The Kyoto streets blurred into a haze of dawn light and smoke as Feng Ruoxi led her crew north, the Jiang villa's echoes of gunfire fading behind them. Her boots pounded the pavement, the phoenix tattoo on her wrist glowing faintly, its crimson pulse a steady hum in her veins—"The blood wakes… the past calls…"—a whisper she couldn't shake. Her chest ached from the night's battles, her fire simmering beneath her skin, but her eyes burned with the resolve that had claimed Kyoto. Beijing loomed ahead, a city of answers—or a trap—and she'd burn through anything to find out.
Jiang Yukang ran beside her, his mask tucked into his jacket, his pistol in hand, blood still seeping from the graze on his arm. Xia Mia stumbled between them, wrists bound, her silk dress shredded, her venomous glare darting between Ruoxi and the road. "You're fools," she rasped, voice hoarse from defeat. "Beijing's a graveyard—Tianhua will bury you."
