The night after I disappeared, the city didn’t relax.

  It tightened.

  I noticed it in patterns most people wouldn’t. Routes overlapping where they shouldn’t. Mana signatures flickering and vanishing too cleanly. Movements without hesitation, without curiosity. The kind of people who didn’t hunt targets, they collected them.

  Someone was cleaning up.

  The girls didn’t know that yet. As far as they were concerned, the day had ended. The pressure I’d applied was psychological, nothing more. No attacks. No retaliation.

  That assumption cost them.

  Ayame sensed something was wrong before it happened. Her driver was late. Two calls went unanswered. The reflection ward she kept idling around her apartment shuddered, just once, like something brushing past it.

  She didn’t have time to react.

  The door didn’t explode. It folded inward, magic collapsing under a suppression field tuned specifically for her frequency. Ice formed instinctively around her hands, fractured instantly as a sigil slammed into her chest. Her mana cut out mid-breath.

  She hit the floor hard.

  By the time she realized this wasn’t an external threat, it was already over.

  Reina never reached home.

  She felt the shift the moment she stepped into the service corridor behind the venue. Her illusions failed to respond, feedback rippling through her nerves. She turned, heart racing, just in time to see two figures closing in.

  She tried to run.

  A stun round hit her back. Her legs gave out. Hands pinned her arms with practiced efficiency, suppressors locking around her wrists. A needle slid into her neck before she could scream.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Darkness followed.

  Kaori fought.

  Tech wards flared as access was forcibly overridden, alarms screaming in her mind as systems she trusted turned against her. She lashed out with telekinesis, slamming one attacker into a wall, but the counterspell hit immediately after.

  Her field shattered.

  She felt ribs crack as she was driven to the ground, restraints snapping into place, heavy and humming. She recognized the framework then. Internal authorization. Retrieval protocols.

  Not enemies.

  Cleanup.

  I arrived just in time to see them load Reina into a transport.

  I stayed back, watching. Counting. Two escorts. Suppression gear. No unnecessary force. Professionals. The kind that didn’t expect resistance because resistance wasn’t supposed to exist.

  I moved when the door closed.

  A thrown shard of compressed mana shattered the driver’s concentration, just enough. I was inside before alarms could trigger, elbow catching one guard’s throat, knee breaking another’s arm mid-cast. I crushed the suppression field generator with my heel and dragged Reina out before anyone else could react.

  She was breathing. Barely.

  Good.

  Ayame’s location came next. A temporary holding site. Clean. Quiet. Two layers of wards. I slipped through the first and forced the second to collapse inward. One guard raised his weapon. I disarmed him, pinned him to the wall, and knocked him out with the butt of his own staff.

  Ayame lay restrained on a metal table, pale, unconscious.

  I cut the shackles.

  Kaori was last, and they were moving her fast.

  Too fast.

  I intercepted the transport in an alley, tearing the rear door open as it slowed. One guard tried to fire. I redirected the spell back into the wall, grabbed him by the collar, and slammed him into unconsciousness.

  The other ran.

  I let him.

  When it was over, the alley was silent again.

  Three unconscious bodies. Three famous faces. Three people who had tried to kill me.

  And now, three people marked for deletion.

  So this was how it worked.

  Use them. Send them. Dispose of them.

  I exhaled slowly.

  “No,” I said quietly.

  I didn’t wake them. Didn’t explain. Didn’t justify myself.

  I moved them one by one through streets that didn’t notice and shadows that didn’t ask questions. My apartment was anonymous. Temporary. Exactly the kind of place no one bothered to watch until it was too late.

  I laid them out carefully on the floor. Checked their breathing. Stabilized what needed stabilizing.

  Then I locked the door.

  Sat down.

  And stared at the wall.

  I wasn’t saving enemies.

  I was refusing to become like the people who decided lives were disposable.

  Tomorrow, they would wake up.

  And then, things would get complicated.