The city was silent. Only the hooves of Crepúsculo on the road echoed around. No bar was open.

Scar automatically regretted not grabbing a cloak before leaving. But how could she remember such a thing when all she had in her head was Ethan’s refusal to see her side. The fact that he saw himself as someone more powerful and skilled, all because he had magic running through his veins.

There were many reasons for Scar to hate mystics. She thought they had changed, that only the elves of the North still carried that superior air everyone knew. But it seems she was wrong about that too.

If Ethan thought he was the hotshot, there was no reason to think others would be different. Scar had seen it all, she didn't need to be sure of anything more about mystics.

On the way, she took a dark green cloak from a clothesline outside a house, one that some women wore daily to protect themselves from the rain. She threw it over her shoulders with ease and fastened it in front with a brooch — probably very expensive — and hooded herself at the exact moment she spotted her own bar.

The lanterns were lit, a low sound coming from inside. A song of deep, out-of-tune voices, along with laughter and shouts of joy.

Scar made her horse stop at a suitable distance. The noise circled her body, and chills ran down her arms and legs, feeling that she could still enter there, that she deserved to have fun.

But over the wooden gate, what she saw left her shaken, her chest heavy. Ryxer Vannyer was next to Courvin, leaning over the counter while Bruce Matchstone gestured to the air, all smiling and listening to Gwenda’s cousin tell his stories before arriving there.

But Bruce was staggering, drunk.

She could have been worried, but Scar remained neutral. She knew her cousin hadn’t drunk that much since she practically saved him from his own hands. Ryxer and Courvin were equally drunk, so much that Vannyer could fall asleep at any moment, and the competitor was just waiting for the grand finale of Bruce’s story, his eyes wide while staring at the adventurer in front of him.

Courvin laughed so loudly that the sound of his laughter reached Scar with clarity. Bruce laughed along and threw his arms on the counter before reaching for the drink with his fingers, and Ryxer startled, rubbing his face while laughing.

Her cousin turned the beer bottle and wiped his mouth with his arm.

Scar lingered on those light brown eyes like hers, as vivid as the last time she saw him in person. She didn’t even go to her bar to see Bruce, but to pay her employees. The guilt was already ingrained in her body and mind, so it just became deeper, like a weight that someday she wouldn’t be able to bear.

Before anyone saw her there or she lost the courage to leave this life behind once again, Scar dug her heels into Crepúsculo’s flanks. The horse moved, and only when her cousin disappeared from sight inside the bar did Scar look away at her own hands holding the reins, light.

She took a deep breath, feeling a twinge in her ribs, and licked her dry lips.

For the rest of the way, Scar refused to think about her family and all those who meant something to her. Because when she returned… when she returned home and didn’t find Ethan, she was absolutely sure that the only thing that would cross her mind was these same people and everything she could no longer do. Because she was dead. Falsely dead.

She would no longer have Ethan. The only one who could live at Scar’s expense for her.

It was funny to think that the same one who caused her disappearance was the one who had permission to see her. The one who knew she was alive, the only one. When she returned, Ethan would no longer be there; he would have gone to the Opposite Continent.

I fought to be here.

Scar sent the consequences to hell as soon as she got off the horse, softening the sound her steps made on the coarse sand of the road. She looked around, the place she knew so well, and for that reason, it made her nauseous.

She pushed the door carefully but didn’t prevent the creak it caused. Quickly, she squeezed her body through and passed, as silent as death. However, she let the door fall and bang with the intention of drawing attention if they hadn’t noticed her presence yet.

It worked.

But he knew Scar was trying to draw attention.

A match struck in the dark, illuminating Rubben’s face in a macabre way.

— Hello, love.

Lanterns lit up on the walls, one by one, so quickly that Scar’s heart pounded in her chest, and she had to put an arm in front of her eyes.

— You know, I really believed you were dead. — he said as Scar’s vision recovered. — I went to your funeral. How depressing.

Lie. If she had seen him, she would have remembered.

Scar blinked one last time and managed to see Rubben flick the match before the blue flame vanished.

