almost bureaucratic hand. Marcella's arrival, in that cutting red, in that calm of someone who'd rehearsed an entrance, supplied a pressure Alessandra didn't like. It was not the gentle rivalry of sisters but a precise, honed competition, the sort that had sat between them for years and only deepened with every small theft of attention.
Even before power, blood, and the Castellan name meant anything, Alessandra and Marcella were rivals. It began quietly in their small, weathered apartment, two sisters competing over everything that made childhood matter. At school, they raced for the top marks; at home, they fought over who could please their parents more. Even the smallest things, setting the table, sweeping the floor, fetching water, became silent contests that only they understood.
Alessandra was disciplined, mature beyond her years, the kind who followed rules, finished chores early, and spoke with the gravity of an adult. Marcella was her opposite, impulsive, radiant, and wild, the kind who ,turned every mistake into laughter and every scolding into charm. Their mother often sighed that Alessandra was the family's spine, while Marcella was its heartbeat.
Their rivalry wasn't cruel then, just constant. But as they grew older, it deepened into something more personal. Both sought attention, validation, affection, especially from their younger brother, Rio. Alessandra saw herself as his guardian, while Marcella treated him like a friend, a confidant, someone who saw her without judgment.
The more Alessandra tried to guide him, the more Marcella tried to steal his attention. What began as childish competition evolved into quiet resentment. Alessandra envied Marcella's warmth. Marcella envied Alessandra's control. And Rio, unknowingly, became the bridge and the boundary between them, the one person they both loved too much, and could never share.
Even then, before the darkness and the blood, before the family name became a banner feared by all, the seeds of their rivalry had already taken root. Two sisters, bound by love, divided by pride. A rivalry that would one day become the fire consuming them all.
Her gaze lingered on Alessandra, who stood among the corpses, pistol still drawn, her expression cold and worn.
"Who told you to come here?," Alessandra muttered, her tone low and sharp, though her voice trembled with restrained frustration. Her once-pristine black silk gothic dress was soaked in blood. Her hands shook slightly, though she hid it well.
Ursula noticed it. She always did. Alessandra's composure was iron, but her eyes, those deep, storming eyes, betrayed what was brewing underneath.
Marcella took a few casual steps forward, her heels clicking against the blood-slicked ground. "I was contacted by one of your men that there was trouble. Cartels, was it? You seem to have handled it nicely."
"Handled is an understatement." Ursula muttered under her breath.
"Scatter around," She then ordered her six female guards with hesitation, her tone cool and commanding. "Assist Alessandra's men in whatever way you can."
The six bowed in unison and dispersed swiftly into the chaos, their movements precise, disciplined, the perfect reflection of Marcella's quiet authority.
Alessandra's reply should have been satisfyingly venomous; instead she found herself saying nothing for a beat, watching the way Marcella moved through the debris as if she were walking a stage. The masked guards began to fan out at her direction, efficient, uncomplaining. Some of them knelt beside injured Castellan men; others signaled to the squads, offering swift hands where needed.
Marcella's voice dropped, conspiratorial but not intimate. "My girls will assist. They are efficient at salvage and quick at sorting. Put the ones left to them."
Ursula said. "Mistress Marcella. We weren't expecting you to come."
Marcella smirked faintly, brushing a few white strands from her face. "Family helps family, doesn't it?" she said, her eyes sliding toward Alessandra. "Right, big sister?"
Alessandra's jaw tightened. She holstered her pistol with a snap. "Don't start," she said.
Marcella gave a playful chuckle.
The air between them was tense, like two blades pressed together, sharp enough that even words might draw blood.
Ursula quietly stepped aside, helping the wounded female goon to keep standing. The woman's breathing was shallow, her face pale.
Marcella's eyes flicked toward her, curious. "Who's this?"
"A survivor," Ursula replied quickly. "She fought bravely."
"Mm." Marcella nodded once. "Good to see loyalty still exists among your people, Alessandra."
Alessandra didn't respond. Her gaze was fixed on the wounded goon, cold, suspicious, dangerous. The woman trembled beneath her stare.
Finally, Alessandra spoke, her voice low but commanding. "Ursula. Take her."
Ursula blinked. "Take her?"
"To my domain," Alessandra clarified, her tone sharp. "I want her questioned. Thoroughly. She definitely knows something."
Ursula hesitated for a heartbeat. "But..."
"Now!" Alessandra cut her off harshly. "I don't want to repeat myself."
The wounded goon's eyes widened, a flicker of panic flashing in them. Alessandra noticed. She always noticed.
Marcella tilted her head slightly, observing the exchange. "Questioned?" she said, feigning casual interest. "Since when do we interrogate our own?"
"Since one of them might've let something… important slip," Alessandra said coldly.
Marcella arched an eyebrow, her faint smile fading into a look of mild intrigue. "Important?"
"Nothing that concerns you, so you back off." Alessandra snapped back, too fast.
That caught Marcella's attention. Her expression didn't change much, but her eyes, those calculating hazel-gray eyes, narrowed ever so slightly.
Marcella stepped closer, her red heels stopping just a few inches away from her elder sister. "You seem… shaken," she murmured. "That's not like you, Alessandra."
"Watch your words," Alessandra said, her tone icy.
"I'm only concerned," Marcella replied smoothly. "Or maybe curious."
"Don't push it."
The two sisters locked eyes, silence heavy, thick with unspoken rivalry.
