"Ayr" was walking through the city's dark alleys, the rhythmic clicking of her high heels against the stone pavement creating a provocative cadence, as if she were playing her own victory march over the ruins of others' souls. Her beauty was at its peak—a diabolical sort of splendor. Her silken hair was styled with extreme care, her short black dress highlighted her plundered luxury, and a smile never left her face as she remembered how she had disposed of the last obstacle in the way of her new fortune. She felt the euphoria of power—the kind of power that comes from crushing the weak and manipulating pure hearts.
The sudden power outage that shrouded the city in pitch-black darkness did not disturb her; rather, it increased her sense of distinction and sovereignty. In this world drowned in gloom, she was the only one who possessed "the light": a golden key to a luxurious house in the city's most prestigious neighborhood. It was a house for which she hadn't shed a single drop of sweat, but had seized with the brilliance of a "viper" that knows how to wear the skin of an "angel." She believed the darkness was her ally, a curtain hiding her sins, unaware that the darkness was the native home of the one waiting for her inside.
She reached the threshold of the grand house—that small palace that had witnessed the greatest emotional scam in the neighborhood's history. She placed her key in the lock, and it turned with suspicious smoothness, as if the door itself were eager to welcome her into her own private hell. She opened the door, and an unusual chill greeted her—a coldness not caused by air conditioning, but the chill of "emptiness" and "death."
"Mother? Father?" she called out in a soft, arrogant voice, but her words were swallowed by the absolute silence enveloping the corners of the house. There was no answer, not even the sound of breath.
She took a step into the wide foyer, and her nostrils were met with a strange, nauseating smell. It wasn't the scent of French perfumes or the expensive incense she was used to; it was a heavy, pungent metallic odor... the smell of fresh blood mixed with something organic beginning to decompose in the warm air of the room. Ayr felt a cold shiver run down her spine like the blade of a knife. The silence in the house was "audible," as if the walls themselves were holding their breath, watching her movements.
"Why this silence? And why this foul stench?" she muttered with an anger meant to drive away the fear creeping into her heart. She pulled her phone from her expensive leather bag and, with a swift motion, turned on the flashlight, letting the violent beam of light tear through the living room's gloom.
The light cut its path toward the large velvet sofa in the center of the room... and there, her heart dropped to her feet.
Her father and mother were sitting in a very strange posture, as if waiting for an absent guest. They were not asleep; their heads were tilted at impossible angles reflecting broken necks, and their eyes were open in eternal shock, bulging terrifyingly toward the ceiling—as if they had seen something the human mind could not comprehend in their final moments. The blood had formed a sticky black painting covering the precious Persian carpet, climbing the legs of the table like a living creature searching for a new victim.
Ayr recoiled, the gasp of terror frozen in her throat, which had suddenly gone dry. She opened her mouth to let out a scream that would tear through the city's absolute silence, a scream for help from a world she no longer belonged to...
Suddenly, a hand emerged from nothingness, from the very heart of the darkness behind her. A hand as cold as ice, yet strong as an iron clamp, settled over her mouth to stifle her scream in its cradle, turning it into a muffled, choked moan. She felt a solid, cold body press against her back, and calm, rhythmic breaths brushed her ear with terrifying coldness.
"Shhh..." a cold masculine voice whispered, its tone carrying the confidence of death and the stillness of a storm. "The neighbors are sleeping, Ayr... we don't want to wake them at this late hour, do we? For real nightmares must be lived in silence."
Ayr trembled violently, trying to resist, but the youth with coal-black hair and eyes like black holes in infinite space dragged her with brutal force toward the center of the room. She turned to see his face under the light of her phone lying on the floor, which cast dramatic shadows over his features. It was not an angry or emotional face; it was a face "void" of any human expression, and that is what made the terror double within her pores.
Before she could utter a single word or beg, she caught the glint of the knife in his hand—a precise surgical blade shining like silver in the dark. With the speed of an expert surgeon who does not err, he pressed his thumb against a nerve in her jaw, forcing her mouth open wide, and with a lightning-fast motion, he cut her tongue from its roots.
Ayr fell to the floor, writhing like a decapitated snake. No scream came from her, only a continuous moan muffled by the blood that began to fill her mouth and seep from between her beautiful lips. She shivered like a bird drenched by rain, her hands beating the wooden floor in despair, her tearful eyes asking with existential horror and lethal confusion: Who are you? And why are you doing this to me?
The youth smiled coldly and sat on a wooden chair opposite her, placing the blood-stained knife on his knee with utter calm. He looked at her as if observing a broken-winged insect under a microscope.
"Oh... pardon me, I forgot you no longer have a tongue to answer," he said, tilting his head slightly with cold curiosity. "That's right... you don't know me. I am just an old friend... a friend of that poor boy you lured into your webs. Do you remember him? That young man who saw you as a pure angel sent from heaven, while you, behind that beautiful face, were meticulously planning how to tear his flesh and suck out his soul?"
A silence fell, broken only by Ayr's rapid breathing and the sound of blood droplets hitting the floor. The youth continued in a tone both mournful and terrifying:
"You were playing him like a fool, acting the part of the victim one moment and the lover the next. You stole every penny he owned—his life savings, his parents' hard work... even this house you are sitting in now, you transferred it to your name with a fake smile and poisoned kisses. And when his well ran dry, and he had nothing left to give, you weren't satisfied with leaving him broken... instead, you sent your scum from the gang to break his limbs, so he couldn't even stand and demand his lost rights."
The smile vanished from the youth's face suddenly, replaced by a terrifying darkness and a look of pure hatred. "Do you know what happened after that, Ayr? His father, the honorable man who spent his life building this home, couldn't bear to see his life's work vanish in an instant, or to see his only son shattered and humiliated before his eyes... he suffered a fatal stroke and died staring at the walls he was evicted from. And his mother? That gentle woman fell into a long coma from the sheer weight of oppression; she only woke to follow her husband a few days later, leaving behind a lost son in a merciless world."
The youth leaned closer to her face, to the point where she could see the reflection of her terror in the blackness of his unblinking eyes. "As for the boy... he ended up a lifeless corpse in a filthy alley, alone, hungry, and betrayed. A truck hit him on a rainy night... that's how the police closed the case. But the truth is, he was spiritually dead from the moment you touched his life. You killed an entire family with your cold nerves, and now the time has come to settle the debt."
The youth looked at the watch on his wrist, then at the window where a faint distant glimmer indicated that maintenance workers were close to fixing the fault, and that the power was about to return.
"Well... the talk has gone on long enough, and words are no longer of use with the likes of you. I don't have much time before the light returns and exposes this filth you think is a life."
The youth stood slowly and gripped the knife firmly. Ayr looked at him with bulging eyes, begging for a life she no longer possessed, asking for a mercy she had never granted to anyone. He raised the knife high above her chest, then plunged it with all his strength and extreme precision into the center of her heart.
"Go to hell... you whore. Tell his father that justice has arrived, even if it is late."
He smiled as he watched the last flicker of life depart from her eyes and the final quiver of her body. He wiped the knife with utter coldness on a piece of her expensive silk dress, then stood amidst the corpses of the family, feeling no regret or fear, but the relief of a warrior who had completed his mission. He pulled the folded paper from his pocket and, with a red pen, crossed out the name (Ayr) with a bold, final stroke.
Only one target remained on the list—the biggest and bloodiest target: (The City Gang).
The youth exited the house with confident, calm steps.