Yorknew City.
Emerald Brilliance Hotel
Leon's doting smile slowly froze on his face as he read. This wasn't the scribble of a child playing make-believe. The language was archaic, ominous, and specific. Seventh night… black envelope… jackal you cannot disobey… It read like a coded threat or a prophecy from a back-alley fortune teller, not the imaginative game of his young daughter.
He looked up at Neon. She was watching him with wide, expectant eyes, but there was a strange flatness in her gaze, as if the spark of playful conspiracy was gone, replaced by a blank, waiting stillness.
"Neon," Leon said, keeping his voice gentle but firm. "Where did you learn this? Did someone tell you to write this?"
Neon blinked, the blankness receding as confusion took its place. "Huh? Learn what? I just wrote down what I saw, Daddy. Isn't that how fortune-telling works?" She tilted her head, her expression returning to its normal, lively curiosity. "What does it say? Is it something good?"
The shift was jarring. It was as if the act of writing had been performed by a different consciousness, one that had now receded, leaving his normal daughter behind. A cold trickle of apprehension ran down Leon's spine. He'd heard rumors in the underworld about Nen abilities that could manipulate or speak through the innocent, but he'd never encountered anything like this firsthand.
"Nothing, sweetheart," he said, forcing a smile and folding the paper carefully. "Just some… interesting rhymes. It's very late. Time for bed." He ushered her to the adjoining bedroom, tucking her in with a calm he didn't feel. As she drifted off, her earlier strange state seemed like a dream.
Back in the main room, Leon's demeanor shifted entirely. The weary father was gone, replaced by the sharp-eyed boss of a mafia family. He summoned his two most trusted lieutenants.
"Look at this," he said, his voice low, placing the folded paper on the table.
The two men read it, their faces growing grim.
"Boss… this is…"
"A warning. Or a setup," Leon finished. "'Seventh night.' We arrived five days ago. That's two nights from now. 'Black envelope.' Could be a hit order, or an invitation we can't refuse. 'Jackal you cannot disobey'… that sounds like a messenger from a Family much higher up the food chain than us. The Ritz family we're dealing with uses a wolf's head as their sigil. A jackal is close enough."
The lieutenant pointed to the second stanza. "'Newborn beast dislikes carrion and chains.' That could be the target. Someone new, powerful, who won't accept the old ways or being controlled. 'You are also one of those disliked.' Boss, if this is about us being sent to fetch someone for the big Families…"
"We could be walking into a conflict with this 'newborn beast,'" Leon concluded, his jaw tight. The third stanza promised survival but pain, and warned against lies. The fourth was a blatant ultimatum: cooperate with the mysterious "money-slave beast" (a painfully apt description for a low-tier mafia boss like himself) or face stagnation.
"Could this be about the Tedoruka job?" the other lieutenant whispered. "The word from our contacts is that Saro Tedoruka is furious about a runaway pharmacist. He's putting out feelers and commissions. If we get tapped as the 'local family' to persuade this guy in Yorbian…"
"And the target is the 'newborn beast' who 'dislikes carrion and chains,'" Leon murmured, staring at the paper. A runaway alchemist with newfound power, refusing to return to his gilded cage. It fit.
The "fortune" was a message. But from whom? A rival family trying to sabotage the Tedorukas? A third party with an interest in the pharmacist? Or was it, impossibly, a genuine supernatural warning? The fact it came through his daughter made it infinitely more threatening and persuasive.
Leon made a decision. He couldn't ignore this. The stakes were his life, his men's lives, and possibly his daughter's safety.
"Cancel all non-essential meetings for the next three days," he ordered. "Increase security detail on Neon. Discreetly. And start digging. I want to know everything about any Tedoruka operations in the Yorbian continent, especially anything involving retrieval of a person. Use all our channels, but be like ghosts. If this 'black envelope' finds us in two nights, I want to know exactly what we're walking into, and who, or what, is giving us a chance to choose 'the farther blue sky.'"
As his men moved to obey, Leon looked at the paper again. The words seemed to pulse with a quiet, menacing energy. His cozy role as a small-time boss running errands for the giants was over. He was now a piece on a board he didn't fully understand, being offered a choice by a player he couldn't see. The parent-child game had ended, and a far more dangerous game had begun. He pocketed the paper, the weight of it feeling heavier than a gun. The clock was ticking. Two nights.
Leon slept fitfully, the cryptic verses from the paper twisting through his dreams into grotesque shapes—envelopes that bled ink, jackals with the faces of men he knew, and a chained beast whose eyes held not fury, but a chilling, intelligent disdain. He woke with a start just before dawn, the hotel room silent except for the hum of the climate control. The paper was still in his pocket, a crisp, tangible anomaly.
He checked on Neon, who was sleeping peacefully, her earlier strange episode seemingly forgotten. The normalcy of it was almost more unsettling.
The day passed in a blur of minor errands and tense waiting. Leon went through the motions, but his mind was on the clock, counting down to the "seventh night." He re-read the poem a dozen times, each stanza becoming more menacing in its clarity. "Follow the jackal you cannot disobey towards the east..." The call last night had ordered him to meet at a dockside warehouse in the eastern industrial district at 8 PM. Jackal. The coincidence was ice in his veins.