Ursula, feeling the tension like a tightening noose, stepped in. "Mistress Alessandra, we should act and move. The area's unstable."
Alessandra finally looked away from Marcella, exhaling sharply through her nose. "You're right." She turned toward her gothic goons, barking orders. "Hunt down every Cartel dogs! No one rests until every inch of this street is clean!"
"Yes, Mistress!"
Marcella watched her sister's back as Alessandra stormed toward the remaining armored vans, her steps heavy, furious.
"Touchy, touchy," Marcella murmured with a faint smirk. Then her eyes shifted toward Ursula again.
Ursula avoided her gaze, bowing lightly. "We'll take it from here now, Mistress."
As Ursula guided the trembling goon toward one of the vehicles, Marcella's expression softened, but only slightly. "Ursula," she said suddenly.
Ursula froze. "Yes, Mistress Marcella?"
Marcella's tone changed, no longer teasing, but probing. "What's going on here, really?"
Ursula hesitated. Her grip on the wounded goon tightened. "It's… nothing, Mistress. Just Cartel interference. Nothing else."
Marcella's lips curved into a faint smile again, but her eyes didn't match it. "You're lying," she whispered.
Ursula's heart skipped.
But before she could respond, Alessandra's voice barked from a distance. "Ursula! Move it!"
Ursula quickly bowed again. "Forgive me. I must go."
She hurried off, half-dragging the wounded goon toward the van. Marcella watched them leave, her expression unreadable.
The red light of the burning debris reflected in her hazel-gray eyes, making them look like molten metal.
She turned her gaze back to the battlefield, over the bodies, the blood, and the faint trail of bootprints leading away from the scene.
Something in her gut told her the truth was there, buried in the silence her sister tried to keep.
"Big sister…" she whispered softly to herself. "What are you hiding from me?"
Then she smiled faintly, one of those smiles that didn't reach her eyes.
"Whatever it is," she murmured, stepping over a corpse, "I'll find out."
And with that, Marcella Castellan walked into the smoke.
August 6th, 2026
8:35 AM
Morning broke over Cremont, but the city refused to brighten. The sun, though high and blazing, could not cut through the pall of smoke and dust that lingered from the night before. The air was sharp, cold, and smelled faintly of iron and burned rubber.
Rio had escaped the chaos of the 9th District, his body sore, his mind hollow. He ran without direction, guided only by instinct and the pounding of his heart. Hours later, he found himself in the quieter 8th District, a place where the world seemed to forget him. There, he checked into a nameless, peeling motel, a place where no one asked questions and no one cared to remember faces.
The bed creaked beneath him as he lay on his back, staring at the water-stained ceiling. His breath came in slow, tired waves. The silence pressed down heavy, like a weight on his chest. For the first time since the escape, he was alone, no gunfire, no shouting, no blood on his hands. Only thoughts.
He remembered Alessandra. The image of her standing amid corpses, her twin pistols roaring, her dress soaked in blood, her expression consumed by something feral, wouldn't leave his mind. That wasn't the sister he remembered. Not the calm, composed, and fair woman who once scolded him for skipping school or sneaking out at night. The Alessandra he saw in that battlefield had changed. She fought like a demon. Killed like it meant nothing. And that smile, half ecstasy, half madness, burned itself into his memory.
When did she learn to fight like that? When did she learn to kill without hesitation?
His chest tightened. Then another name surfaced in his thoughts, his mother, Isabela. The woman who now ruled Cremont as though she had been born for the throne. Owning the city. Commanding men. Pulling strings in shadows. It didn't feel real. It didn't sound real. The gentle mother who once brushed his hair and laughed softly at the dinner table, gone, replaced by a cold, untouchable queen.
And yet, the thought that haunted him most wasn't about her power, it was about his father.
Janus Castellan.
Rio winced, remembering that weary smile six years ago, the night Janus said goodbye and left their small apartment. He remembered the promise to come back soon, the faint warmth in his eyes. Then the cause of his death. Terminal illness, they said. A slow, quiet death.
But Rio knew better. His father had always been strong, healthy, disciplined, the kind of man who refused to even catch a cold. It didn't make sense. None of it did.
He turned his head on the pillow, jaw tightening.
No. It wasn't sickness that took him. It was something else. Something darker.
And deep inside, he knew who to blame. Alessandra. Marcella. Selene. Even Isabela. Somewhere, somehow, they were all connected to his father's death. The thought of it made his blood run cold, and burn at the same time.
He clenched his fists.
He would find out. Everything. Every truth, every lie, every buried sin. Even if it destroyed him. Even if it damned him. Even if they have to punish or....
...kill them.
The faint hum of traffic outside pulled him back. He sat up, the motion stiff and slow. The room smelled of cheap detergent and dust. On the table lay a wrinkled hoodie he'd bought from a thrift stand on the way. He slipped it on, pulling the hood low over his head.
The cold steel around his wrists pressed against his skin, he hadn't removed the handcuffs. Couldn't. Not yet.
He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, hiding the glint of metal, and stepped out into the cold morning air.
The streets of the 8th District were quiet, lifeless. Only the distant wail of a siren broke the silence. He moved quickly, keeping his head down, eyes scanning the signs, the corners, the faces of strangers passing by. He had one destination in mind, the workplace of his father's old friend. The man who stood beside him at the funeral. The one who gave him damning evidences of his mother's affair.
If Janus Castellan's death has secrets, that man would know them.
And Rio was ready to hear them all.