There was no answer. They remained on guard, their gazes locked in a suffocating silence.

  Zavi glanced toward the road on his right. He stood with his back to the door, his thoughts spinning rapidly. Was this Moreira’s doing, or was there really someone who intended to kill him?

  He held his breath, forcing himself to remain calm. Meanwhile, his right hand slowly moved behind him, tightly gripping the handle of the revolver hidden beneath his clothes.

  "Now…"

  Suddenly he turned and ran to the left, slipping into the narrow alley beside the house. His goal was simple. Leave this district, no matter how.

  One of the two men immediately chased after him. The other turned toward the house, pulling the dagger from the wall before following behind.

  Zavi ran while opening the cylinder of his revolver, inserting bullets one by one. His hands trembled, but his movements were fast. The cylinder closed again. Fully loaded.

  Perhaps because of panic, he ran extremely fast, enough to leave the two of them behind. When he burst out onto the main road, his steps suddenly stopped. A crowd of people filled his view, pedestrians moving back and forth.

  From behind, without warning—

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Zavi’s eyes widened. He had not even had time to turn around when something tore through the air, hot and deadly.

  The bullet should have pierced his head. But at the last second, its trajectory bent, as if deflected by something invisible, and struck a woman across the street.

  Screams immediately erupted.

  "There’s a shooting!"

  "Is he still alive?"

  "Find the shooter. Now!"

  Chaos exploded instantly.

  Zavi stood frozen. His eyes were fixed on the woman. Her body twitched in pain for a few moments, then became still. Dead.

  Zavi’s jaw tightened after witnessing that. His hands trembled violently, his thoughts spinning as he slipped his silver revolver back inside his clothes. Aware that if people saw him holding a gun, everyone would assume he was the culprit.

  "This can’t be possible, right?" he muttered in disbelief, then with a swift motion he turned his head back, scanning the people along the side of the road whose attention was focused on the main street.

  'Damn it. None of this is my fault.' he thought irritably, then he resumed walking, turning right after realizing there were no more signs of gunfire.

  On the other side, several seconds after the gunshots were heard, from a narrow gap between buildings, the shooter, Nawai, froze in disbelief.

  His pupils widened, his hands trembled, and his breathing grew heavier. He knew exactly where he had aimed.

  "I can’t believe it," he muttered in confusion, the first time something like this had happened to him.

  A cold sensation crawled along his spine. The brown pistol in his left hand slipped free and fell to the ground, quickly producing a brief echo as it lay beside him.

  "The bullet… actually bent?"

  'Is it because it’s very dark around me?' he wondered in confusion, while also puzzled that there was only thick darkness surrounding him.

  Several seconds later, Calvert arrived with hurried steps from behind him, confusion immediately filling his mind as he looked at his companion from a distance and at the crowd ahead.

  "What happened?" he asked calmly, trying to confirm.

  There was no answer. The air brushed briefly between his fingers as he watched Nawai slowly turn toward him, staring at his friend’s face with shining eyes and tightly closed lips.

  "Answer me! What are you doing?" Calvert shook Nawai’s shoulder, trying to wake him, thinking he had been struck by a sleeping charm, but that assumption was completely wrong.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  "Um… Calvert. Is that you?" he asked to make sure. "Are we already dead?"

  Calvert frowned, not understanding why Nawai had suddenly become like this after being left alone for a moment.

  "Are you joking?" he said in confusion.

  'What exactly is happening to him? Is there someone else who did this besides him?' he thought uneasily, his gaze sweeping toward the edge of the street with growing anxiety.

  He immediately stepped out of the narrow gap and headed toward the intersection and the crowd ahead. But their target, Zavi, was no longer where he had been before.

  "He was here earlier? There’s no way he could escape that easily."

  He was about to turn back. He took one step, then his shoe touched something wet in front of him.

  Calvert immediately stopped. He crouched and touched the road stone with the tip of his finger.

  Blood. Warm and fresh.

  "So it’s true… he has escaped," he murmured quietly. "Something isn’t right."

  He stood up and looked back toward the gap between the buildings. Realizing Nawai was still there, sitting against the wall, his body stiff, barely moving like someone who had just died.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  "Nawai. There’s something I want to ask." Calvert stood at the mouth of the alley, his fingertips holding the wall of the building while his eyes looked at him with curved brows. "That man escaped. Get up. We’ll chase him, then we go home."

  There was no clear response.

  Nawai’s movement was slow. His head lifted slightly, his lips moved, but his voice could not be heard at all.

  "Where are you now, Calvert…?" he asked weakly. "Is it true that I have died?"

  His voice cracked.

  "I… I’m afraid to be alone. It’s very dark here!"

  Calvert froze.

  Nawai stared straight ahead. Not at him. Not at anything. His eyes were open, but empty.

  "Impossible..." Calvert’s breath caught. "You… you can’t see?"

  There was no reaction.

  Nawai’s hearing had vanished, swallowed by something unknown, along with his sight. His words came out without direction, without control, as if thrown into a prison without boundaries.

  Calvert stepped back half a step.

  He had seen death in many forms. He had killed, toyed with it, even laughed at the sound of human screams.

  But this—

  This was not a wound. Not death. This was punishment.

  Nawai’s knees suddenly gave way. His body collapsed, and his crying burst out, raw and desperate, like a lost child searching for his parents in a silent space filled with absolute darkness.

  Calvert did not move. For the first time, he felt fear. Not fear of dying, but fear of something that still allowed them to live.

