Lili stood oustide dressed in simple black layered in functional form: long-sleeved shirt tucked into dark pants, long boots. Across from her, Katika adjusted the snug fit of her dark blue combat suit with armored plating at the shoulders and sides. She looked every inch the “official hero”.
Lili squinted. “What is it with you and Cova dressing like that?” she asked, nodding toward the polished spandex-like fabric. “Some kind of sanctioned kink? Or are you just committed to aerodynamic disappointment?”
Katika blinked, then barked a laugh. “It’s a uniform, shadow-goblin. Some of us like looking like professionals.”
Lili raised an eyebrow. “I’m dressed to disappear. You’re dressed to be seen. Who’s really the professional?”
“Oh please,” Katika said. “I’ve seen your idea of stealth. You act like the shadows owe you rent.”
Lili smirked. “They do. I collect in bruises and regret.”
Katika shook her head with hidden amusement in her eyes as she tossed Lili a small communication earpiece. “Try not to brood so hard it shorts the battery.”
Lili caught it midair. “No promises.”
And just like that, the banter faded into readiness—the kind that only came before a mission. But even beneath the sharp lines and sharper tongues, something quieter stirred between them. Respect. Earned, not given.
A low tremor started beneath Lili’s boots—subtle at first. Then it deepened, pulsing through her bones in rhythmic waves. Her stance shifted instinctively, muscles tensing.
“What the—” she began, brows furrowed.
“Relax,” Katika said with a sly grin, already bracing herself. “You didn’t think we’d take a car, did you?”
Before Lili could reply, the ground cracked open beneath their feet and they were swallowed.
Minutes passed in the dark hush of soil. Then they rose again, emerging from the ground behind a thick cluster of ruined concrete pillars. A collapsed railway station stretched ahead.
Lili shot Katika a look. “Warn me next time.”
Katika shrugged, clearly pleased. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Lili wiped grit off her sleeve and muttered, “Next time I’m dragging you through shadows. Let’s see if your hair survives it.”
“Deal,” Katika grinned. “Now stay low. We’re not alone out here.”
They slid between broken pillars and rusted steel. Up ahead, half-buried by time and ivy, stood the stolen vehicle.
Lili crouched behind the mangled skeleton of a train car, her eyes narrowed beneath the veil of moonlight filtering through broken beams. “Looks abandoned,” she murmured, tone low but coiled.
Katika scanned the area. “It’s clean.”
“Yeah,” Lili muttered. “Too dead quiet.”
Her irises flared yellow.
Heat signatures crouched among the rubble, tucked into crumbled walls, peeking from corners.
“Katika,” she breathed, voice sharp through the comm in her ear. “We’re not alone.”
“Don’t be paranoid,” Katika replied, already stepping forward with the quiet confidence of someone used to walking through danger. “It’s clear.”
“My Gift never lies,” Lili hissed. “Wait. Just wait—”
But it was too late.
Katika stepped into the open.
The truck’s lights ignited all at once blinding, locking her in the center.
Lili dove deeper behind the wreckage.
“This was a trap,” she hissed, already summoning the shadows around her fingers.
Katika’s voice came back through the comm tight. “I see that now.”
Lili’s lips curled into a sharp line as the shadows around her rippled. “Hold their attention,” she whispered, already melting into the folds of black around her.
Katika’s stance shifted. She rolled her shoulders once, then drove her palm into the cracked ground. Jagged stones coiled and lifted, creating a crown of armor around her.
“You want a fight?” Katika shouted and stepped boldly into the center. “Then come earn it!”
Gunfire erupted.
Sparks sprayed as bullets ricocheted off the rising walls of stone.
Meanwhile, one by one, men fell—throats cut, ribs broken, shadows swallowing screams before they could rise. But then a strange vibration materialized in the air.
Something slammed into Lili’s back. She flew forward, hit the ground hard, tumbled across gravel and rusted rail.
She twisted up. Her eyes burned yellow without any result.
A man stepped out from thin air. His form shimmered, glitching in and out, like fractured light.
“Cute tricks,” he sneered. “But you’re not the only shadow in this war.”
“Good,” Lili said, the gleam of something unyielding in her eyes. “I like it when they think they’re clever.”
From behind, earth cracked again—Katika had sensed the shift.
“Lili?” she called out.
But Lili didn’t answer. Her focus was locked on this stranger.
She didn’t press the attack. Her first blows were tests. Feints and flickers of shadow that sliced through air but never flesh.
