---
The seam did not open. It breathed once under Mia's palm and went still again, a lie made of air and heat.
The second breath never came.
Something black and wrong dropped out of the rim above her like a hole learning how to fall. It had the jaw of a cat and the patience of a knife. The lacquered mask hit where a throat would be if she had been slow. She wasn't. Her chin tucked, her shoulder rose, and the jaw met plate with a hard, toothy clack. Sparks. The smell of camphor and old meat.
"Down!" Serit barked, already moving.
Two more shadows slid in from the left and right, quiet as the thought you didn't tell anyone because you might have to do it. A fourth came straight because that was the only line that let his hands do what they were trained to do: break a knee in one motion and a story in two.
Seven-star killers, all of them. You could feel it in the way the air made the room cold.
