"...Fine."
A moment of silence. Then Raphael took her hand and shook it.
*Witch.* He'd seen the word in confiscated documents before — a classification for women born with an innate arcane source, no contract required, no Demon necessary.
They simply *had* it from the start.
The secrets Evelyn was carrying ran deeper than he'd assumed.
Looking at his former Black Gloves partner now, he felt the strange displacement of meeting someone familiar who had quietly become someone else.
"I'm glad we get to work together again, partner."
She smiled — clear eyes, uncomplicated warmth.
"Even after all this time apart, I think we're still the best team. Don't you?"
She rose smoothly from the chair.
"I'll be waiting at the Red Gloves base. Rest a little first — Instructor John will run you through assessment when you arrive. I trust your instincts, so."
A small nod. "I'll see you there."
She walked out.
Raphael watched her go until she disappeared around the corner.
Then he was quiet for a while.
---
Summer, 2022.
A teenage boy stepping out of a black room, someone else's blood drying on his clothes.
That was how it started — the special conditioning, the education that didn't have a name anyone said out loud.
How to kill with a ballpoint pen was one of the first things they taught him.
After that came shoelaces, plastic bags, wine bottles. Then firearms, blades, and explosives.
The rule was simple: only those who walked out of the black room alive were cleared of their inherited designation — *child of a sinner* — and brought into the Black Gloves.
Evelyn Vigo had been in the same cohort.
Out of everyone who went through that period with him, she was the only other one who made it out.
A girl who was always praying. Always wearing that secondhand nun's habit that was slightly too large for her. She became his partner.
Raphael knew better than most what lived underneath that gentle exterior. He'd seen it. He'd worked alongside it for three hundred and seventy-nine days.
"379 days..."
He said it under his breath without thinking.
That was how long they'd run together — recognized throughout the Black Gloves as the unit's ace pairing.
Not because either of them was individually the strongest.
Because together, their coordination was something that couldn't be trained into two separate people.
Then, on the last day of that count, Evelyn's arcane ability awakened. She became a transcendent. She transferred to the Red Gloves.
Different departments. Different worlds. They hadn't crossed paths once since then.
Until today.
He shook his head — a small, deliberate motion — and let the memory go. He dealt with the IV line, got up, and made his way to the washroom.
---
Hot water. Steam. Eyes closed.
Standing under the shower, he thought about what *Sin* actually was.
The answer had come to him the moment the vampire fell — not as a concept, but as a certainty that settled somewhere below rational thought.
It was the lives ended by his hand. Every one of them.
He stood there for a while. Then he looked up at the tile wall. The glazed surface reflected his face back at him, pale and sharp in the steam.
He turned the water off. Got dressed.
Then he went straight to the Red Gloves base.
---
The Red Gloves compound sat directly adjacent to the Black Gloves facility, but it felt larger —
Wide, open corridors leading to sprawling combat training grounds, the kind of space that seemed designed for things that needed room to be dangerous.
The base was nearly empty.
A few people moved through the common areas, their steps slowing when they noticed him, eyes meeting his briefly before sliding away.
Most of the Red Gloves teams were out — handling incidents, managing whatever the supernatural world had decided to do this week.
The only place with any real activity was the dispatch center, where consoles and voices hummed with steady urgency.
He was halfway down one of the main paths when the instructor approached.
Tall. Built like someone who'd stopped keeping track of how much weight he could move.
A scarred face that was currently doing the work of reading Raphael from the ground up.
"You're Raphael Alanster?"
He didn't wait for an answer.
"Rhetorical. Who else would be wandering the base at this hour if not the new transfer?"
Instructor John rolled his neck. The joints cracked in sequence.
"Black Gloves elite." He said it without particular warmth.
"That doesn't mean much here. The things you're going to face aren't gang shooters or street-level dealers."
He tilted his head slightly. "Vampires. Werewolves. Wraiths. And whatever else decides to show up."
He kept his eyes on Raphael's the entire time he spoke, watching for the moment something flinched.
He stepped forward and put a hand on Raphael's shoulder.
"You can still leave.
Your file hasn't been formally entered yet. Outside of Evelyn Vigo, nobody in this building knows you exist.
You could go back to the Black Gloves. Stay in a world that makes sense. Keep your distance from all of this."
Raphael held his gaze without expression and knocked the hand aside.
"Are you done?"
He wasn't built for speeches. If the situation called for him to say something meaningful and principled in response, he genuinely didn't have it.
The instructor stared at him.
Then he laughed — loud and completely unguarded, the laugh of someone watching a young dog square up to something it has no business squaring up to.
"Ha — *ahaha!* There it is!"
The amusement faded into something more measured.
"Your file says insubordinate. Says you run the operation first and file the report after, which is exactly why they stopped assigning you partners.
Fine. If you want to test yourself that badly, I'll give you the chance."
His voice leveled.
"But if you can't get past me, you don't get near Evelyn. I'm not letting your lone-wolf instincts get the most talented Red Gloves operative killed."
They walked to the training ground in silence.
It was empty. Just the two of them, and the open space, and the distant sounds of the dispatch center bleeding faintly through the walls.
John's voice shifted when he spoke again — quieter. Something reflective in it.
"This place used to be full during assessments. People watching from the sides — some cheering, some heckling, some just there to see how it went."
He paused. "Some of them are dead now. Others transferred out. The rest are too buried in rotations to stop moving."
He stripped off his tactical jacket and dropped it to one side. Set his stance.
Raphael scanned the perimeter.
Evelyn stood in the shadow near the far wall. Watching quietly, making no move to announce herself.
He looked away. Shrugged off the trench coat. Pulled one glove from his hand, tossed it high.
*Slap.*
The moment it touched the ground, both of them moved.
Raphael's approach was pure aggression — close the distance fast, then bury the opponent under volume and pace.
He came in with heavy, continuous combinations, not giving space to reset.
John absorbed it.
His base dropped low, stance wide, weight planted.
He didn't meet Raphael's rhythm — he took it, blocking and redirecting with the patience of someone who knew what was actually coming.
The technique was even. The power behind each hit was real on both sides.
But John was getting crowded — the tempo of Raphael's output, relentless and escalating, was starting to push the edge of what he could cycle through cleanly.
So he stopped playing the same game.
Between one exchange and the next, John sank his center of gravity — a sudden drop — and every muscle in his torso and shoulder fired at once.
Veins surfaced along his forearms and neck.
Raphael read it in time to step back.
Not far enough.
*CRACK.*
The impact landed flush into his left flank, and the shockwave went through him like a hammer through dry plaster.
He left the ground. Hit it again several meters away, rolled twice before the momentum gave out.
He lay still for a moment.
"...Hss—"
He pressed his fingers to his side. The flesh had caved inward. Skin already bruising deep purple-black. Two ribs, at minimum.
That wasn't a human punch.
"...Arcane."
Cold sweat. The pain was clear and constant, cutting through everything else. Raphael pushed himself upright, jaw set.
One more hit like that and he was done. His fighting mechanics couldn't bridge this kind of gap — technique didn't negotiate with force multiplied by arcane output.
So.
The red crept in at the edges of his vision.
It spread fast — climbing through his irises, saturating everything until the world was rendered entirely in tones of crimson.
His skin went pale in increments, blood withdrawing from the surface. His breathing thickened, became deliberate.
The crushed tissue at his side began to rebuild itself visibly. Skin smoothing. Bone resetting.
And from somewhere nearby, carried on the air—
Blood.
*Warm. Sweet.*
His focus sharpened to a single point.