VISHKANYA CHRONICLES: BETRAYAL OF THE ROSE
***
The asphalt of the Old Sector 7 bypass was a graveyard of burnt rubber. Once a playground for the city's illegal drag racers, it was now silent, bathed in the sickly orange glow of a flickering street lamp.
A black sedan screeched to a halt, its front tires shredded and smoke billowing from a punctured radiator.
Two men scrambled out of the wreck, their breaths coming in ragged gasps.
These were not common thugs; they were members of the Phantom Six, the apex predators of the Jianghu. They had survived a hundred shadow wars, yet tonight, they were trembling.
They were supposed to be stealing a classified file from the Prime Minister's people. It was a simple mission. But they hadn't even started before an ambush turned the night into a massacre. Two more of their brothers lay dead in the dirt behind them.
In front of them, a motorcycle stood in the middle of the road. A figure clad in white, wielding dual swords, waited. The wind was howling, whipping around the silent attacker.
"W-who the hell are you! Why are you hunting us!" the youngest asked, his voice cracking. He scrambled to load his gun, his fingers shaking as he counted the few remaining bullets he had left. Beside him, the leader was losing too much blood. He was weak, his body heavy with fatigue.
The figure on the bike was dressed in pure, blinding white. From the helmet to the boots, not a single inch of skin was visible. It was impossible to tell if this killer was a man or a woman, just a pale, silent shape in the middle of the night.
The killer didn't speak. The figure simply hopped off the bike, the kickstand clicking against the pavement with a sound like a closing coffin.
With a smooth, practiced motion, the lone attacker reached back and drew two swords. The steel caught the moonlight, gleaming as white as the suit.
"Stay back!" the youngest screamed, leveling his gun at the center of the white suit. "I'm warning you! One more step and I'll open fire!"
The figure moved in a sudden, blinding blur.
The youngest of the Phantom Six never even felt the steel. In one clean, surgical arc, his head was severed from his shoulders. The gun clattered to the pavement, still loaded, held by a hand that no longer had a brain to command it.
The leader watched in frozen horror. He had dueled the greatest masters of the Jianghu and walked away without a scratch, but he had never seen speed like this.
As the killer came to a halt, the wind tore at her silhouette; her hair fell loose, whipping around a face of chilling, stony beauty. Her cold eyes scanned him, stripping away his dignity as a warrior.
"Who sent you!" the leader wheezed, his voice thick with blood. "Do you have any idea who we are? We belong to the Wulin Society!"
He threw the name out like a shield. The Wulin Society was one of the two titans that had ruled the Jianghu for centuries, rising to absolute power after the great genocide. To touch a member of the Phantom Six was to declare war on the masters of the world.
"Wulin Society?" The woman's lip curled into a sneer of pure contempt. "They are nothing but ants."
She stepped over the youngest's body, her dual blades humming in the wind.
"When my master descends, the new order of the Jianghu will be forged in your blood," she said, her voice dropping to a deadly whisper. "Prepare for your death."
Just as the woman raised her blades for the final strike, the silence of the bypass was shattered.
A thunderous roar of engines erupted from the darkness, vibrating through the cracked asphalt. From both ends of the road, a swarm of motorcycles tore through the mist, their headlights blinding as they circled the scene like a pack of wolves.
The riders didn't just carry weapons; many had passengers on the back, triumphantly waving flags that snapped in the wind. On the black fabric, a stark logo stood out: a Black Rose.
The pack was led by a man whose face was hidden behind a jagged, half-skull mask. The bone-white porcelain covered his features, leaving only his eyes visible—eyes that didn't hold the coldness of the woman in white or the terror of the dying leader. Instead, they were bright, dancing with a dangerous, playful energy.
He leaned back on his bike, watching the carnage with the casual air of someone watching a street performance.
"Now, now," he called out over the dying hum of the engines, his voice dripping with mock disappointment. "Is this how we treat the 'predators' of the Jianghu? I expected a bit more of a struggle before the fun started."
The woman recoiled, sheathing her blades with a metallic hiss as she put distance between herself and the newcomers.
"What do you want, Cain?" Her voice was like a shard of ice, trembling with irritation. "This kill belongs to me. Get lost."
"My, my," Cain purred, his playful eyes crinkling behind the jagged edges of his skull mask. "You're as radiant as ever, Snow. Even when you're covered in filth."
The Leader of Phantom Six froze. The sound of that voice was like a ghost reaching out from the grave.
It was a voice he had trusted for years the voice of his second-in-command who had vanished into thin air a month ago. He had assumed the man was a victim, another casualty of this invisible war.
"You... you damn bastard!" He roared, his rage momentarily eclipsing the agony of his shredded lungs. "A traitor! You sold your brothers to this monster?"
Cain didn't move. He sat perched on his bike, watching the leader's struggle with the detached curiosity of a boy watching an insect under a magnifying glass.
"Oh, Raze. Don't waste your final breaths on a tantrum. Just sit back and enjoy the show," Cain said, his tone dripping with bored condescension. "And let's be clear, I'm not a traitor. I simply got bored. I was finished playing house with the Wulin Society, so I decided to change the script."
He gestured to the circling riders, the Black Rose flags snapping aggressively in the wind.
"The Wulin Society is old news, old man. I found a much more interesting stage to dance on."
Snow's jaw tightened. She didn't fear a fair fight, but Cain was anything but fair. She knew his reputation—and the reputation of the hounds he ran with. They were the Veil of Shadows, a pack of ruthless gangsters belonging to Los Zetas.
Among the two-headed monsters of the underworld, Los Zetas was the big syndicate at the very top of her master's final list. They weren't just warriors; they were butchers who thrived on chaos and played dirtier than anyone in the Jianghu.
Even Snow, for all her cold precision, knew that starting a war with them here would turn the road into a meat grinder.