  "Is this punishment for a hunter like him? But why him? Shouldn’t it be me who receives it?" He fell silent, and after that he did not speak another word.

  He approached his friend who now looked like an empty cocoon, something that might disappear in the future. Unable to speak to him, knowing that Nawai could not hear, Calvert could only remain silent, refusing to accept this reality, searching for a reason why all of this had happened.

  Suddenly, Nawai forced a smile while whispering, "Mother… is that really you?"

  Calvert was startled. Not because of the sentence, but because of one word. "Mother."

  It had been far too long, perhaps more than sixteen years, since the last time he had heard that word come out of Nawai’s mouth. Even the two of them did not know what their biological mother looked like. They had longed to meet their parents and had insisted on searching for them until now.

  His tired face formed a thin and bitter smile.

  "If you can’t see or hear me, at least you can see your mother’s face in your heart?" he murmured with a faint smile. "In that case, I want to meet my mother too, damn it."

  At the same time, Zavi thought about leaving Suwwer Kurs Street and heading toward Buca Street number one, Hava District, to avoid pursuit from the hunters.

  He did not want them to know that he lived in Vica and threaten his family directly.

  His head spun. Guilt pressed against his chest because of the woman’s death. He kept thinking about it, wondering where the bullet had come from. One thing was certain. The bullet came from the two unfamiliar men he had encountered earlier.

  Zavi clicked his tongue.

  'Damn. I forgot to check that mailbox.'

  However, there was one thing that surprised him.

  By coincidence, at the previous intersection he chose to turn right, and only a few meters from where he stood, he encountered Moreira in the middle of the chaos that had erupted.

  Earlier, Moreira had asked why he did not wait at the location he had given.

  Zavi hid the previous incident and casually answered, "I just wanted to get some fresh air." Hearing that, Moreira only nodded and followed him.

  But something was wrong that slipped into his mind.

  About Moreira wearing glasses! But he remained silent.

  And now, they walked side by side, along the edge of the sidewalk, heading toward the mailbox at the border.

  However, because he wanted to reveal his curiosity, while remaining alert, he did not hesitate to ask:

  "You were supposed to be alone. Who is the person watching from there?" His index finger pointed to the right, toward a café and the muddy road beside it, the Hava street market.

  As his gaze swept around, Zavi quickly added,"Glasses man, you are the enemy."

  Moreira’s body stiffened. He did not turn, but occasionally glanced toward Zavi who stared back at him.

  'Why isn’t that person hiding?' he thought.

  "You’re smarter than I expected," he said in praise, not expecting his opponent to be this perceptive.

  "..."

  Zavi suddenly turned around and ran away, pulling the revolver from his coat pocket and preparing to shoot.

  "Hey. Who are you really? Answer! If not I will pull the trigger." he threatened, his finger ready to pull the trigger if there was no answer.

  'It’s impossible, completely impossible for a bullet to kill him. Level two, Sorcerer, from Sorcerer.' Zavi thought, his face unable to hide his shock.

  From the opposite direction, a man wearing a bowler hat walked closer. The brim of his hat covered his face, leaving a dark shadow where his eyes should have been.

  His steps were calm. Too calm.

  There was something strange about the way he walked that made the air around him feel wrong. Even without a weapon, anyone could feel that he was dangerous.

  "Stop right there!" Zavi growled as he raised his revolver. "One more step and I will shoot!"

  But the man in the bowler hat seemed to hear nothing at all. He kept walking forward, passing his companion, crossing the quiet roadside before his body slammed hard into the wall.

  Thud.

  "What?" they muttered at the same time, puzzled by the man who seemed to deliberately slam himself into the wall.

  He did not turn. He did not curse. He did not show any sign of pain. He simply stood there, his head lowered, as if he did not even realize the wall existed.

  Zavi and the fake Moreira exchanged glances.

  "What… did we just see?" they whispered at the same time, as if forgetting that they had been briefly hostile moments ago.

  Then the man disguised as Moreira, a Receivers who possessed the ability of a Sorcerer, immediately approached his companion who had suddenly begun acting strangely.

  His face changed. Like a mask being forcibly torn away. His straight black hair fell loose, and his brown eyes were now filled with undisguised panic.

  'Was that man the one who did all of this?' He did not understand what had just happened.

  His plan should have gone smoothly. He disguised himself as Moreira, kidnapped him first after two days of investigation, took parts of his body as a requirement to imitate him perfectly. Zavi should have been deceived, he should have been careless and should have died together with his partner.

  But everything was wrong. His partner had become strange. Now the man in the bowler hat moved like a blind man, groping the empty air, his face empty and filled with boundless fear.

  For the first time, a cold feeling spread through his legs.

  This was not simply a failure. Something was wrong, and he was no longer sure who he was facing.

  "Hey, what happened? Answer!"

  His attempt failed. His partner did not respond. Not because he refused to answer, but because three important senses, sight, hearing, and smell, no longer functioned as they had a few minutes ago.

  Several seconds later, the man disguised as Moreira realized something. The person standing in front of him was someone capable of threatening the existence of his other comrades, including himself.

  He immediately turned around, realizing that his target was not an ordinary man. Completely different from the information given by the client.

  Yes, they were part of the same hunter group as Calvert and Nawai. Even though they were from different teams, Eistender carried out its work with two groups in a single hunt. If one succeeded in defeating the target, then the other would receive no payment, only wasted sweat and effort.

  He immediately bowed deeply, realizing that he had no chance of winning against an opponent whose power was far too dangerous and completely beyond his current level.