The heavy brass bell above the door of Marinakas cafe chimed for the final time that evening.
Devin reached up and flipped the wooden sign from 'Open' to 'Closed'. He pulled the thick, canvas blinds down over the front windows, shutting out the fading purple twilight of the Reignn streets.
The cafe was finally empty. The suffocating tension that Inspector Vance had dragged into the room hours earlier had lingered all afternoon, clinging to the wooden rafters like stale smoke. Devin was physically and mentally exhausted. He just wanted to walk back to the slums, lock his rotting door, and sleep.
He picked up a damp rag and began wiping down the tables, moving with a stiff, mechanical rhythm.
The swinging wooden doors of the kitchen pushed open.
Dunkan stepped out into the dining area. The massive chef had untied his stained white apron, tossing it carelessly over a chair. He wasn't holding his usual wiping towel. He stood perfectly still in the center of the room, his dark, dead eyes tracking Devin's movements.
"Leave the tables, Zain," Dunkan said. His gravelly voice was exceptionally low, completely devoid of its usual, gruff kitchen cadence.
Devin stopped wiping. He slowly straightened his back, the damp rag hanging loosely from his fingers. The Cyprian venom resting quietly in his veins gave a sudden, sharp throb—a biological warning bell ringing in the back of his skull.
"The floors still need sweeping," Devin replied flatly, keeping his posture relaxed.
"The floors do not matter," Dunkan stated. He walked slowly toward the heavy front door. He reached out and slid the massive iron deadbolt shut with a loud, definitive clack.
Devin dropped the rag onto the table. He turned fully to face the chef, his muscles subtly coiling beneath his woven jacket.
"What is this, Dunkan?" Devin asked, his voice steady.
"This is an evaluation," Dunkan replied, turning his back to the door and facing the barista. "Dr. Langstrum reviewed the field report you submitted yesterday. He also reviewed the events of this morning."
"Inspector Vance left with absolutely nothing," Devin defended calmly, holding the handler's piercing gaze. "My physiology was perfectly suppressed. He couldn't read a single lie on my face. My cover is completely intact."
"Your cover is a blazing beacon," Dunkan corrected, taking a slow, measured step forward. "You were officially activated three days ago. In those seventy-two hours, a sub-human civilian was butchered in your personal quarters. You shattered the jaw of the Prince of Colstar in the middle of a crowded academic hallway. A top-tier Stark student is found dead of an alleged suicide. And now, the most elite royal Inquisitors in the Northern Kingdoms are standing at my counter, pointing their fingers directly at you."
"I am handling the variables," Devin said, his jaw clenching.
"You are the variable," Dunkan countered smoothly. The chef took another step forward. "Count Sapien designed the sleeper agents to be invisible. You were engineered to be a ghost that only materializes when the order is given. You are not a ghost, Zain. You are a localized hurricane."
"I am adapting to the holy gene exposure," Devin lied, desperately trying to maintain the psychological facade of the brainwashed operative. "The venom's integration is volatile, but it is under my control."
Dunkan stopped ten feet away. He slowly shook his head.
"No, it isn't," Dunkan said, his voice dropping into a cold, clinical absolute. "You didn't kill the girl in your bed autonomously. You were awake. And you didn't kill her because of the holy gene. You killed her because you are defective."
Devin's blood ran ice cold.
"Dr. Langstrum does not tolerate defective assets," Dunkan continued, his massive hands reaching slowly behind his back. "A weapon that draws the Colstar royal guard directly to a Cyprian safehouse is a weapon that needs to be permanently decommissioned."
Devin didn't wait for the handler to draw his weapon.
The Prince of Trangdar dropped the dead-eyed barista act entirely. He completely unclipped the mental leash he had forged in Lotjed's cellar. He needed every single drop of the Cyprian venom's raw, explosive power to survive the next ten seconds.
The dark obsidian flooded his amber eyes. His muscles expanded, tearing the seams of his jacket. Devin lunged forward with terrifying, feral kinetic energy, closing the ten-foot gap in a fraction of a second. He threw a devastating, venom-fueled right hook aimed directly at Dunkan's temple, a strike that had easily shattered Aiden Colstar's skull.
SMACK.
The sound wasn't bone breaking. It was the sound of thick, unyielding muscle absorbing an impact.
Dunkan hadn't dodged. He simply raised his massive left forearm, catching Devin's fist squarely on his wrist. The floorboards beneath the chef's heavy boots cracked from the sheer, transferred kinetic force, but Dunkan himself didn't move a single inch.
Devin's eyes widened in sheer disbelief. The absolute, unstoppable strength of Zain Ricky had just hit a brick wall.
"You think you are the only one with venom in your veins, boy?" Dunkan whispered, his dead eyes staring directly into Devin's.
Before Devin could pull his fist back, Dunkan's right hand whipped out from behind his back.
The heavy, polished steel of a massive kitchen meat cleaver caught the dim light of the cafe. It didn't swing wildly; it moved with a terrifying, surgical precision that completely defied Dunkan's massive bulk.
Devin desperately threw his weight backward, relying on his royal martial agility to dodge the lethal arc.