The man moved slipping between moments, reappearing inches away to land a brutal punch or a focused blast of force. Her ribs ached. Her breath caught. But she didn’t retreat. She studied.
Her irises flared yellow again, but useless. He flickered too fast. The trails were broken and mismatched. Then blue—sensing more clearer Gifted traces, but he scattered them with continuous flickering.. And then—red, dissolving the world into lines of bloodflow.
When he slipped, his heart jerked first. When he punched, his shoulder twitched just before.
She parried his blow with her forearm and twisted around him, a scythe of darkness following in her wake. His spine was exposed. She inhaled. This was it. Strike.
But the earth exploded between them with a sharp crack.
Dust and grit spiraled and when it cleared, Katika stood behind this man, calm, steady, and far too pleased with herself. The man stumbled, turning toward her with wide eyes as she drove a needle into the side of his neck forcing him on the ground.
“Really?” Lili said dryly, panting. “You thief! He was mine!”
Katika smirked. “You wanted to kill him. I wanted him to talk.”
“…Fine.” Lili rolled her eyes, shadows curling away from her. “But next time, I stab first. Then you suppress.”
“Deal,” Katika said with a grin, stepping aside.
Lili’s eyes flared yellow once more. The world shifted—heat signatures bloomed into her sight, vivid pulses against the darkened backdrop of ruin.
“I see two people,” she murmured, narrowing her gaze. “Their stances—they’re not moving freely. Looks like they’re tied up.”
Without waiting, she slipped into motion, heading toward a crumbling building half-swallowed by ivy and ash. Her silhouette vanished between the fractured walls.
Katika followed a few paces behind. The air inside the half-swallowed building tasted of dust.
Lili was already crouched low. Two captives in dark uniforms lay slumped against a fractured pillar, wrists bound, mouths gagged, faces painted in bruises. Their eyes widened when they saw her. First it was fear, then fragile, flickering relief.
She cut the first binding. “You’re safe,” she murmured, voice quieter now.
Katika stepped through the doorway, silhouette framed by fractured light, scanning corners, ceilings, shadows. She exhaled slowly. “Looks like we walked into a rescue mission.”
“They baited us,” Lili replied without looking up, already slicing through the second captive’s restraints. “They knew we’d come looking.”
Katika’s jaw tightened, gaze drifting toward the unconscious flickering man outside, then back to the doorway. “Then they underestimated who’d come.”
Lili didn’t answer immediately. She pulled the gag from the second captive, studied the marks around his wrists. She rose slowly.
“No,” she said at last, voice low and thoughtful. “They didn’t underestimate us.”
Katika stilled.
Lili’s yellow irises flared again, bathing the broken room in pulses of heat and hidden heartbeats. Nothing immediate. Nothing breathing beyond the four of them.
And yet her gaze drifted to the far wall. A thin metallic glint half-buried in mortar. Too intentional to be debris.
She stepped closer. Crouched. Dug it free.
A small device. No larger than a coin. Its surface blinking once… then going dark in her palm.
Her stomach tightened.
“They wanted us here,” she said quietly.
“For what?” Katika asked.
Lili looked up, something sharper than fear threading through her expression.
“To see who would come.”
The captives shifted, confused, exhausted.
Katika stepped closer, voice firm. “Explain.”
Lili held the device up between two fingers. “This wasn’t just a trap. It was a test.” Her gaze slid toward the open doorway. “They hit us loud. Predictable. Sloppy.”
“You think someone was watching,” Katika said.
“I know they were.”
Lili turned toward the rescued pair. “Who sent you?” she asked.
The first captive swallowed, throat raw. “We—we were tracking the stolen vehicle. We thought it was routine. Then they were just… there.”
“How many?” Katika pressed.
“Five. Maybe six.”
Lili’s eyes narrowed. “There were twelve,” she said softly.
Silence fell.
Outside, wind slid through broken rails with a hollow howl. Lili stepped past her, out into the fractured platform once more, scanning the skyline, the skeletal towers in the distance, the places where someone with patience and power might perch unseen.
Her voice, when it came, was almost a whisper. “They’re not dead.”
Katika joined her side, shoulder brushing shoulder.
“Then where are they?”
Lili’s jaw set, shadows curling faintly at her fingertips again.
“Waiting,” she said.
A pause.
“For what?” Katika asked quietly.
Lili’s gaze fixed on the horizon, where the sky bled slowly from iron gray into bruised blue.
“For us to realize,” she murmured, “this wasn’t about the truck… or the captives… or even the ambush.”
Her grip tightened around the small dead device.
“It was about sending a message.”
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