THE ASSASSINS
They were not soldiers.Not agents.Not men.
They were products.
Governments did not train them — they manufactured them.
Some were taken as newborns, unnamed and unclaimed, their first lullabies replaced by electrodes and doctrine. Others were "recruited" later, pulled from orphanages that vanished overnight, from warzones where records burned faster than bodies. Birth certificates erased. Faces rewritten. Histories sterilized.
By adulthood, nothing human remained.
Pain was language.Obedience was instinct.Identity was a liability burned out of them early.
They existed off the record, off the grid, beyond accountability. No civilian knew their names. No politician admitted they existed. Even generals lowered their voices when whispers of them slipped through classified halls.
They were the silent spine of global dominance — the invisible hand behind every coup, every erased witness, every anomaly too precise to be coincidence.
Perfect monsters.
And yet… incomplete.
For all their refinement, all their conditioning, there was something missing. Something they had chased across decades and continents.
A variable they could not control.A force they could not replicate.
Until now.
The rumor began small.A whisper passed between intelligence leaks.Then a spark — then a wildfire.
The Vigilante.
A phenomenon immune to profiling.A ghost immune to capture.An executioner whose motives defied prediction.
He left no signatures. No patterns. No mercy for the guilty — and no collateral for the innocent. He moved like the dark itself had learned to walk, leaving bodies governments denied and civilians pretended not to see.
Analysts stopped trying to understand him.Stopped trying to categorize the impossible.
Eventually… they stopped asking why.
Instead, they prayed.
Prayed he would never learn their names.Prayed he would never stand on their street.Prayed their sins were small enough to escape his attention.
No one gambled with myths.
Rain tapped lazily against Yuri's window.
The city below glowed faintly blue beneath streetlights, fog curling along the floor like something alive. His room was quiet — not peaceful, but contained. The kind of silence that presses in on you once it realizes you're alone.
Yuri sat on the carpet, back against his bed frame, exhaustion clinging to him like a second skin.
Before him lay the mask.
The world's nightmare.
His own.
It rested on the floor like a relic dug from the wrong grave. Hollow. Pitiless. Watching him without eyes.
It felt… aware.
As if something inside it breathed.As if it recognized him.As if it had been waiting.
Anger gnawed at him. Guilt followed close behind. Fear and regret tangled together until he couldn't tell where one ended and the next began.
His fingers hovered over it.
Then—
Knock. Knock.
Yuri froze.
The sound wasn't loud.Just wrong.
Too late.Too deliberate.
His breath stilled. His instincts sharpened, snapping into place like teeth. He hadn't heard footsteps. Hadn't sensed a presence. No shift in air. No warning.
Had he been distracted?
The thought unsettled him more than the knock itself.
He rose slowly, movements precise, controlled. The kind of calm drilled into him through years of blood and discipline.
No killing intent seeped through the door.
No hostility.
Which somehow made it worse.
He opened the door—
—and the world glitched.
Duke stood there.
A shadow wearing a man's shape. Someone Yuri had seen once — only once — along with the others, at school.
Duke's presence felt… incorrect. Like reality hadn't finished rendering him.
"Y–You're—" Yuri began.
"Don't," Duke cut in flatly. "Skip the confusion."
He met Yuri's eyes, and for the first time, something urgent cracked through his usual emptiness.
"You've got minutes," Duke said. "Grab what you need. Run. As far as you can. Right now."
Ice flooded Yuri's veins.
"What are you talking about?" Yuri demanded. "Run from what?"
But Duke was already stepping onto the balcony.
Rain misted across his coat. The railing creaked beneath his weight. He didn't look back.
So quietly Yuri almost missed it—
"You're not allowed to die yet."
Then Duke stepped off.
He didn't fall.
He didn't land.
He simply… ceased to be.
Yuri lunged forward, gripping the railing.
Nothing.
No sound. No motion. No ripple in the rain below.
Only a tremor that crawled down his spine.
He grabbed the mask.
Instinct took over.
He ran.
Down halls. Across rooftops slick with rain. Through alleys drowned in fog. Metal fire escapes rattled beneath his feet as stormwind howled around him.
Searching for Duke.For answers.For proof he hadn't lost his mind.
There was nothing.
Only cold.
Only the certainty that something had already begun.
He stopped atop a skyscraper, rain slicing down in frozen sheets. His hands braced against his knees, breath fogging violently.
"What is happening…?" he whispered.
A voice answered from behind him.
"Excuse me."
Soft.Calm.Wrong.
A warm hand settled on his shoulder.
Yuri spun—
BOOM!
The impact erased the world.
He was hurled downward, smashing into the empty highway below. Concrete detonated beneath him. Dust and debris roared upward.
He skidded across asphalt, sparks screaming, until he slammed into a twisted road barrier.
He pushed himself up, coughing blood—
And saw him.
Dark curls tossed by the storm. Eyes glowing white — almost holy. A pristine white jacket draped over black. A scythe spinning lazily between his fingers.
A grin sharp enough to kill.
"Damn," the man laughed. "Almost went overboard. Bet this is the first time you've ever been scratched."
Yuri vanished mid-step.
Reappeared above.
Struck.
Blocked.
Again. And again. A storm of violence.
The man danced through it all like he'd memorized Yuri's every instinct.
Then—
CRACK.
A knee slammed into Yuri's jaw.
SMACK.
The scythe sent him crashing into a parked car, metal folding around him.
"This is the Weapon?" the man scoffed. "Pathetic."
Rage answered.
A car launched through the air.
The man Sliced the car it two with his scythe.
Then—
What in hell, is this guy!? yuri questioned. realizing he's at a disadvantage, yuri quickly tries to re-evacuate
VWUP!
Yuri was yanked back, flung across asphalt, sparks trailing behind him.
Before he had time to gather his thoughts.
The sky split.
CRASH!
The scythe drove him into the road, carving a crater.
The man paused.
Yuri had caught the blade.
Held it.
"...oh"
BAM!
A punch launched the man through a building's side.
Rain fell.Dust settled.
A thin fracture split across Yuri's mask.
Pain flared in his chest — ancient, deep, awakening.
Then laughter.
Wild. Delighted.
The man stepped from the rubble, clapping slowly.
"Well I'll be damned," he said. "Guess I underestimated you, lil bro. How fun was that?"
Yuri stared back — silent. Changed.
The man lifted his scythe.
"FIRST VERDICT! Next time we meet," he said, voice cold, absolute, "you and I will be completely different people."
He leaned forward, eyes blazing.
"Don't forget this name."
"YUTA."
And then he was gone.
No ripple.No sound.
Only rain.
Only ruins.
And Yuri standing alone.
Again.
Always again.
What... what just happened?