He wasn't fast enough.
The heavy steel blade cleaved effortlessly through the thick canvas of Devin's jacket, slicing deeply across his chest. The cut was perfect—deep enough to sever the superficial muscle, but missing the ribcage. Hot blood instantly sprayed across the polished wooden tables.
Devin let out a sharp hiss of pain, stumbling backward and crashing hard against a wooden dining chair. He kicked the chair aside, his hand flying to his bleeding chest.
"You are a prototype, Zain," Dunkan stated clinically, taking a slow, predatory step forward, the bloody cleaver resting easily in his massive grip. "You are a volatile, unstable cocktail of raw aggression. I am the finished product. My venom doesn't scream. It calculates."
Devin didn't speak. He couldn't. The horrific realization was dawning on him. Zain Ricky's body was a weapon of mass destruction, but Dunkan's body was a flawless, refined instrument of execution. The handler wasn't just older; he was biologically superior.
Devin shifted his stance, falling into a low, defensive Trangdar guard. He couldn't match Dunkan's strength, so he had to rely on technique.
Dunkan lunged.
The massive chef moved with a speed that completely broke the laws of physics. The cleaver came down in a brutal, vertical chop aimed at Devin's skull. Devin pivoted sharply on his heel, letting the heavy blade bury itself deep into the wooden table beside him.
Devin immediately stepped inside Dunkan's guard, driving a brutal, open-palm strike directly upward toward the handler's chin, aiming to snap the brainstem.
Dunkan simply dropped his chin, catching the strike on his thick jawbone. He didn't even blink. He let go of the embedded cleaver with his right hand, reached down, and grabbed Devin by the throat with his left.
Devin was instantly lifted completely off his feet. The massive, vise-like grip crushed his windpipe, instantly cutting off his oxygen.
Devin thrashed wildly, kicking his heavy boots against Dunkan's chest, but it was like kicking a solid iron boiler. He clawed frantically at the massive hand choking him, his venom-laced strength entirely useless against the finished product.
"You were a disappointment, operative," Dunkan said smoothly, watching the life rapidly draining from the barista's dark eyes. "You let human attachments compromise the biology. You let the Colstar boy live. You let the Mortipian prince walk into my cafe. You are sloppy."
Dunkan's right hand slipped smoothly to his waist, drawing a long, incredibly sharp boning knife from a leather sheath hidden beneath his shirt.
Devin stared down at the gleaming, needle-thin blade. Panic, pure and absolute, seized his fading royal consciousness.
No, Devin screamed in the suffocating silence of his own mind. Not yet. I haven't killed Sapien. I haven't saved my kingdom. I can't die in a cafe.
Dunkan didn't gloat. He didn't offer a dramatic villainous monologue. He was a professional cleaner finalizing a botched experiment.
With a swift, entirely emotionless upward thrust, Dunkan drove the long boning knife directly under Devin's ribcage, burying the six-inch steel blade perfectly into the boy's heart.
The sheer, agonizing shock of the cold steel piercing his most vital organ forced Devin's eyes wide open. A thick, wet gasp tore through his crushed windpipe. The furious, roaring Cyprian venom in his veins instantly died, snuffed out like a candle in a hurricane.
Dunkan released his grip on Devin's throat and simultaneously ripped the knife free.
Devin collapsed onto the floorboards, his body hitting the wood with a heavy, lifeless thud.
The pain was absolute, eclipsing every single sensation he had ever experienced. It was a dark, pulling vortex that violently dragged his consciousness away from the wooden floors, away from the smell of roasted coffee, away from the quiet, sociopathic monster standing over his bleeding corpse.
The dark edges of his vision rapidly closed in. The rustic cafe vanished.
Devin Trangdar fell backward into the eternal void.
GASP!
Devin violently inhaled, his eyes snapping open.
There was no blood. There was no pain in his chest. There was no rustic cafe ceiling above him.
The transition was immediate and agonizingly familiar. The blinding, sterile, immaculate light of the celestial realm seared his retinas, completely erasing the shadows of Marinakas.
He was back.
Devin lay flat on his back on the unseen, infinite floor of the white void. He didn't try to stand up. He didn't try to fight the oppressive, physical weight of the divine atmosphere pressing him down. He just stared blankly up into the endless, suffocating light.
He had failed. Again.
The entity clothed in pure, woven starlight hovered directly above him. The radiant, burning heat coming off the creator was immense, a silent, mocking testament to Devin's pathetic mortality.
"Checkmate, little prince," God spoke.
The harmonic, vibrating voice echoed through the very marrow of Devin's soul. It was dripping with profound, exquisite amusement.
"It seems your time in the barista's skin was rather brief," the divine entity mused, floating closer, the starlight pulsing rhythmically. "You played the monster so poorly, Devin. You tried to hold the leash, and the handler simply cut the dog's throat."
Devin squeezed his eyes shut against the blinding glare. He didn't have the energy to curse the deity. He was so incredibly tired of dying.
"Are you ready for your next vessel?" God asked, the tone turning sharply gleeful. "The board has been reset. The game must continue."