The casino tables were arranged as always, nothing out of place. His thugs surrounded him. Two positioned right behind and three slowly walking among the tables towards Scar. One had a closed wound on his neck that would leave an ugly scar, another had a black eye being healed slowly.

— What brings my dear friend back from the dead? — Rubben asked sarcastically. — Did the desire for company speak louder? I believe the disturbing news made you appear. Or rather, look for me, to be more specific.

The smile on his face sent chills down Scar’s spine, but she narrowed her eyes. She had no idea what news he was referring to, but she’d love to stay and find out. So she abandoned the idea of turning back, knowing that there was probably another thug waiting for her at the exit.

Rubben raised his eyebrows.

— I believe you don’t know — he lifted his chin and tilted his head slightly to the side, reciting slowly — what I’m talking about.

Scar remained still, in position. The thugs continued to approach stealthily.

— Well, — Rubben continued — we can make things easier and get straight to the point. If you don’t know the marvelous news, then what’s the reason for this unexpected visit?

The three thugs stopped, erect as rods and at least three meters from Scar. She observed them all with keen eyes, looking for weapons inside their clothes and boots. One had two pistols under his clothes, one on each hip; another had the tip of a dagger glinting at the end of his sleeve. The rest probably had firearms. Rubben wouldn’t be stupid enough not to arm his personal guards.

— Be direct — Scar muttered, bored.

Rubben gave a half-smile.

— So the undead speaks. How interesting.

Scar clenched her fists inside her cloak.

— I suppose your friend is completely shaken. What was his name again? Triron?

Scar closed her eyes.

— Trytan. — she said angrily.

— That’s it. That’s right. — Scar could feel the grin in his voice.

Every nerve in her body yielded to it, and she let her hands fall open, her arms so inert they might have been amputated.

— Why?

Rubben frowned.

Scar asked more rigidly, taking a step towards him:

— Why did you kill him?

— I didn’t kill anyone.

And he said it with such conviction that Scar almost believed him. But she let out a laugh.

— You’re nothing but a lying, opportunistic bastard.

One of the thugs advanced.

Scar bent her knees.

The other did the same and touched the weapon on his hip.

— No.

He stopped advancing, capturing his boss’s order, but remained where he was, glaring at Scar with hatred. She laughed with a shrug and showed him the middle finger. What she got in return was a gnashing of teeth.

She always found it strange how they acted like animals.

— It seems to me that there’s only one liar here. — said Rubben — With all your... means of coming back from the dead. Since you were never really dead, were you?

Scar felt anger rushing through her veins. That scoundrel kept smiling.

— I’m curious. — he inquired — Have you ever been truthful? Because your little friend Triron was quite convincing when he talked about you.

Her legs went weak.

Rubben picked up a deck of cards from a table and started shuffling them skillfully. In her entire life, Scar had only seen Rubben shuffle like that. Without dropping a single card.

— So much about you, what you do in life, and what you’ve been through. But nothing about me, can you believe it? — Rubben had the nerve to look Scar in the eye. — You never told him that you belonged to me?

— I never belonged to you the same way I belonged to Trytan.

And that opened a wound in Rubben, enough to make him stop shuffling the cards, but only that. Scar observed and prepared herself.

— He didn’t deserve you.

— Are we talking about you now?

Rubben glared at her from under his lashes. Let him get irritated.

— I would hate to spoil that spectacular vision you have of Triron. What an incredible little man, respectful, humble... a killer. Your boyfriend had some debts.

Rubben gave an amused smile when Scar tensed up. He continued:

— How did he manage to get that body in the cart? — Rubben resumed shuffling the cards skillfully. — The poison is no longer a poison; it’s a drug. And your friend knew that; he was more doped up than the addicted rebels.

A strong buzzing started close to her ear.

— You’re lying. — she said, breathless.

Rubben sighed.

— I wish I were. — Rubben carefully placed the cards on the table and began to walk around, his eyes always on hers. — Your former boyfriend got addicted, and when he discovered he knew the next dealer, he seized the idea of going there. The rebel who escaped from you on the day of the Sector 9 explosion had stolen an enigmatic amount of poison and started selling it around. Fortunately, before the drug spread further, Triron killed him, of course. Too bad it was for a personal reason.

