The alley was dark, narrow, and smelled like stale urine and wet cardboard. A single streetlamp flickered halfway down, buzzing like an angry insect. Y/n's footsteps echoed off the brick walls, the only sound for a moment.

Until a hard impact cracked through the silence.

Y/n froze mid-step. The sound came from just ahead — the wet thud of a body hitting brick, followed by a grunt of pain. Then another impact, sharper this time. A sickening crunch.

Someone should turn around.

But curiosity had already hooked itself into their ribs, and their feet kept moving, slower now, careful. The lamplight caught movement. Three men, shadows against the flickering glow, and a fourth figure at the center of it all. The three men surrounded him, but he wasn't cowering. He wasn't even braced. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing dark ink curling along his forearms, and his hands — his knuckles were already bloody.

He was tall. Broad through the shoulders. Silver-blond hair, disheveled, falling across sharp features that looked like they belonged on some Ministry wanted poster or a high-end cologne advertisement. There was nothing frantic about his movements. Calm. Precise. Like he'd done this a hundred times before and would do it a hundred more without losing sleep.

One of the men lunged.

The blond man caught him by the collar, pivoted, and slammed him against the brick wall with enough force that the impact echoed through the alley. The man crumpled. The second moved in, and the blond man turned almost lazily, catching his wrist, twisting it until something popped. A howl of pain. He shoved him down like he was disposing of rubbish.

The third man backed away, hands raised.

The blond man barely looked at him. He straightened, flexing his bloody knuckles, rolling his shoulders like the whole thing had been a mild inconvenience. His head tilted slightly, watching the third man retreat until he disappeared into the dark.

Then his pale eyes shifted. Directly toward Y/n.

They held perfectly still, caught in the flickering light like a deer that had just realized the headlights weren't going to wait. He didn't move. Didn't blink. Just stared at them from across the alley, his expression entirely unreadable behind the blood staining his hands and the faint curl of smoke still rising from a cigarette abandoned somewhere on the ground.

Y/n suddenly realized they had seen something they probably weren't meant to see.

The silence stretched between them, thick and charged, the only sound the faint buzz of the streetlamp and the distant noise of London carrying on like nothing had happened at all.