The mercenary lunged past Gabriel, vanishing into the darkened alley where the wagon had disappeared. Footsteps echoed, swallowed by shadow.
"Bloody mercenaries,"
Gregory muttered, emerging from the tavern with his waistcoat unbuttoned and no firearm in sight. His spectacles hung askew, a flush of annoyance warming his cheek.
He tossed a length of iron piping to Gabriel, its surface still warm from the hearth.
"Here. Ragna will handle the runner. We keep the rest entertained."
Gabriel caught the pipe mid-air. The weight was reassuring.
Gregory, now rolling his sleeves up to the elbow, tore his belt free and wrapped it taut around his wrist like a brawler from the dockyards.
One of the remaining mercenaries stepped forward. From his belt he drew a Venetian stiletto, the narrow blade singing beneath the gaslight as if eager for blood.
Gregory's mouth curved slightly—never quite a smile.
"Bringing a knife to a gentleman's dispute?" he asked, his voice low and civil.
"Good thing I left my pistol inside. I might've taken offence."
Across from them, the second mercenary tilted his head and tapped the pavement twice with his walking stick. With a click, the polished cane unsheathed to reveal a slender sword of tempered steel.
Gabriel raised the iron pipe to his shoulder like a holy relic.
"A cane-sword. By the Saints above…"
He shut his eyes briefly, murmuring as he steadied his breath:
"May the Lord grant me strength.
May the blessing of the Pathmaker guide my arm.
May Saint Leon keep my footing swift.
May Saint Raphael-—"
"Oh, for heaven's sake!"
Gregory barked, exasperated.
"Must you recite the entire Book of Benedictions before every fight?"
He turned sharply toward the sword-wielding mercenary.
"Count yourself fortunate, my friend. Another three verses and he'd have called down fire from the heavens—or worse, started to sing."
The mercenary blinked.
Gregory stepped forward, the torchlight glinting off his glasses now restored to their perch.
"Shall we dispense with the pageantry?"
He said, flexing his hand around the belt-wrapped fist.
"I do so hate to fight on an empty stomach."
Gabriel exhaled once, pipe ready.
The mercenaries hesitated only for a breath.
Then they struck.
Without warning, the mercenary lunged—a quick, shallow thrust aimed at Gregory's shoulder. It wasn't meant to kill—just to test. The speed, the edge, the reflex.
But Gregory didn't blink.
The stiletto met resistance as leather met steel—Gregory's arm, wrapped in his own belt, intercepted the blade with a practiced turn of the forearm. The steel caught in the worn leather with a shriek of friction.
Before the mercenary could twist free, Gregory moved.
SNAP.
His hips turned—a sidekick tore through the air.
But the mercenary dropped low at the last instant. The kick hissed past overhead, wind brushing his hair. He rolled, tucked, and emerged beside a rusted trash can. Fingers groped the cobbled ground.
A shard of green glass—jagged, wicked.
With a flick of the wrist, the bottle spun toward Gregory's face like a thrown comet. In the same breath, the mercenary dove for the stiletto, still glinting in the dust.
Gregory didn't flinch.
He sidestepped—the bottle shattered against the tavern wall in a burst of shards.
The moment the mercenary was upright again, Gregory was already there.
His fist snapped upward in a brutal uppercut, catching the man square beneath the chin. The crack of bone echoed down the alley.
The mercenary's head snapped back, blood misting from his lip. He staggered back, dazed—but not down. Not yet.
He wiped the blood with the back of his hand, then smiled.
"Not bad, clerk," he rasped.
Then came the second blade.
A curved fighting knife, drawn from the boot.
The mercenary shifted his stance—low, feral, predatory—and launched forward in a flurry of slashes. Silver arcs shimmered under the lamplight. Fast. Wild. Desperate.
Gregory danced.
He weaved between the strikes, footwork sharp and angular.
"Too easy," he muttered, smirking.
A slash tore for his eye. Gregory turned just in time—the blade grazed his cheek, drawing a thin, hot line of blood. But his arms were already in motion—snaking around the attacker's limb, twisting, locking.
With a savage grunt, Gregory lifted and pivoted, slamming the man down onto the cobbles.
THUD.
Air left the mercenary's lungs in a wheeze. The knife clattered away, lost in the street's gutter. Still, he rolled clear before Gregory could follow up, rising on one knee, blood trickling from his brow.
His eyes scanned. Desperate.
A pipe. Rusted, forgotten, resting near the alley wall.
With a desperate cry, he lunged and grabbed it, swinging wide toward Gregory's knees with the wrath of a dying man.
But Gregory had already seen it.