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Scar growled and dug her nails into her palms.

— Stop talking crap. — she snapped.

— The dealer mutated the poison; it was not for nothing that I had sent my men after him, to stop him before the worst happened. And Trytan knew it, so when he was denied the drug, he killed the bearer and tried to hide the body. He just wasn’t so addicted as to go after the drug stash and ignore that he had just drowned someone in a barrel of water.

Scar didn’t know if she could breathe or defend Trytan. She didn’t know whom to believe.

The worst part is that I can’t even get high. I’ll be taken to Wind Prison like a doped puppet.

She closed her eyes.

Trytan had been planning all that, and Gwenda had turned a blind eye to it because it was Trytan, and she thought she knew him.

— He wasn’t as innocent as you imagined him to be.

— But he wasn’t a monster like you. — she said. — He was just lost.

— Lost in his own discoveries and foolish choices. He chose to act that way. It could have been avoided.

— And you simply killed him. — Scar growled.

— If you want to believe so much that Triron did none of this, I won’t interrupt while you delude yourself.

She couldn’t believe Trytan would have the capacity to betray like that. To ingest a mutant drug and go crazy for more to the point of killing someone. He wasn’t like that.

Not as far as she knew.

— Come back to me.

Scar stared at him, as immobile as a stone.

It was the only thing Rubben said after giving away Trytan, and in a way too painful to have come from him.

Scar wasn’t crazy enough to accept something like that. Not again. So she chose to remain silent or turn around and face the thug outside. The second option wouldn’t be so hard to handle. Training with Ethan had put Scar in a different position.

She shook her head in denial.

— You killed him.

Rubben closed his eyes.

— You’re mistaken.

— You threatened him in front of me. — Scar shot back. — Are you trying to say he dug his own grave? No. He’s dead because of you.

— No. I’m not the one responsible for Trytan’s death. — Rubben replied impatiently.

Trytan had set his own trap, but it was Rubben who didn’t give him a chance. The men he sent after the dealer were probably looking to bring him to Rubben, and killing Trytan and the others in the cart was a way to protect the drug.

Rubben could sell it.

— Lie. — Scar took another step forward, as if holding herself back from running and choking her former master.

— Stop blaming the innocent. Don’t you think you’ve done that enough? Aren’t you tired?

Scar averted her gaze to her own feet. He said it in such a guilty and disappointed tone...

But she blamed herself. And she was innocent of many things.

Scar did everything to hold back the tears that threatened to fall.

Tired? Who wouldn’t be tired in this state, with everything happening? Scar was just a victim, always had been. All she wanted was to fix the past, finish these cases, and get some peace, to be able to rest. She didn’t want to look at any more faces, just live the life that had never been planned and never involved killing anyone.

She wanted to be normal.

But this was normal. And why? It didn’t have to be.

— Let me go.

Rubben was already shaking his head.

— You can’t...

— Let me go. — This time, her voice broke, and Rubben seemed to notice, softening his expression.

She swore he would deny it again, even if he was shaken by her. Rubben was never good with feelings, despite always showing what he felt for Gwenda. She saw so openly how bad he felt for her, got angry with himself when he exploded with Gwenda.

He had no idea that Gwenda no longer existed, and Scar didn’t give a damn.

And then, without another word, without any recollection or request, Rubben nodded.

And Scar left into the cold night, not caring about the bodyguard outside who followed her with his eyes until she reached her horse. Not even when Twilight ran away, its powerful hooves thundering on the ground.

----------------------------------------

As soon as Gwenda left, Rubben's heart ceased to be made of stone, finally.

What he felt for her was a demonstration of affection that no one had ever shown him. That’s why he was incapable of being more affectionate; he never had been. He had never been as merciful as he was now, and, surprisingly, everything felt lighter.

Rubben took a deep breath, knowing his men were watching him, waiting for an order to go after her. But he remained silent, staring at the door through which his former agent had left.

Knowing that Gwenda was alive was like a stake through his neck because he was sure she would come after him sooner or later, accuse him of things he had never done, and blame him until the end, even discovering the truth. And Rubben was ready to face the consequences that his past had condemned him to.

