The chaos behind us was absolute. Shouts, whistles, and the frantic clanking of heavy armor echoed from the breached cellar as the knights realized they had a massive jailbreak on their hands. Holding Josan's torn, drug-stained uniform tightly in one hand, I sprinted into the foggy darkness.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the real Zenni scrambling out of the hole, desperately looking for an escape route. Before he could sprint into a main street and get himself captured by the perimeter guards, I lunged forward, grabbed him by the collar of his tattered shirt, and dragged him violently into a pitch-black, dead-end alleyway.
I slammed him against the damp brick wall, pinning him in place.
Zenni gasped, his eyes wide as he stared at my Miera disguise. He swallowed hard, trying to put on a brave face.
"Easy there, silver-hair! There's no time for flirting! The knights are going to swamp this district in seconds. And what the hell was that punch? Your power... that's no human skill!"
I ignored his quip, leaning in close so only he could hear my voice.
"Zenni, listen to me very carefully. You need to leave Sisiphon City tonight. There is too much happening right now. The Sisiphon Alchemist Guild, your drug operations, your identity at the academy... the High Council wants your head on a spike. I am telling you this as a friend. Run."
Zenni shrugged violently, trying to pull away from my grip, a stubborn, arrogant sneer returning to his face.
"Is your brain completely rotting from the Lotus Dust, girl? Why would I run? Of course I'm going to keep working down at the meth lab. I quit being a student days ago… I'm done with that trash academy. The cartel is my life now."
I let go of his collar, reached into the folds of my stolen uniform, and pulled out a heavy, leather coin pouch, pressing it firmly into his hands. It was time to give this kid a reality check.
"Use this money to leave the city, I'm telling you, this place is a death trap. Every faction in the underworld is looking for you. And your meth lab? It's gone, Zenni. It was raided this morning. Gary and Anastasia are dead. I don't want to risk your life in this mess, so please, take the money and get out."
Zenni's stubborn expression completely shattered. His face went pale, a deeply confused, horrified look taking over his features.
"What...? Gary? Anastasia? Dead? How do you even know their names? Who the hell are you?"
I looked him dead in the eye, letting a fraction of my true, suffocating my presence leak into the alleyway.
"My name is Eirene Rynd. I am an S-rank bounty hunter from Caria. I came to Sisiphon City with one objective: to claim Oksana's head and tear her empire down. I've been using your name to get inside. So please, for the love of your own life, leave."
Zenni stared at me, his jaw dropping as the puzzle pieces finally clicked in his head.
"You… You're the monster who jumped me yesterday... the one who beat me senseless, stripped me of my clothes, and locked me in a dumpster outside the slums! What the hell did you do to my life?!"
"Don't ask questions! I just gave you every single piece of silver I have on me. It is more than enough money to buy passage on a carriage out of the sector and start a fresh life somewhere far away from the Lotus Dust. If you stay in Sisiphon City, you won't survive another day. The knights, the Eastern Clan, or Oksana herself will slaughter you. Now move!"
Zenni looked down at the heavy pouch of silver, then back at my face, the harsh reality of his situation finally sinking in. He knew he was outclassed, and he knew his drug-running days were over. Without another word, he gripped the pouch, turned on his heel, and sprinted deeper into the fog, heading toward the western city gates.
Zenni stared at the heavy pouch of silver, then back at my silver-haired face. The weight of reality finally crashed down on him. Realizing his friends were dead and his life was thoroughly forfeit if he stayed, he bit his lip, turning to run toward the western city gates.
"Wait! Before you leave... hand over your academy dorm keys."
Zenni paused for a fraction of a second. Without looking back, he reached into his ragged pocket, pulled out a heavy brass key stamped with the crest of the Sisiphon Magic Academy, and threw it backward at me.
I caught the keys effortlessly in the air.
"Good luck, hunter,"
Zenni muttered through the fog, before sprinting into the darkness, completely vanishing from the city.
He was gone. The real Zenni was officially out of the picture.
I looked down at Josan's crumpled, torn ivory uniform in my hands. The sirens were getting closer, and I still needed to find a quiet place to shape-shift back into a male form, repair this uniform, and somehow sneak into the academy freshman dorms before the morning roll call.
The heavy thud of armored boots echoed dangerously close, accompanied by the panicked shouts of the knights as they began rounding up the fleeing criminals.
"They went toward the western blocks! Sector three, move in!"
I didn't waste a second. Holding Josan's ruined uniform tightly against my chest, I leaped upward, using the raw physical power of my biology to scale the brick wall of a nearby house. I ran silently from rooftop to rooftop, leaping over narrow gaps and dodging through the thick midnight fog until the shouts of the guards faded into the background. Once the perimeters were clear, I dropped down into a quiet, secluded alleyway near the edge of the district.
I needed to fix this uniform immediately, but I didn't have any tools.
Scanning the dark alley, my eyes caught a discarded sewing kit poking out of a dumpster. I dug through it and managed to salvage a long, sturdy spool of gold thread, perfect for matching the academy's trim, but there was no needle to be found.
"No needle? No problem," I thought.
I bit the tip of my finger, drawing a tiny droplet of deep crimson fluid. Extending my hand toward the flickering amber glow of a nearby street lantern, I channeled my magic.
With the use of my blood manipulation, I morphed a single drop of blood into a shape of something else.
A needle.
The droplet of blood lengthened, spinning rapidly in the air until it hardened into a razor-sharp, high-density metallic needle made entirely of crystallized iron from my own blood. I threaded the gold string through the eye of my crimson needle, sat down on a stone crate beneath the dim, pulsing light of the lantern, and went to work.
As I meticulously stitched the tears in Josan's blazer and patched the frayed fabric of the trousers, I caught my reflection in a puddle of rainwater on the cobblestones. My long, silky hair shimmered softly under the lantern light.
The moonlight had played tricks on my eyes earlier, but looking closely now, the elegant, pale gray strands fell perfectly around my face. It was the flawless disguise of a refined noble girl, completely detached from the chaos of the city.
My fingers moved with terrifying, superhuman precision. Within fifteen minutes, the bloodstained, torn uniform of the arrogant nobleman was completely restored, the gold thread seamlessly blending into the academy's original embroidery. I snapped the thread with my teeth, and my blood needle dissolved back into a harmless mist.
With Zenni's dorm keys safely in my pocket and a freshly repaired male uniform in my hands, it was time to drop Miera's form, put Zenni's face back on, and finally claim my bed at the academy before the sun came up.