Near the edge of the forest, the swordsman, who had spent the entire time lounging comfortably against the trunk of a tree, suddenly jolted awake, his expression turning grave in an instant.
He reached into a pocket of his robe and pulled out a strange, circular piece of wood.
On the surface, there was nothing special about it. No carvings, no markings of any kind, nothing, save for a single crack running through its center, splitting it cleanly in two.
The swordsman studied it with hard eyes and touched the two halves together, only to find them coming apart again without resistance.
He hadn't broken it.
Something else had.
"Shit, what the hell did that girl do?" he cursed, immediately grasping the implications.
The girl was dead.
She had been his plant, the one he'd sent to make sure their target was delivered to them. But who would have guessed that not only would she fail to return, but that she'd actually end up dead?