He didn’t regret anything he had done in the past, but he felt hatred for himself for not making good choices. And now he smiled as he said:

— It’s not every day we miss a visit from you.

The door opened, and Rubben turned to see who had just entered from the back, still smiling as if he were welcoming them.

He wished Gwenda would come back to him, stay there, thus preventing this hooded man from entering the casino. He wouldn’t like to ruin the disguise for Gwenda, and Rubben had almost done so, so he had appeared to sort out his shit.

The man pulled the hood back.

— I’m still surprised by the way you appear in my casino.

Anyone inside there, Rubben was aware of. Like a pirate captain with his ship. Every body in his territory was never hidden from the captain’s eyes and senses.

— The contract ends here. — said the fae at the door.

Rubben just raised his chin. His men began to walk towards the fae.

— I was going to say the same.

It was annoying to think that he had signed this contract.

Despite looking for any trick, Rubben hadn’t found one. But now it made sense. The mystic wanted to come out on top of whatever shit was going to happen, wanted to leave his tracks clean, and thus direct them to Rubben. That’s what happened, what Gwenda deluded herself into. And now he was guilty of Trytan’s death and many other things, including the arena explosion and the deaths of the agents in the Sector Tower.

Darcy Raux was probably just waiting for the right moment to end his kind.

He had placed his trust in the mystic who was now there, ready to put an end to it because Rubben had almost exposed the truth that Gwenda wasn’t ready to hear. And if he was now willing to be truthful for the first time with his former agent, why wouldn’t he do the same the next time he saw her? The mystic was there to make sure he wouldn’t take risks again.

The fae advanced, and Rubben conjured the blue fire spark that ran in his veins.

----------------------------------------

Scar entered the work area in complete silence, the stuffy, warm air inside sector 3 almost knocking her down. After closing the door gently, she didn’t remove her hood as she had imagined doing seconds earlier. Anyone could appear at any moment.

She had no idea why the door was open but ignored the fact and decided to think about it later.

After leaving the casino, Scar went to the sector to retrieve the case she was working on with Vannyer and, if she could find it, Trytan's case. Who knows, they might have found more in the meantime. And who knows if Rubben was telling the truth... and if he wasn’t, Scar would make it clear that she wouldn’t be returning there for games. She would be armed to the teeth.

Without wasting time, she zigzagged between the tables of the Carvlineas who were still working there, ignoring any information about their cases, and suddenly stopped right in front of Darcy’s desk.

Memories surged in her mind, and Scar felt more shaken than she already was.

Raux's desk always had papers of all kinds, but the cases Scar worked on had to be there, thrown in some corner. They always went to the boss when the agent working on them was disqualified or assigned to another post. In short, when they could no longer work there.

So Scar searched the desk, messing up and turning over every paper. Looking for information that could give some answers and for all the signs the interrogator had extracted from the fae. She would finish the wall case, no matter what it cost. She was there, wasn’t she? There was no way to make the situation worse to get back into action, even if as a ghost.

In the midst of everything, the top of a paper had Rubben’s casino name written in tangled cursive, circled twice. Scar frowned at this and picked up the information with trembling hands. As she pulled it from under the others, a drawing of an arrow was in the center of the paper, with indications on the sides.

Scar scanned that perfectly drawn arrow. Indeed, the sector 3 artist never missed.

But the symbol, Scar would recognize that symbol even blindfolded, and connecting it with the circled casino at the top of the sheet... there was no doubt.

It was such an emotional pain that Scar’s eyes watered. Yes, she had faced Trytan’s killer, the killer of many people.

She never really got to know Rubben’s weapons. Each time he was changing them so that people like Scar wouldn’t uncover mysteries around the city. But that symbol could not be anything else.

Beside it, in hurried and diligent handwriting, it said: Weapon of Trytan’s death; Rubben: guilty.

Scar gritted her teeth and clenched her fist, crumpling the paper.