"Can't fight without toys, can you?"
He spun—not back, but into the swing, the arc sailing harmlessly behind him. The spin carried momentum, and his heel snapped outward.
CRACK.
The kick landed against the side of the mercenary's temple. Clean. Precise. Final.
The man dropped.
The pipe rang against the ground.
Silence followed.
Steam coiled from his body in the cold night air.
Gregory stood above him—shoulders heaving slightly. Blood beaded along his cheek, a thin red ribbon trailing toward his collar.
He unwrapped the leather belt from his forearm slowly, as if shedding the last tension from the fight. His fingertips traced the cut on his face. He muttered something under his breath—half a prayer, half an insult.
Then he looked up. Toward the other street.
Toward where Gabriel was still fighting.
CLANG! CLANK!
Steel crashed against iron as the mercenary's cane-sword swung with brute force. Gabriel parried each blow with eerie precision, his battered pipe moving like a holy relic in the hand of a vengeful saint.
The night air pulsed with the sound of metal and breath.
Gabriel's lips parted, murmuring into the cold:
"Lord, this servant thanks You for Your blessing."
His eyes—gold and glinting like judgment—locked on the mercenary.
"Dear mercenary brother," he smiled, almost warmly,
"Fights should be short. Let's end this in seven moves."
The mercenary cocked his head. The smirk on his face curved like a crescent wound.
CLANG!
The can-sword slashed down, a heavy, rusted arc of steel. Gabriel raised the pipe in a rising angle—redirecting, not resisting—and the blade shrieked as it scraped along the pipe's corroded surface.
He stepped in. Close. Too close.
"First strike."
In a blink, Gabriel spun.
The pipe whipped around like the tail of some divine serpent, the curved end cracking against the back of the mercenary's skull.
CRACK.
Blood bloomed from the wound. The mercenary staggered, feet faltering, both hands instinctively flying to the back of his head.
But Gabriel was already in motion.
"Second."
The pipe swept low, a feint toward the knees—but reversed upward in a sudden arc. The mercenary flinched, raising his arms to shield his face.
The pipe struck the cobbles, intentionally misdirected.
But it didn't matter.
"Third."
As the mercenary's guard loosened for just a moment, Gabriel stepped inside his stance—and drove his elbow forward, smashing it into the man's nose with the weight of a hammer swung in prayer.
CRUNCH.
Cartilage split. Blood sprayed. The mercenary reeled back with a strangled cry, clutching his ruined face.
Gabriel didn't give him time to mourn it.
"Fourth."
He brought the pipe down onto the man's exposed wrist—disarming him with a sharp twist and a crack.
The can-sword clanged to the street, useless.
The mercenary tried to retreat, limping toward the shadows. But Gabriel followed, step for step, pipe dragging beside him like a grim shepherd's staff.
He whispered:
"Shall I count higher?"
But before the mercenary could muster a breath—
THWACK.
A final, unseen strike landed with surgical grace. The pipe didn't even whistle through the air—it whispered, like a sermon's last word.
The mercenary's body seized. His knees buckled. His eyes rolled white. And then—silence.
He crumpled, face-first, into the cobbled street. The torchlight flickered across the glinting blood on his brow.
Alive. But no longer part of the fight.
Gabriel stood above him, pipe still warm in his hand. He didn't spare the fallen man a second glance. Instead, he bowed his head, clasped his hands around the steel like a rosary, and spoke low:
"Thank You for Your blessing, my Lord."
The breeze tugged at the hem of his coat, and somewhere in the distance, a cathedral bell tolled.
Behind him, the gas lamps burned quietly, throwing long shadows—one of a paladin, pipe in hand, haloed not by gold but resolve.
"Damn!"
Gregory stretched his arms with a grunt, joints cracking as he rolled his shoulders.
"Reminds me of the old days," he muttered, a crooked smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Gabriel, still breathing steady from the fight, turned to look at him. His own lips curved faintly, recalling the sentiment—
But that smile faltered.
His gaze, for a moment, grew distant. Hollow.
The pipe in his hand lowered as a stillness crept into his frame. Gregory saw it—the shift, the subtle drop of the jaw, the flicker in the eyes.
A memory had returned. Uninvited. Unwelcome.
Gregory's grin faded. Slowly, his shoulders sank under an invisible weight.
He knew exactly which memory.
For a breath, neither of them spoke. The sounds of the city blurred into a hum—carriages in the distance, laughter spilling from a tavern door down the lane, the rustle of wind through a chapel steeple nearby.
They stood amidst it all, heads slightly bowed—not in grief, nor prayer, but in quiet recognition of a pain they never put into words.
