The last dregs of coffee sat cold at the bottom of the chipped mug, bitter as the city itself. Malik pushed the cup away and let the hum of the diner settle around him like a lullaby made from neon buzz and clinking plates. It was the kind of place that never changed, like a stain on the sidewalk that time kept stepping over. He didn’t remember much, but Malik knew this kind of joint—where the tired waitresses wore too much rouge and not enough hope, and the coffee came strong enough to strip paint off a bumper. Felt like home, if home was a halfway house for men trying to outwalk their past.

  He didn’t remember much, but this kind of place? It felt familiar. A refuge for lost souls and night drifters, the kind of folks that didn’t make the headlines but always seemed to die for them. He slipped a folded bill—money he’d lifted off a corpse—under the lip of the sugar dispenser. Malik figured the universe could use a little realignment. Even if he didn’t know who he was, something whispered it was the right thing. Folks like her, the ones stuck on the edges of everyone else’s stories—they deserved a break now and then.

  Outside, Kuroyami City waited like a wolf in a dirty trench coat. The rain had stopped, sure, but the pavement still glistened like wet glass under the flicker of neon signs. Kuroyami City never really slept—it just blinked slow and mean between shadows. It waited like a wounded dog—quiet, slick with rain, and mean when cornered. The storm had passed, but the wet still clung to everything. Neon reflections shimmered in the oily puddles, fractured and shifting, painting the sidewalk in broken halos. The air buzzed with power lines and something deeper, a low hum just beneath the skin of the city that only the lost and the cursed ever seemed to hear.

  Malik paused beneath the diner’s rusted awning and dug out the pack of smokes he’d lifted off one of the alley corpses. Tilting his hat back he looked at he pack. The cardboard was damp, edges warped from a dead man’s pocket, the brand written in some old script I couldn’t quite read but somehow understood. The logo was a coiled serpent curling around a dagger, black ink on silver foil. Classy, in that lowlife kind of way. Malik popped one between his lips and struck the lighter he’d snagged off the same corpse. Metal casing, heavy, etched with a symbol he didn’t recognize—like a half-closed slit-pupiled eye crossed with fangs. It sparked to life with a soft click, flame flaring just long enough to light the smoke. The flame flared, short and hot, as he lit the smoke and dragged deep. Bitter. Grounding. Real.

  He checked the address again, the paper dry and stiff in his fingers. Heavy block print, no name, just a place. Didn’t matter that he didn’t know where it was—his legs knew. The same way he knew which alleys to avoid, which puddles held oil and which held blood. Instinct, not memory. And tonight, instinct was king.

  He pocketed the scrap and walked, coat pulled tight, collar up. The shadows stretched long and strange around him, curling off the brick like smoke, and the glimmer of rain-slick streets echoed underfoot with each step. At the edge of a flickering streetlamp, Malik ducked into a recessed doorway and checked the gun. It slid out smooth, cold in his palm. Empty clip. No surprise. He swapped it for a fresh one from his harness—six mags left, twelve rounds apiece. Not a war chest, but enough to end a few conversations. He racked the slide, holstered the piece, and stepped out again.

  The deeper he walked, the heavier the dark got. Not the natural kind, not just night. This was something else. Alive, maybe. Watching. Breathing. He couldn’t say for sure if he was being followed or if the city was just playing tricks, but he moved like he was. One eye on every reflection. Every open doorway. Every set of footsteps that didn’t quite echo right.

  Kuroyami City didn’t just test you. It peeled you. Stripped you down to bone and grit to see what was left. And right now, Malik was starting to think maybe that was the point. He crushed the cigarette under his heel and kept walking. The address in his coat might’ve been scrawled in pencil, but to him, it felt etched in fate.

  Malik didn’t walk the streets so much as melt into them. Kuroyami City at night wasn’t dead—it just changed its rhythm, like a jazz tune slowing down after midnight, breathless and low. The tempo eased but never stopped, not in a city like this. Even with the rain gone and the storefronts shuttered, the city thrummed with a current all its own. He slipped into the crowd that drifted along the sidewalks and alleys like smoke—factory workers heading home late, girls from the back rooms of neon joints, tired men in long coats with shoulders too heavy for their frames. And somewhere in all of that, Malik found the beat. It wasn’t something he thought about—it just happened. Like he’d always belonged here, in this moment, wearing shadows like an overcoat.