"Vultures," Snow hissed, her hand white-knuckled on the hilt of her sheathed sword. "You're overstepping, Cain. The Los Zetas have no business with this hunt."
Cain tilted his head, the skull mask casting a long, jagged shadow across the asphalt.
"Business? No," he said, his voice light and airy. "But we do have a taste for theater. And watching a legend of the Wulin Society die in the dirt? That's the kind of entertainment my boys live for."
The riders of the Veil of Shadows revved their engines in unison, a deafening growl that drowned out the howling wind. They didn't care about the new order or the Master. They only cared about the carnage.
Snow glanced at Raze, then back at the circle of motorcycles. She was a professional, but Cain was a psychopath with a private army.
"If you interfere with my master's design," Snow warned, her voice dropping to a dangerous register, "not even Los Zetas will be able to hide you from what's coming."
"Snow, you're hurting my feelings," Cain said, though his eyes remained dancing with mischief. "But don't worry, I won't interfere with your kill. I just wanted to remind you this is a reunion. And I'm still waiting for someone."
As if on cue, the temperature plummeted. A sudden, unnatural wind swept through the bypass, carrying with it a rain of blood-red petals that danced through the orange street lamps.
The playful light in Cain's eyes vanished instantly, his expression hardening into a rare mask of seriousness.
Snow stood frozen, her hand tightening on her hilt as she held her breath.
Then, a sound cut through the howl of the wind a high-pitched, childish giggle that made the skin of every seasoned killer on the road crawl.
Out of the pitch-black darkness, a small figure emerged.
It was a girl, no older than eight or nine, dressed in a neat school uniform. She hopped along the cracked asphalt as if she were in a park, clutching a lollipop in one hand and a tattered plush toy in the other.
"Lalalalala..." she sang, her voice sweet and terrifyingly innocent.
She stopped just a few feet away from the carnage, tilting her head as she looked up at the woman in white.
"Jiejie, you're beautiful!" the child chirped, her eyes wide and sparkling. She pointed a small, sticky finger toward Snow's face. "I want to carve your face into my painting!"
The Leader, Raze, stared at the child in utter confusion and dread. He was a veteran of a hundred wars, but the sight of a little girl hopping through a massacre was the most horrifying thing he had seen all night.
This girl wasn't some lost soul or an innocent bystander she was a demon wearing the skin of an angel.
The realization hit them like a physical blow the moment their eyes landed on her hair clip: a jagged, deep-red rose carved from what looked like dried blood.
Cain's playful bravado shattered. The mask of the skull-faced gangster fell away to reveal a man who had realized he'd just stepped into a trap. This wasn't the person he was waiting for.
By bringing his circus of motorcycles to this road, he hadn't just interrupted a hit; he had woken a sleeping dragon, and now that dragon was knocking on his door.
The red rose was the Crimson Thorn, the mark of the Crimson Rose the of the legendary figure who had orchestrated the Great Genocide centuries ago.
The Thorns were a group that existed only to bring ruin, leveling entire sects and burning cities to ash before vanishing into myth. Now, the myth was standing on the asphalt, humming a nursery rhyme.
This child was their Second-in-Command, the nightmare known as the Thousand-Faced Lolita.
"Jiejie, why are you so quiet?" the girl asked, her voice dropping the sing-song tone for something flat and hollow. She took a bite of her lollipop, the crunch echoing like breaking bone.
Snow's hand began to tremble against her sword hilt. She was a top-tier assassin, but in the presence of a Crimson Thorn, she was just another ant.
Cain's riders, the ruthless Veil of Shadows, began to back their bikes away, the roar of their engines now sounding like the whimpering of beaten dogs.
The painting the child mentioned wasn't going to be made with ink.
"Let my masterpiece begin! Party time!" the little girl squealed, her eyes lighting up with a manic glow.
As the words left her lips, the red petals that had been drifting harmlessly through the air suddenly ignited.
They weren't flowers—they were catalysts. Each petal detonated with the force of a grenade, turning the bypass into a hell scape of fire and flying shrapnel.
Chaos erupted instantly; the roar of motorcycles was replaced by the screams of the Veil of Shadows and the thunder of back-to-back explosions.
Meanwhile, tucked away from the carnage, the madness was being watched.
Inside a quiet pavilion just a few hundred meters from the center of the destruction, the air remained still and fragrant.
A woman sat composed at a stone table, the flickering orange fire from the road reflecting softly in her eyes.
Across from her sat her butler, a man of sharp lines and absolute discipline.
He wore a perfectly tailored suit, golden spectacles that caught the dim light, and spotless black gloves.
The sounds of death and exploding asphalt were nothing more than background noise to them. Their focus remained entirely on the stone board between them. With a steady, gloved hand, the butler placed a white stone down.
They were playing a game of Go, calmly moving pieces across the board while the world outside was torn apart.
"The air in the Jianghu is shifting. Just as you commanded, Yanxi has begun making her moves," the butler remarked, his voice smooth and unaffected by the distant screams.
The woman paused, her fingers hovering over a polished Go stone. A faint, knowing smile played on her lips as the horizon glowed with the fire of the explosions.
"It seems you kept her on a leash for too long," she mused. "Now that she's free, she's turning the world into her personal playground of destruction."
"My humblest apologies, Miss," the butler replied, bowing his head slightly as he adjusted his golden spectacles.
"No matter. Let her play for now," the woman said. She placed her final stone with a decisive click, sealing the board and signaling her absolute victory. She stood up, her silhouette elegant against the backdrop of the burning road. "Start Phase Two."
She turned and walked away into the shadows of the pavilion, not once looking back at the carnage she had set in motion. The butler stared at the finished game for a moment, seeing the inevitable defeat on the board, then turned to follow his mistress into the night.