Yoriichi opened his hand.
The man dropped to the mud like a sack of flour, clutching his bruised throat and coughing violently, gasping for the foul alley air as if it were the sweetest wine.
Yoriichi looked down at him. "If you dare to steal from anyone again," Yoriichi said, his voice a freezing, absolute baritone that offered no room for negotiation, "I will be the one to claim your head. Do you understand?"
The man, weeping and hyperventilating, nodded frantically. He didn't even bother to pick up his rusted knife. He crawled backward in the mud for a few paces before finding his footing and sprinting away into the night as fast as his legs could carry him.
Yoriichi adjusted his cloak and resumed his walk, the brief interruption entirely dismissed from his mind.
The scent led him out of the narrow alleys and into a slightly wider, more populated street. The smell of cheap, heavy floral perfumes and painted powder began to mix with the foulness of the slums. He had entered the lowest rung of the Street of Silk—the cheap brothels of Flea Bottom.
Women in tattered, highly revealing dresses leaned out of doorways and hung from wooden balconies. Some looked bored, others desperate. The ambient light here was cast by red-tinted lanterns, giving the street a sickly, unnatural glow.
"Looking for a warm bed, handsome?" a woman called out, stepping into his path. She was young, perhaps only a few years older than him, but her eyes were deeply lined with exhaustion. She wore a thin linen shift that did little against the cool night air. She reached out, trying to grab the edge of his dark cloak. "Only a silver stag for the whole night."
Yoriichi smoothly stepped around her outstretched hand, politely refusing the contact.
"I have no need for a bed," Yoriichi replied gently. He reached into his pouch, pulling out three copper pennies and placing them in her hand. "But I have a question. Has there been anything irregular happening in this area recently?"
The woman looked at the coins in surprise, biting one to ensure it was real before tucking it into her bodice. Her demeanor shifted from fake seduction to tired curiosity.
"Irregular?" she scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest. "My lord, it's Flea Bottom. Men get stabbed for a crust of bread every hour. Everything is irregular here."
"I am looking for something worse," Yoriichi pressed, his burgundy eyes intense. "Something that does not fit the usual violence."
The woman frowned, thinking for a moment. Another prostitute, older and missing a front tooth, leaned out from the doorway behind her.
"Well, in our establishment, a couple of the younger sisters went missing a fortnight ago," the older woman chimed in, eyeing Yoriichi carefully. "Lara and Bess. They were pretty things. We just dismissed it, thought maybe they found a rich merchant and ran away to Essos. But they left all their meager coin behind."
"Yes, and I remember now," the younger woman added, pointing down the street. "That fruit stall at the front lane? Their working boy vanished three days ago. Just went to fetch water from the well at night and never came back."
"The pottery shop near the Sept of the local brothers, too," the older woman nodded. "The master's apprentice. Gone."
Yoriichi's brow furrowed. Multiple disappearances, specifically targeting the vulnerable, all happening at night, with no bodies found and no belongings taken. It perfectly aligned with the hunting patterns of a creature that needed to feed secretly.
"If these happenings are so frequent," Yoriichi asked, "did you not inform the City Watch?"
The younger woman let out a bitter, humorless laugh.
"My lord, you clearly don't live down here," she smiled sadly. "We are just small peasants working in a cheap whorehouse. The Gold Cloaks only come down here to collect their bribes or to break heads when a riot starts. When we tried to tell a patrol captain about Lara and Bess, he dismissed us harshly. Said whores run away all the time, and threatened to throw us in the black cells for wasting his time."
Yoriichi thanked them, offering a polite dip of his head before turning away and continuing his pursuit.
As he walked, a heavy sigh escaped his lips. He hadn't expected the situation on the ground to be this bad. The capital was in a state of chaotic, rotting order. Anything could happen in these slums, and the City Watch—the very men sworn to protect the peace—were nothing more than glorified thugs who only did rounds for basic security and extortion. He could also see from the forced, hollow expressions of the women he had just spoken to that they did not want to be selling their bodies, but were forced into it by the crushing wheel of poverty.
The shadows in this city are deeper than I thought, Yoriichi mused.
He followed the scent as it violently spiked, leading him away from the brothels and into a dead-end alleyway.
The squalor here was absolute. Enormous rats scurried over piles of refuse. The houses were nothing more than hastily erected mud and straw shelters, leaning heavily against the ancient stone of the city's outer wall.
The scent of blood and darkness was now so thick it practically choked the air. It was emanating directly from the last hovel on the left.
Yoriichi stopped in front of the rotting wooden door. His right hand instinctively rested on the crimson-wrapped hilt of his Valyrian steel katana. He could hear movement inside. Subtle, shifting weight.
He didn't kick the door down. He raised his left hand and knocked lightly on the wood.
Knock. Knock.
The movement inside ceased instantly. Several tense seconds passed in dead silence.
Then, the wooden latch clicked, and the door creaked open a few inches.
A man peered out. He looked entirely normal. He had thinning brown hair, a patchy beard, and wore a stained, coarse wool tunic. He looked perplexed, his eyes darting over Yoriichi's black cloak and masked face.
"Sir?" the man asked, his voice a raspy, hesitant whisper. "Do you... do you need anything? We have nothing to steal here."
Yoriichi looked at the man. He analyzed his aura, his breathing, the micro-expressions on his face. The man looked terrified and confused, like a normal peasant confronted by a dangerous stranger in the night.
But the scent pouring out of the crack in the door was deafening. It was the absolute epicenter of the predatory rot.
Yoriichi did not draw his blade. His face remained entirely stoic beneath his mask.
"I apologize for the late intrusion," Yoriichi said smoothly, his voice calm and polite. He reached into his pouch and pulled out a gleaming silver stag. He held it up so the coin caught the faint moonlight. "I have been walking for a long time. I just want to rest for a few minutes out of the wind. Can I come in?"
The man's eyes widened at the sight of the silver. It was more money than a Flea Bottom resident would see in a year. The greed warring with his fear was evident on his face.
Slowly, the man nodded, opening the door wider and stepping aside. "Aye... aye, you can rest, my lord. Just... keep quiet. The children are sleeping."
Yoriichi stepped over the threshold, his senses dialed to their absolute maximum, stepping directly into the den of the unknown predator.