The knock shouldn't have existed, that sequence—three, pause, two—wasn't just a signal, it was a dead language, one spoken only by a covert order of killers long erased from the kingdom's books, the Black Ink Network, a group so feared and hunted that the Church had declared their very name a curse, and the only reason Kaito knew that code was because his soul had inherited it from another world, a world where secret codes meant more than flags and laws, a world where assassins didn't leave footprints unless they wanted to.
Lilyeth stood still, eyes fixed on the far wall, her breathing sharp, her hand hovering above the blade hidden in her boot, she didn't recognize the knock, not fully, but she felt it in her bones the way animals feel storms, and when she looked at Kaito and saw his expression—calm but narrowed—she knew whoever was outside wasn't just another informant.
Kaito stepped slowly toward the bookshelf, one hand behind his back where the [ZeroSystem Mk-IX] was already locked and loaded with an Echo Round, not meant to kill, just confuse, he tapped the rune-lock hidden beneath the alchemist's journal, slid the panel aside, and stared into the dark hallway on the other side of the door, where a cloaked figure stood still, not speaking, not moving, just waiting as if time had no meaning.
The stranger raised one hand, palm open, revealing a tiny metal seal etched with the same moth crest Ashcloak's agent had worn—but with a black streak scratched across it, a sign of exile or disavowal, which only raised more questions than it answered.
"You're supposed to be dead," Kaito said without raising his voice.
The figure spoke, their voice low and distorted by a whisper spell.
"So were you."
That earned a faint twitch from Kaito's brow, but nothing more.
Lilyeth broke the silence next.
"Who sent you?"
The figure didn't answer right away, just lowered the hand and stepped into the workshop with slow, deliberate steps, their cloak dragging over the floorboards as if carrying more than cloth, maybe memory, maybe weight, they removed their hood, revealing a face half-covered by a porcelain mask, cracked down the middle, and beneath it, a woman's eyes stared back—sharp, tired, and familiar in a way that hit like a ricochet.
"Kaito Sumeragi," she said, using his full name like a threat, "The moment you sold a Hollow Curse disguised as a Blessing Orb, you lit a beacon."
Kaito didn't blink.
"And you followed it."
The woman nodded.
"Because I'm not the only one watching. You've drawn the attention of more than the Church. The old networks are listening again. And they think you're starting a war."
He tilted his head.
"I'm just selling charms."
"You're selling fire in a kingdom full of dry wood."
And with that, she placed a scroll on the table.
Lilyeth reached for it, but the stranger raised a finger.
"Only he can open it. It's keyed to his mana."
Kaito stepped forward, eyes never leaving hers, then tapped the seal and let a sliver of his [Gun Saint's Aura] flicker across the scroll, enough to trigger the glyph without exposing the room, the parchment unraveled, revealing a map, a list of seven names, and a blood-red symbol he didn't recognize.
Lilyeth looked over his shoulder, her eyes narrowing.
"What is that?"
Kaito's voice was quiet.
"A hit list."
The masked woman nodded.
"Seven names. Each tied to the old empire, each protected by royalty, and each tied to the reason the Black Ink Network was destroyed."
He stared at the scroll for a long second, then looked back at her.
"What do you want from me?"
Her voice didn't change.
"To finish what we couldn't."
Kaito exhaled once through his nose, not in amusement, not in fear, just understanding.
"If I do this," he said, "I don't stay hidden."
"You never were."
Kaito didn't move for a long time, just stood there staring at the map, tracing the red symbol in the center with his eyes, not touching it, just observing it like it might burn him if he got too close, because the names on the list weren't common, they weren't street-level thugs or corrupt merchants, they were old money, protected bloodlines, nobles and priests and knights with too many titles to fit on their own gravestones, and every one of them had ties to something deeper—something the Kingdom of Blades had buried under ceremony and denial.
Lilyeth leaned over the scroll, her voice low.
"Do you know any of these people?"
Kaito nodded once.
"Just one."
He tapped the second name on the list, a name printed in delicate red ink: CardinalVisenHaldrik. The very same Church official who had placed a secret bounty on Kaito's head after the death of Lord Verrun. The man had never appeared publicly, but his orders moved like ghost knives through the city's underground, shaping who lived and who bled.
"So this is payback," Lilyeth muttered.
"No," the masked woman replied before Kaito could, "This is cleanup."
She pulled a small scroll case from her cloak and placed it beside the list.
"The Black Ink Network didn't vanish, it fractured. Some of us scattered. Some of us adapted. Some of us—like him—rose from another world and started drawing attention faster than we could stop it."
Kaito didn't flinch.
"You didn't answer the question," he said calmly, "Why me?"
