Cadenza chuckled.
It wasn't mirth. It wasn't human. It was a sound that echoed like it belonged to something that had slumbered beneath the earth for centuries—a sound that made the shadows flinch and the wind hush.
The assassin beside him didn't even turn. He didn't have time to register the danger, to cry out, to run.
In one smooth motion, like a whisper through silk, Cadenza stood at his shoulder—and a second later, the man's head hit the floor with a sickening wet slap.
The body remained upright for a breathless second, shuddering like a puppet whose strings had just been cut.
Then it collapsed.
Blood bloomed across the stone floor, dark and warm, filling the cracks like red vines seeking roots. The stench of iron thickened the air. The silence that followed was heavy, sacred—like the pause after a prayer in a dying church.
Cadenza stood motionless. He hadn't even looked at his victim. His eyes were fixed ahead—on Nana.
His presence was ancient. It didn't just fill the room—it pressed against the walls, seeped into the bones of everyone still breathing. It was a presence that didn't shout. It commanded.
He tilted his head.
"Ah..." he murmured, as though deciphering something delicate. "I see."
His voice was soft. But behind it was a weight older than memory.
Nana didn't hesitate.
A scream of rage surged in her chest. She pushed off the blood-slick ground with all the fury of someone who refused to be forgotten. Her body surged upward, fists blazing with conviction.
She didn't just want to hit him. She wanted to erase him.
But as she drew near, Cadenza shifted.
It wasn't a dodge. It wasn't even effort.
It was like space itself moved to accommodate him.
Her fist struck nothing.
A breath passed.
Then his voice, cruel and quiet, slithered around her like smoke.
"You are mere humans," he said, not looking at her. "Whose lives are worthless."
His words hung in the air like funeral bells.
"No ambition. No goal. No true power."
Each sentence was a nail in the coffin. His eyes, now glowing faintly beneath his lids, didn't blink.
"Just a life full of lies."
The insult wasn't loud, but it cracked something deep within her—a foundation built over years of struggle and belief now exposed to rot.
Nana froze, trembling—not from fear, but from a confusion that clawed at her gut. Who was she, truly? Could she really defy something like him?
Cadenza didn't wait for an answer.
His gaze slid away, as if she no longer mattered.
He turned to Noct, and when he spoke again, the room itself seemed to lean in to listen.
"Finish up this one," he said, voice smooth and final. "Then come."
The silence that followed was not empty—it was pregnant with dread. Noct said nothing, but his shadow shifted slightly, like something was stirring beneath his skin.
And far above, in the corners where the light no longer reached, something watched with eyes that had long forgotten mercy.
A hush swept over the broken chamber.
Noct tilted his head, eyes burning like dying stars. "Let's finish this," he said, his voice calm—too calm, like silence before a storm.
Across from him, Nana stood—blood on her cheek, fists clenched, pride cracked but not yet shattered. "No... I will kill you," she answered, defiant, breathless.
Noct laughed.
Not with joy. Not with mockery.
It was a sound hollow and slow, the kind that echoed in the soul like footsteps in a tomb. As if death itself found her declaration amusing.
"You will now know the true Prince of Agony," Noct whispered, his voice venom in velvet. "All because of your arrogance."
Something shifted in the air—pressure, weight, presence. Nana instinctively stepped back, her legs faltering not from choice but from the crushing force leaking off him.
Noct leaned forward. Calm. Cruel. Hands tucked behind his back. His grin curled like a predator's. "Are you scared?" he asked.
And Nana—cocky, relentless Nana—trembled.
Not at his words. But at what her eyes saw.
Power. Unbound. Ancient. Starless.
Noct smiled wider, something inhuman hiding behind it.
"All of... you think thi…s is a gam…e," Nana muttered, her voice shaking, words fractured by dread.
Noct's reply was soft, final. "Now you realise you are not in our league. You are just a pawn."
"All this…" Nana tried to say, reaching for some thread of reason, some hope—
"Yes," Noct cut her off coldly. "Stupid girl, it is."
And in the blink of an eye, the world tilted.
A single arc. A whisper of movement.
Nana's head hit the floor with a dull thud, eyes wide, lips parted mid-sentence. Blood spread like ink across the ground, staining the silence.
Noct crouched slowly, tender as a collector with a prized relic. He lifted her severed head, gazing into the lifeless eyes.
"Another one for my collection," he said.
His tone was gentle.
Almost proud.