Rage prevented Scar from thinking clearly about Rubben’s weapon changes. Because he wouldn’t leave the damn famous symbol on his weapons if it wasn’t to be caught. Maybe he wanted to come out as a hero when the drug story broke. After all, the body in the cart also made Trytan a culprit, and eliminating him would automatically become something heroic on Rubben’s part.

But, above all, his death was no complete mystery.

Darcy knew. Her boss knew it had been Rubben who killed Trytan from the beginning. Because she knew the damn arrows, she knew everything that came from Rubben, especially the hateful symbol. And even so... even so, she hid it from her, probably thinking that this way she would protect her from something.

Stupid. The boss had no idea that Scar was more capable than anyone in this place to exterminate Rubben and bring down that entire casino.

And so she would. She just had to get weapons and...

Scar felt the presence before a hand closed around her wrist on the desk. But it was too late when she raised her free fist and aimed at whoever it was because another scarred hand dampened her blow and closed around it.

Scar looked at that face close to hers and couldn’t hold back the sob.

Darcy was as serious as Scar remembered, looking at the former agent from under her lashes and revealing the deep dark circles.

Scar swallowed hard, waiting for the boss to recognize her at any moment and hit her. But the only thing Darcy did was remove her hand from around her wrist and pick up a letter from her desk, handing it to Scar.

The sector 3 boss nodded slowly just once, as if encouraging Scar to take the letter and disappear again.

— Take it to the king. — murmured Raux, hoarse. — There’s no more time.

— What...? — whispered Scar just as Darcy pushed her away from the desk.

— Now. — said the boss. — Go.

Scar weighed those words. Was Raux expelling her? Did she want her to leave and never come back? She didn’t understand a damn thing.

Scar shook her head and yanked her hood back. The two stared at each other.

— What the hell is going on? — she asked the boss. — I just got here and you’re sending me away. What’s the problem?

— The problem, Matchstone. — Darcy circled the desk and stopped in front of Scar, only a few centimeters separating them. — Is that you’re being threatened and don’t realize it. You fell into a trap a long time ago. — The boss pushed her again, and Scar grabbed a nearby table. — Go to the king and fix this, we don’t have more time.

Scar scrutinized those blue eyes of Darcy’s in the dark, like a pool of clear water.

— What the hell does the king have to do with this?

— Not the king, but you. You’re the cause of this, so do as I say as soon as you leave here.

Darcy grabbed Scar’s arm and directed her to the exit. But she growled and planted her feet on the ground, breaking free from Raux with brutality.

— You knew from the beginning, — Scar accused. — From the beginning when you went to that damn funeral, you knew it was all a fucking lie.

— No, I didn’t know. But I found out. — the boss replied. — But by the time I understood what it was about, your death gave me more headaches than I imagined it would.

Scar blinked.

Was she really talking about the problems her fake death caused her?

— You’re in trouble, Matchstone. — said Darcy, slowly. — And I’m giving you a chance. We are all giving you a chance to do the right thing and live for what you must live for.

— Why does everything have to seem like a riddle, damn it?

— Because you’re the daughter of mysteries, and nothing in your life will be different. I thought you were used to it.

Scar rubbed her forehead hard and brushed the hair from her face, growling.

Was that why she had become a Carvlinea? To solve mysteries? Is that why she had become so good at it?

Darcy sought Scar’s face again, wanting to look the former agent in the eye so that Scar would pay attention to her.

— I don’t know what’s keeping you here, Matchstone, but you must fulfill your destiny.

— Since when do you know anything about my destiny?!

— Because your father was the damn Oracle! — Raux gripped Scar’s shoulders so hard that the former agent gritted her teeth. — Go to King Hendrix and give him the letter. Don’t let anyone tell you what to do, follow who you are and claim your rightful place.

Scar thought of saying that there was nothing more to claim, but a beep sounded in the silence that had settled for a while. She frowned as Darcy’s eyes widened.

— GO!

Raux pushed Scar towards the exit, and her legs seemed to come to life as she ran to the door and managed to get out.

Scar glanced over her shoulder as she ran to the other side of the street, looking for Darcy, but the boss had stayed behind, looking for the source of the noise. And when she turned to the former agent, worry and fear crossing those deep blue eyes, sector 3 exploded.