  There was a conversation riding beneath the surface, a thread he kept catching snatches of as he passed. A couple old men muttering near a noodle stall. A driver leaning out of his cab window, jawing with someone on the curb. Two women speaking fast in the hush between neon flickers. Different tongues, different accents, but the story was the same. The world was winding down. Maybe it was dying. You could feel it in the bones of the city—the way light dimmed a little quicker, how the air carried a kind of fatigue even when it wasn't hot.

  They talked about the D?o like it was a god and a ghost at once. Malik caught that word like a hook to the ribs. D?o. Power, energy, spirit—whatever name you gave it, it ran through this place like blood in a vein. And something was wrong with the flow. The energy that fed the towering skyline, lit the streets, ran the elevators and floating rail cars—all of it came from one place now, deep in the belly of the city. A single facility, according to the gossip. An old woman called it “the heart of the beast.” The younger voices said the energy was thinning. Not fast, not loud. Just a slow, quiet death—like a man bleeding out into his coat on a dark alley floor.

  Malik didn’t need a memory to know what that meant. A world running low on D?o was like a gun with a dry chamber. Trouble was inevitable.

  He turned onto a narrower street, his shoulders brushing damp bricks. The lights here weren’t steady—neon signs blinked like they were thinking about giving up, and the buzz of the fixtures echoed against the alley walls like the rasp of a dying man’s breath. His steps slowed. Gut tightened. This was a choke point, textbook. A funnel, a trap.

  And that’s when they stepped out.

  First came the muscle. One on the left, tall, wide, skin pulled tight over a jaw full of bad decisions. A serpent tattoo slithered up his neck, disappearing behind his ear like it had secrets. The one on the right wore mirrored shades, despite the night. He moved with a calm that came from believing pain was something other people experienced.

  But it was the third that really got Malik’s attention. Leaning back in the cut, half-shadowed beneath a flickering sign, was a smaller man in a trim pinstripe. His suit whispered money, but his posture screamed menace. He took a long drag from a cigarette and let the smoke curl through the neon. There was no mistaking the way he sized Malik up. Cool. Precise. Like a tailor measuring a mark for his coffin.

  “Evenin', courier,” the man said, voice low and smooth like jazz played in a backroom nobody advertised. “Funny thing. City like this, you think you’ve seen it all. Then you show up.”

  Malik didn’t reply right away. He measured his stance, watched their hands. He kept his voice flat when it came, like a man just tired enough to be dangerous. “I think you’ve got me confused with someone else.”

  “Doubtful,” said Snake-Neck, his grin all teeth and bad breath. “Word on the wire is you’re carrying somethin’ that don’t belong to you.”

  “Not mine to begin with, and again you got the wrong dude.” Malik said, thumb grazing the edge of his coat. “Just passing through.”

  “You’re passing through our turf,” the suited one said, stepping off the wall. His eyes gleamed beneath the brim of his fedora, catching just enough light to look sharp and dead. “And you’re carrying what belongs to people I don’t like. Now, you can be a good dog, and hand it over… or we can get unpleasant.”

  Malik sighed and scratched his jaw like he was thinking it over. Truth was, he knew this dance. Always a conversation before the violence. A little pageantry before the blood. Still, he tried to play the part.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “You break my legs, dig through my pockets, then leave me to bleed out while you argue over who gets the bigger cut.”

  The goon with the mirrored shades cracked his knuckles. “That’s the polite version.”

  Malik looked from one to the next. His fingers twitched near the hem of his coat. “So diplomacy’s off the table.”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  The man in the suit smiled wider and flicked his cigarette to the ground. “It never was on.”

