It had been a long shift. The kind that left your bones heavy and your mind wandering toward the promise of tea and a futon.

You turned down your usual route, past the closed stalls and the ramen shop where steam still curled from the kitchen vent. A shortcut through the backstreets—narrower, quieter, the electric hum of the main road fading into something almost peaceful.

That was when you saw it.

A shift in the dark. Movement, just barely, at the mouth of an alley between two crumbling buildings. The flicker of a figure, slumped.

Your feet slowed. Then stopped.

Against the grimy wall, barely visible in the dim light, a man lay crumpled. His clothes—what looked like an expensive black suit—were torn and stained. Dark patches spread across the fabric. Wet. And there was a smell: copper, sharp and thick.

His head lolled.

Then his eyes opened.

Crimson. A red so startling, so unnatural, that for a moment you forgot to breathe. They locked onto yours—disoriented, unfocused, lost. They held none of the menace the color suggested. Just confusion. Just pain.

He tried to speak, but only a rasp escaped his throat. His lips moved again, shaping a single, broken word.