"...It was the warehouse job, wasn't it?" Gregory finally murmured, voice barely above the wind.
Gabriel didn't answer. He didn't need to.
The silence was his reply. The kind only two old soldiers could share.
SIX YEARS AGO-
The sky was a sheet of iron, rain carving silver veins across the darkness as it hammered down upon the rusted shell of an abandoned warehouse on the edge of Alder's derelict district.
Thunder cracked.
Gregory Wells, his shirt soaked and clinging to his skin, elbowed a man in the jaw, the crunch echoing under the tin roof. The man stumbled back into the mud.
"Break it open, Gab!"
Gregory bellowed, turning just in time to block a strike from a splintered bat with his forearm. A grimace twisted his face—he felt the bone bruise, but he didn't stop.
Gabriel Faye—slimmer, shorter, and eyes like a storm barely contained—threw himself at the warehouse door. The old wood groaned under his foot.
Again.
And again.
"They've barred it from the inside!" he hissed.
"Cowards!"
Another body slammed into Gregory's back. He twisted, gripped the man's collar, and headbutted him into unconsciousness.
"They locked them in! They locked the damn thing with him still inside!"
Gabriel shouted, fury rising in his throat like bile.
"Then KICK HARDER!"
Gregory slammed a man against the wall, knuckles raw and knotted with blood. The green pants and white shirts their assailants wore were identical to theirs. Fellow students.
Comrades. Brothers.
No. Not tonight.
They were no brothers tonight.
With a final crack, the rotted hinge snapped. The door banged open.
Smoke curled out like fingers.
Inside was a massacre.
Bodies—young men barely older than boys—lay crumpled and torn on the concrete floor. Faces beaten beyond recognition. Blood pooled in the dips of the floor, mixing with the soot and spilled lamp oil.
Twenty of them.
All wore the same uniform.
All students of the Alder National Military College.
Gabriel stumbled inside. The air was thick, choking with ash and the copper stench of blood.
"Ragna…"
The word caught in Gregory's throat like glass.
He saw him.
Slumped against a scorched beam, legs sprawled, one arm limp at his side, the other still clenched around the broken shaft of a pole.
Ragnar.
Barely conscious.
His white shirt blackened with smoke and blood, the side of his skull gashed deep enough to see the bone.
Gabriel fell to his knees beside him, cradling his head gently.
"We're here. We came, brother. We came back for you."
Ragnar's eyes, barely open, twitched toward them.
He smiled—or something like it. A broken mockery of it.
"As expected… only you two ever understood me…"
His head dropped.
"NO!"
Gregory grabbed his collar, shaking him.
"Ragna! RAGNA!"
But his breathing was still there—shallow, rattling. Not dead. Not yet.
Then came the sound.
The crackle of fire licking through oil-soaked walls.
The warehouse had been doused. A trap from the start.
"We need to MOVE!"
Gabriel snapped. His voice didn't waver.
Gregory hooked his arms under Ragnar's shoulders, and the two of them dragged their friend across the broken floor, ash and glass cutting into their boots.
They emerged into the rain once more, smoke billowing behind them.
Then—figures. Dozens. Standing in the storm's shadow.
Umbrellas raised. Coats buttoned. Silent silhouettes in green trousers.
Waiting.
Gregory lowered Ragnar to the ground slowly.
Gabriel stood tall beside him.
The warehouse burned behind them, casting flickering shadows onto the waiting horde.
"Cowards!" Gregory spat, voice hoarse.
"You locked him in and called it an initiation?"
No one replied. They didn't have to.
A voice rang out. Calm. Eloquent.
From the crowd's centre.
"Only the strong deserve to serve. Those were the rules."
It was Senior Commander Castellan, student body prefect. Unscarred. Untouched.
Gabriel's fingers clenched around the crucifix at his chest.
Gregory stepped forward, his hands empty but his posture radiating violence.
The rain fell harder.
Gabriel whispered,
"If we die here…"
"We won't,"
Gregory said.
Behind them, Ragnar stirred.
They would survive.
But something in them burned forever from that night on.
A bond of fire, blood, and betrayal.
That night—the Warehouse Night—never made the papers.
But it made monsters out of men.
PRESENT-
Then Gabriel inhaled slowly, his hand tightening on the pipe again—not for battle, but as if anchoring himself to the present.
He looked up at Gregory.
"They never came back from that fire."
Gregory nodded.
"No. They didn't."
A pause. Then a whisper, heavy as stone:
"And we didn't forgive ourselves."
A church bell rang somewhere in the misty dark, tolling eight times.
The two men turned quietly toward the sound.
And walked.