He selected his two most reliable, discreet men—Viktor and Carlo—and briefed them only with the operational details from the call: a simple escort and retrieval observation for the higher-ups. He said nothing of the poem. Superstition had no place in their business, but a gut feeling backed by uncanny prophecy was something else entirely.
As dusk fell on the seventh night, a heavy, damp fog rolled in from the bay, swallowing the city's lights. The industrial district was a maze of shadows and echoes. Leon, Viktor, and Carlo arrived at the designated warehouse—a crumbling, cavernous space smelling of rust, salt, and oil. Inside, under the glare of portable work lights, a scene was already set.
A man Leon recognized—Moreau, a mid-level lieutenant from the Ritz family with a reputation for brutal efficiency—stood at the center. He was the "jackal," his family's sigil a stylized wolf's head on his lapel pin. Around him were six of his own hard-eyed operatives. And in a chair before them, looking pale but defiant, was a young man Leon didn't recognize. He had the look of a scholar or a technician, not a fighter. A "pharmacist," perhaps.
"Leon," Moreau greeted with a thin smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Good, you're punctual. We're just having a chat with our friend here about the importance of honoring commitments. Thought you and your boys could learn something. Watch. Listen."
It was a power play, a lesson in intimidation for the smaller family. Leon nodded stiffly, his hand resting casually near his concealed pistol. Viktor and Carlo flanked him, their postures tense.
Moreau turned back to the young man. "Saro Tedoruka is a generous patron. You had a good life. You walked away from that. Now, you can walk back. Or," Moreau gestured to one of his men, who stepped forward with a heavy case, "we can discuss the terms of your return in more... persuasive detail."
The young man swallowed, but lifted his chin. "I don't work for slavers anymore. My skills are my own."
Newborn beast dislikes carrion and chains. The line burned in Leon's mind. This was it. The "beast" was this defiant alchemist. And he, Leon, by his mere presence as an enforcer for the system, was "one of those disliked."
The negotiation—a thinly veiled threat session—dragged on. Moreau grew impatient. He nodded to his man with the case. It was opened, revealing not money, but an array of sinister-looking surgical tools and vials of unknown liquids.
"If you speak with a tongue hiding poison, the striking sharp claws will be swung towards you."
Leon's breath hitched. He hadn't spoken. But his role here was a form of poison—complicity in this act. He was the hidden tongue.
Just as Moreau's man selected a tool, a sound echoed through the vast warehouse—not from the door, but from the rusted skylights high above. A sound like tearing canvas.
Everyone looked up.
A dark shape dropped through the fog and broken glass, landing in a crouch amidst the circle of light with unnatural silence. It was a man, tall and lean, dressed in dark, non-reflective gear. A black envelope was clutched in his gloved hand.
He stood, his face obscured by the shadows of a hood and the stark backlighting. He didn't look at Moreau or his men. His gaze, Leon felt with a primal certainty, was fixed on him.
The man lifted the black envelope and let it fall. It didn't flutter; it sliced through the air like a blade and landed perfectly at Leon's feet.
"When the bell of the seventh night tolls, a black envelope will fall into your palm." The warehouse clock, high on the wall, chose that moment to chime eight times, its toll deep and sonorous in the tense silence.
Chaos erupted. Moreau shouted. His men went for their weapons.
The newcomer moved. It wasn't Nen—Leon, a non-user, wouldn't recognize it as such—but it was speed and precision far beyond human. He was a blur, disarming two men with movements that seemed to break physics, his strikes causing audible cracks. A vial was smashed, releasing a cloud of gas. Moreau's men stumbled back, choking.
The defiant young man in the chair saw his chance. He bolted, not towards the door guarded by Moreau's men, but towards a gap in the warehouse wall, vanishing into the fog-shrouded night. The "newborn beast" had escaped his chains.
The newcomer didn't pursue him. Instead, in the confusion, he closed the distance to Leon in two strides. A hand shot out, not to attack, but to grip Leon's shoulder with iron force. Leon's men raised their guns, but a sharp glance from the hooded man froze them.
"Choice time, Leon," a voice, distorted and metallic, whispered directly into his ear, bypassing the noise. "The money-slave beast asks you. Stay and decay with these carrion-feeders. Or break free. Truth for a future. Now."
"The money-slave beast asks you, it is time for a choice."
The prophecy was unfolding in real-time, in blood, gas, and terrifying efficiency. The black envelope at his feet, the escaped "beast," the ultimatum being delivered by this impossible operative—it was all true.
Moreau was recovering, his face a mask of rage. "Kill them! Kill them all!"
Leon looked at the hooded man, then at the envelope, then at the raging Moreau, whose "protection" now meant certain death for failing this task. He thought of Neon's blank eyes as she wrote the poem, and her innocent question: "When are we going home?"
He made his choice.
"With you!" Leon barked to Viktor and Carlo. He scooped up the black envelope and, following the hooded man who was already melting back into the shadows of the warehouse, he ran—not towards the decaying world of obedient jackals, but into the unknown, foggy east, toward the promised, terrifying "farther blue sky." The striking claws of Moreau's vengeance would follow, but for now, he had chosen truth and survival, just as the poem had foretold. The game had changed, and Leon was no longer a minor character; he was a player who had just bet his life on a prophecy delivered by his daughter.
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