BEEP!

The phone buzzed at half past noon.

Ronan was sprawled across the mattress with Sarael draped over his chest like a living blanket, her shadows keeping the room dark enough for his skills to hum at full strength.

She’d been dozing on and off for hours, still riding the high of their night together. With the bite mark on her neck sitting proudly above the collar of her shadow-made sweater.

It was still daytime, and neither of them wanted to risk going out. They’d become night owls by necessity, sleeping through the sun, eating whatever was left from Sarael’s convenience store haul and his old rations, and killing time until the sky went dark.

BEEP!

His phone buzzed again, and he reached for it without dislodging her.

16259: Got another job if you’re interested. Bigger than last time. Pay’s triple.

Ronan’s thumb hovered over the screen. Triple pay sounded good, but bigger jobs meant bigger risks.

GodBound: What kind of job?

The reply came fast.

16259: Asset disposal. Some mid-rank hunter’s been running a side business selling guild secrets to rival organizations. His guild found out and wants him gone before he leaks anything else. They can’t do it themselves. They want outside talent.

Ronan read the message twice.

Disposal. The fixer hadn’t said "kill," but he didn’t need to. Retrieving a sword from an empty vault was one thing. This was something else entirely.

16259: And if you do well, I’ll even give you my best clients next time. So, you up for the job? I have easier jobs as well if you’re more interested in those.

GodBound: Who? Where? When?

16259: Straight to the point, huh? It’s a B-Rank named Sebastian Filgree. Sources say he lives in a penthouse at a hotel on Sevent Street’s Chinatown, Room 325. Could ambush him there, or you could try his favorite convenience store. Apparently he heads there every morning at 9:32 for cigarettes.

GodBound: Does he have guards?

16259: That I do not know. Best to assume he does. So, you in?

GodBound: Yeah. I’ll get it done by tonight.

16259: Tonight? Now you’re talking. I’ll negotiate quadruple if you can pull that off.

GodBound: Sounds good.

Ronan set the phone down and stared at the ceiling. The name meant nothing to him.

Sebastian Filgree. Just another B-Rank who’d gotten greedy and crossed the wrong people. He’d carried equipment for a dozen guys just like him over the years.

But quadruple pay meant quadruple the resources. It meant he could upgrade their situation faster. Get Sarael out of this shack and into somewhere with actual walls and working plumbing.

Somewhere she could have more than convenience store snacks and a mattress with rusted springs.

He reached for his phone again and pulled up the map of Chinatown, zooming in on the hotel. It was a tall building wedged between older storefronts, the kind of place that catered to hunters with money but not enough sense to live somewhere less conspicuous.

Room 325. Third floor, facing the street. Windows on two sides if the map was accurate, which meant two entry points and two angles for snipers if the target had his own security set up.

Or...

He could try something new.

Use the open window. Throw a rock. Blow the target’s head off from a distance.

Right now, the Association assumed he had teleportation. That was the rumor circulating through the internet, the label they’d slapped on him after the interrogation room.

The "Shadow Porter" who could phase through walls and vanish without a trace.

But they didn’t know about his strength.

They had no idea he could hurl a chunk of concrete through a window from three buildings away and kill a man without ever stepping foot inside the room. That kind of damage, that kind of range, it didn’t fit their profile of him at all.

If he pulled it off, they wouldn’t blame the Shadow Porter. They’d blame an S-Rank.

And S-Ranks weren’t lurking on underground forums taking assassination contracts from fixers. They weren’t people you could hire with quadruple pay and a private message. The strongest guilds in the country couldn’t even reliably control their own S-Ranks, let alone contract one for a hit on a mid-level traitor.

If a B-Rank turned up dead with his skull caved in from a projectile that cross-referenced no known weapon, the investigation would spiral in the wrong direction entirely.

They’d chase ghosts. They’d question rival guilds. They’d waste weeks trying to figure out which S-Rank had gone rogue or which foreign power had sent an operative.

None of it would point back to a D-Rank porter hiding in an abandoned shack.

It was cleaner than infiltration. Safer than close-quarters combat. And in his head, far more untraceable than teleporting into the penthouse itself.

The only real question was the angle. He’d need a clear line of sight through the window, which meant finding a vantage point with enough elevation and enough shadow to keep him hidden. A rooftop across the street, maybe. Or a parking garage. Chinatown had plenty of both.

And he’d need a projectile. Something small enough to throw accurately but heavy enough to do the job. A chunk of concrete, a loose brick, a piece of rebar. The city was full of rubble if you knew where to look.

The plan came together in his head with the same cold efficiency he’d learned in Tartarus-B. No guards to deal with. No alarms to trigger. No risk of being seen or recorded or leaving behind evidence that pointed to a teleporter.

Just a single throw, a single kill, and a clean exit through the shadows before anyone even realized what had happened.

He now had a plan of action.

"This job might be easier than the last..."