Sometimes, the first truth you uncover is that you were never safe to begin with.
The room exploded in motion.
Glass scattered across the floor like shards of static, crunching under the boots of the figure that had just crashed through Elijah's window. Rain followed him in — cold, angry, insistent — drenching the hardwood in seconds.
The intruder moved like smoke. Low, silent, inhumanly fluid.
Elijah's training kicked in. He dove to the side, grabbing the revolver from the box and rolling behind the desk just as a blade embedded itself in the chair where he'd been standing.
Wood splintered.
Heart pounding, Elijah peeked over the edge.
The attacker was tall, wrapped in a heavy black cloak with a low hood. His hands were covered in gloves that glowed faintly red — cipher symbols etched into the fabric, pulsing like embers.
A Cipher Hunter, Elijah realized.
Not a myth. Not a story whispered in old profiler forums.
Real.
"Who sent you?" Elijah barked, steadying the revolver with both hands.
No answer.
The attacker lunged again — fast. Too fast.
Elijah fired.
The shot rang out, deafening in the enclosed room, but the hunter ducked, rolled, and disappeared behind the wall of case files.
Then came the whisper.
"You shouldn't have opened it."
The voice was wrong — layered. It sounded like several voices at once, echoing through Elijah's skull.
He stumbled back, vision blurring. The cipher… the cipher from the package was glowing on the table. The symbols were shifting — no, rewriting themselves.
This wasn't just ink.
It was active.
Elijah blinked hard and shook his head.
Focus.
He ducked left and sprinted for the hall, nearly slipping on the wet floor. The hunter followed, fast and silent.
As Elijah reached the stairwell, the figure tackled him from behind, sending them both crashing through the railing. They tumbled down two floors in a mess of limbs, rain, and pain.
Crack.
Elijah hit the landing hard.
The hunter was already up — blade raised. Elijah barely rolled away in time.
Think, Graves! You used to profile these people for a living!
But this wasn't a man.
It was something… adapted. Changed.
Then Elijah saw it.
Burned into the attacker's forearm beneath the cloak — a cipher.
Not drawn. Branded.
It pulsed in sync with his gloves.
And Elijah understood: this wasn't a weapon. It was a tool. A key. And the hunter — he was using it to sync with something else.
He's being guided.
Possessed?
Or augmented?
Elijah raised the revolver and fired again — this time aiming at the hunter's hand.
BANG.
The shot clipped the glove. Sparks flew. The symbols dimmed.
The man—no, the Cipher Hunter—screamed. The sound was wrong. Electronic. Distorted. Like a corrupted file.
He collapsed, shaking violently.
Elijah didn't wait. He rushed forward, kicked the blade across the floor, and pinned the hunter down.
"Talk. Now."
The hunter's mask shifted. It was mechanical. Underneath, what Elijah saw wasn't human — at least, not anymore.
Pale skin. Veins blackened like wires. And eyes...
Red. And empty.
The man convulsed.
Blood — or something like it — leaked from his ears.
Then he whispered, just once:
"It's already begun."
And before Elijah could stop him, the cipher on the glove lit up one last time.
Self-triggered collapse.
A blinding pulse.
A flash of red.
And then…
Nothing.
Just a body.
Still. Empty.
Cipher symbols burned into the floor, already fading.
Elijah stood there in silence, breathing hard, the gun shaking in his grip.
Rain continued to fall.
Somewhere, across the city, a church bell rang.
"Cipher Veil," Elijah whispered.
"You're not just back. You've evolved."
➤ To be continued…