  Malik’s jaw tightened. Instincts screamed again—not fear, not quite. Just the same whisper he’d heard before in the alley, in the fire escape, in the way his body knew how to move before his brain told it to. This wasn’t going to be talk. It was going to be noise. And he was ready for it.

  The alley dropped into stillness, that kind of pregnant silence right before a storm cracks wide open. Malik could feel the air hum, could taste the copper edge of violence on his tongue. The shadows clung tighter to the walls now, and the flicker of neon down the block looked more like a pulse than a light. His heartbeat slowed. Not in fear, but in focus. Everything stretched. Slowed. His senses peeled wide like a lens snapping into place.

  Time didn’t stop, but it damn well bent.

  The man with the snake tattoo shifted, his weight betraying his intent just a fraction too soon. Malik didn’t think—he moved. The draw wasn’t a movement; it was an instinct, a ripple in the air. Shadow coiled around his chest and shoulder like a living thing, deepening where the leather met flesh, shrouding the act. His hand blurred—one moment empty, the next holding the pistol low and tight, the silencer catching what little light there was. No one saw him draw. No one heard the shot. But they sure as hell saw the effect.

  The mirrored thug blinked—too late. A single muffled pop split the air and Snake-Neck staggered with a breathless grunt, his knee buckling as he fell forward like a marionette with cut strings. He was dead before his brain figured it out.

  The bark of return fire cut through the air like a hammer hitting steel. The thug with the mirrored shades wasn’t slow. His revolver was a heavy brute, something designed to end arguments with a single punctuation mark. It flared like a flashbulb in the dark. But Malik was already moving—was already gone. His instincts screamed, not with panic, but precision. His legs kicked off the damp concrete, his body rolling low under the muzzle flash. He wasn’t dodging bullets—no one was that good—but he was faster than the man’s trigger finger, and that was enough.

  He came out of the roll in a crouch, weight steady, arms tight, the silenced pistol already tracking. Two shots. One to the chest. One to the head. Each clean. The second thug pitched back and crumpled without ceremony.

  And then the knife came.

  He didn’t see it until the last blink. A glint. A hiss through the air like an exhale of breath. It sank into his shoulder, cold and clean at first, then heat blooming like a match against muscle. He staggered slightly, teeth clenched, but he didn’t cry out.

  Pain was just noise. Grit filtered the noise.

  He passed the pistol to his off-hand, fingers already slick with sweat, and gripped the knife’s handle. It was a slender stiletto, the sort of blade made for silken deaths and whispered vengeance. He yanked it free with a sharp grunt and stared at it for half a second, more curious than angry.

  “Nice steel,” he muttered, his voice dry. “Shame it didn’t come with manners.”

  He tossed the blade behind him like yesterday’s news and turned to retrieve his pistol—only to find the last man, the one in pinstripes, already bolting into the dark.

  “Son of a bitch,” Malik growled, stepping forward, raising his weapon.

  Too late. The man slipped into the crooked maze of Kuroyami’s back alleys with the ease of someone who’d done it before. But even from this distance, Malik’s sharp ears picked up the fleeing gangster’s breathless mutter as he vanished into the night.

  “I gotta tell the boss... he’s better than the last one…”

  Malik stood there a long moment, the smoke still rising from the silencer, the sting in his shoulder pulsing steady with his heartbeat. He felt the itch behind his eyes—the one that told him the system was watching. That he’d just been measured again. And this time, he’d passed the test.

  The last echoes of gunfire had barely finished bouncing off the narrow alley walls when the air shifted. The stink of cordite and blood still clung to the rain-slick concrete, but now something else stirred—a low hum, like static crawling along his skin. Malik stood still, breathing slow and deep, pistol lowered but ready, eyes sharp in the shadows. The city didn't care about two more corpses in the gutter, but something else did.

  The D?o answered.

  From the bodies of the two fallen thugs, tendrils of faint, violet-black energy began to rise. It wasn’t smoke exactly—more like memory bleeding loose, curling and writhing in patterns that defied the eye. The strands floated toward him, and as they reached the space around his chest, the familiar ghostly image of the cartridge belt uncoiled in the corner of his vision. It stretched wide in that strange, heads-up display only he could see, slick as oil on glass, not quite real but unmistakably present.