The woman turned to face him directly now, pulling down her mask fully to reveal a face lined with thin scars and eyes sharp enough to cut through armor.
"Because your bullets do what our blades can't anymore," she said, "They don't just kill. They humiliate. They expose. They remind people that even a god can be silenced if you aim properly."
He considered that for a moment, then took the scroll case and opened it slowly, revealing sketches of an estate, a manor built into the cliffs outside the capital, and a red circle drawn around one window—no floor plans, no names, just a time and a symbol.
"You want this done without a trace," he said.
"No," she corrected, "We want it done with style. We want the message clear—Gun Saint doesn't follow kings, and shadows still have fangs."
Lilyeth glanced between them.
"Sounds like a trap."
"It probably is," Kaito said, already flipping through the notes with one hand while sorting ammo types in his mind with the other, "But if the old empire's waking up again, then it's time we get ahead of the next war."
The woman gave him a final nod, then turned and moved toward the false wall behind the storage shelf, disappearing through a glyph seal without leaving a footprint or a breath behind, just silence and tension, lingering like gun smoke.
Lilyeth folded her arms and gave Kaito a long look.
"You're not going to say no, are you?"
He reached behind the shelf and pulled out a hidden case—inside were the shells he'd been saving for something big, something personal, each one carved with different sigils, some half-finished, some glowing faintly from experimental mana reactions.
"No," he said as he chose one and began etching it with a tool carved from dragonbone, "But I'm not doing it for them."
"Then who?"
Kaito didn't answer right away.
Instead, he muttered to himself as he carved, the words soft and without emotion.
"I'm doing it for profit. And for peace."
Then he looked up at her, eyes steady.
"And maybe... to see if I still can."
The cliffside manor known as Varrenholt Hall stood like a crown of stone above the eastern bay, its towers wrapped in ivy and illusion wards, its walls guarded by mercenaries too well-fed to be peasants and too quiet to be knights, it was the kind of place that looked peaceful from a distance but reeked of expensive violence up close, the perfect home for a man like Visen Haldrik, the Cardinal who smiled in sermons and signed execution orders before dessert.
Kaito lay prone on a rocky ledge across from the estate, cloaked in a mana-dampening sheet Lilyeth had stolen from a mage hunter caravan three nights ago, the sea breeze ruffled the edge of his hood but didn't break his focus, his eyes locked on the glowing window three floors up, where a faint silhouette moved in rhythmic patterns—someone pacing, unaware that they were walking into the crosshairs of a man who didn't believe in gods.
"Fifteen seconds per pass," Kaito muttered, adjusting the ZeroSystem Mk-IX's scope, "Three guards on the lower terrace, one enchanted gargoyle statue, range about 310 meters."
Lilyeth's voice crackled in his ear through a mana-thread communicator, a recent invention she "borrowed" from a tinkerer two cities ago.
"Back window's open, side ward flickering, someone didn't maintain their sigils this week," she said, "I can sneak in through the laundry shaft if needed, plant a glyph near the balcony."
"No need," Kaito replied, loading a specially prepared Echo Round etched with a rune that disrupted sound, vision, and logic for five seconds on impact, "This one's not a stealth job. It's a message."
He waited until the pacing figure turned again, slowing slightly as if pausing to read a book or admire the ocean, then Kaito pulled the trigger.
The shot was nearly silent, just a faint click and the whistle of air parting, the Echo Round cut through the sky like a ghost, slicing through the illusion ward before it could react and striking the glass with just enough force to pierce the window and rupture the round mid-air.
There was no bang.
No scream.
Just light—blue and violet and wrong—flashing against the curtains like a cursed memory unfolding, and then the silhouette inside began to stumble, clutching at its face, spinning in circles, tearing at its robe as if insects crawled under the skin.
Kaito watched with cold eyes as the man collapsed, twitching, his screams silenced by the round's effects, but his agony perfectly visible through the enchanted lens, five full seconds of helpless thrashing before he passed out, unconscious and covered in his own bile.
Lilyeth's voice returned, flat and impressed.
"That was disgusting."
Kaito smirked beneath his hood.
"That was branding."
He stood, holstering the gun and vanishing back behind the ridge before any magical sensors could recalibrate, already peeling off the cloak and tossing it into the sea, already changing into a traveling merchant's robe, already preparing the next lie.
Back in the manor, guards would find the Cardinal foaming and whispering to the floorboards, eyes rolled back, robes ruined, and no sign of a weapon or assassin.
But burned into the stone near the shattered window, scrawled in cursed ink by the round's enchantment, were two words:
"Gun Saint."
And across the kingdom, three nobles with old empire ties would read the report by morning and understand that the shadows were shifting.
Kaito didn't kill his mark.
He destroyed his reputation.
And now, the price of silence would rise.