  Click. Click. Notches filled. One belt, complete. A second unspooled just beneath the first, and with it, three more spectral cartridges locked into place. Then came the voice—cool, clinical, male—like a radio dispatch from the bottom of the ocean.

  

  The belt flared briefly, and then a subtle ripple of energy coursed through his limbs, like a jolt of espresso laced with lightning. His breath caught—not from pain, but exhilaration. He didn’t just feel alive—he felt sharp. The alley, the city, the world all seemed to crystallize around him in finer detail. The wound on his shoulder closed up and healed.

  

  A pause and he flexed his shoulder as the words faded from sight, and new ones started to emerge.

  

  As the words settled into place, he felt it—something coiled beneath his skin, waiting. His aim was tighter. His hand steadier. Like the pistol wasn’t just a weapon anymore, but an extension of his intent. Every pull of the trigger would now take something more than blood from the next poor bastard that crossed him.

  A second chime sounded, gentler, but no less clear.

  

  Malik blinked once, slow. Ghoststep. That explained the roll, the dodge—how he’d moved before that goon’s revolver had barked. He hadn’t thought, just slipped past the bullet like he already knew where it’d land. Now the system had acknowledged it.

  

  He muttered under his breath, “Yeah… let’s get stronger.”

  Malik leaned back against the alley wall, letting the last wisps of D?o energy coil down into the cartridge belt glowing faintly in his vision. The HUD lingered, pulsing gently as if waiting for him to say something.

  “Three points,” he muttered, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth. He wasn’t out of breath, but something in him was racing all the same—blood buzzing with whatever that energy had done to him. He’d leveled up. Hell of a thing.

  The stat sheet floated into focus beside the belt. Same as before: Quickness, Aim, Grit, Instinct, and… his eyes narrowed at the last one—Presence.

  “Presence,” he said aloud, the word rolling on his tongue like a bitter sip of cheap gin. “You’ve been sittin’ there quiet as a ghost this whole time. What the hell are you?”

  As if the D?o had been waiting for him to ask, the voice whispered again in that cold, distant tone:

  

  Malik blinked once, slowly. “Huh.” He lit another cigarette, flicking the flame with that lighter he’d looted. “So that’s what makes a man’s shadow longer when he steps into the room.”

  He let the smoke trail out as he thought. He hadn’t spoken much since he woke up in that hotel room, but already people were looking at him different. The waitress. The thugs. Even that dying assassin. Like he had gravity. A weight to his steps. If that was Presence, he’d take more of it.

  “One point in Presence,” he said, nodding to the air like it owed him a drink.

  

  Two points left.

  He rolled his shoulder. The throwing knife wound was closed now, but the memory of the sting lingered. It hadn’t slowed him much, but still—he needed to keep moving, keep dodging. He tapped the edge of the display with a mental flick, watching Quickness shimmer.

  “Another in Quickness. Can’t hit what you can’t catch.”

  

  Last one. He turned his head slightly, eyes narrowing. His aim had been sharp—deadly, even. But instincts were what saved him. That feel in his gut when things turned bad. The whisper in his mind that screamed move before a shot rang out. And that system? It rewarded that.

  He smirked faintly.

  “Instinct,” he said. “Always trust your gut.”

  

  The stat sheet folded away, slipping back into the void, and the D?o’s voice faded once more into silence.

  Malik took one last drag of his smoke, then flicked the butt down into the gutter. The city’s hum returned, neon glinting off the puddles like oil over steel. He rolled his shoulders, holstered his pistol, and stepped deeper into the night.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  His fingers flexed, and as the hum of the D?o settled back into the silence of the alley, the voice returned one last time—calm, certain, inevitable.

  

  Malik looked back at the bodies cooling behind him, remembering the smoke from his pistol, and the glimmer of power in the air that now felt like it belonged to him. The city hadn't even blinked—but something deep inside had turned. He holstered his weapon, jaw set, and let the night take him once more.