This wasn’t his real skin.

  A closer look showed the paleness came from a layer of fine, hard growths covering his flesh—like the scales of some cold-blooded creature. They coated the back of his hand, his knuckles, wrist, and forearm in rough, overlapping plates, giving off a dull, bone-white sheen in the light.

  Right now, steam—thin, white, and sharp-smelling—hissed from the seams between those raised scales, heat bleeding off from the force of his punch.

  “Hah. So you dodged.”

  The man lifted his head, revealing a face carved by a thick scar slashing across one cheek. His eyes were small, sharp, and gleamed with a feral light.

  His voice was a low, grating rasp, like rusty metal dragged over stone. “Didn’t think our setup would get spotted by the prey.” A scaled tongue flicked out, licking cracked lips, twisting into a vicious smile. “Seems you’re not as simple as that idiot ‘Poxman’ said… good.”

  They called him “Iron Hand.” The name fit. All his changes, all his power from the Corpse-Plague, were focused right there in his mutated hands. That punch into the concrete wasn’t some new-second-rank parlor trick; it was the mark of a seasoned combat elite, hardened in real fights.

  His sheer size and that display of raw power were meant to shock, to intimidate.

  And if you added in the black muzzles now sliding silently from second-story windows all around them, the cold glint of gunmetal between leaves and rotting wood, the message got a whole lot louder.

  Pandora, subtly pinned by seven or eight sight-lines, didn’t show the panic a normal person might. She just watched the dangerous man, her gaze cool and assessing. There was no fear in it, only a detached, icy scrutiny—like she was evaluating a object, not a threat.

  She opened her mouth, maybe to ask a question, maybe to issue a warning.

  Iron Hand didn’t give her the chance.

  His savage grin dropped. The ferocity in his eyes flared, and he let out a grinding, guttural command.

  “Take her down!”

  The words were the spark.

  Instantly, the air tore apart.

  Gunfire erupted from every direction upstairs—a sudden, deafening storm of lead. Bullets shrieked down, a concentrated steel rain aiming to shred the slender figure in the center.

  Brass rained down. Gun smoke bloomed.

  The roar of the guns drowned out any possible reply, obliterating the last slim hope for a peaceful end.

  Dust and smoke kicked up in a choking cloud.

  In the split second before the lethal barrage swallowed her, Iron Hand saw the final trace of anything soft in Pandora’s eyes vanish.

  What remained was cold. Pure, condensed ice.

  Facing the bullet storm capable of chewing through concrete, Pandora didn’t flinch.

  In her expanded senses, enveloping the shops on both sides, the bullets’ paths felt obvious. Predictable. Almost clumsy.

  She didn’t need to think. The combat instinct forged in countless cycles of the Crimson Moon Nightmare—instinct that went beyond logic—took over.

  Her body moved with impossible efficiency.

  No big leaps, not even a step.

  Just minimal, precise shifts of her wrists, a subtle turn of her waist, a slight bend of her knees. She moved like a ghost dancing through the storm, slipping through the narrowest gaps in the lethal net.

  And for the bullets she couldn’t slip past, the custom jet-black sword she’d drawn at some point met them—each deflection a sharp, clean clang in the chaos.

  A traditional medieval blade would have shattered. But seven months was plenty of time to upgrade her gear. For her, it was a simple necessity.

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  The assault wasn’t over.

  The attack didn’t just come from above.

  “Iron Hand” made his move.

  The mountain of muscle crouched, the ground under his feet groaning in protest. Every cord in his body coiled tight like a compressed steel spring—and then he launched.

  His huge frame shot through the air in a crushing parabola, a tackle designed with brutal physics to leave no room to dodge, aimed to smash her spine in a single, decisive impact.

  But—

  Clang!

  Pandora’s sword came down in a cool, precise arc.

  The edge met the thick skin of his forearm.

  It left only the faintest white mark.

  Pandora’s eyes narrowed. It wasn’t a mark at all.

  It was an incredibly dense layer of bone scales that had erupted from under his skin the instant her blade made contact. As the threat passed, the scales softened and retracted back beneath the surface, seamless and silent. The spots the bullets had hit reacted the same way, mostly producing dull thuds instead of wounds.

  Iron Hand looked at the still-calm Baroness before him and grinned, a flash of white teeth in his scarred face.

  “Heh heh…”

  People called him “Iron Hand,” and for good reason. But he’d also learned a useful trick: a name could tell the truth, or it could set a trap. He was pretty good at using both.

  The people who knew his secret fell into two groups: the truly powerful, who couldn’t be bothered to explain it, and the dead. Corpses tell no tales.

  Now Pandora knew.

  He looked at her the only way you can look at someone who knows your secret—like she was just another future corpse.

  Her response to his dead-man stare was a thread of icy mockery in her voice, laced with something worse: disappointment.

  “And this is your ambush?” she asked, the words almost casual. “This is all you brought?”

  Her gaze flicked to the black muzzles still pointing from the windows, then settled back on his face.

  “If that’s it… my turn.”

  Before the last word finished leaving her lips, the immense, honed pressure of her spiritual power—already coiled and waiting—unleashed like a shattered dam.

  An invisible wave of psychic force, sharp and searing as red-hot needles, drove deep into the minds of every gunman hidden on the second floor, each one wholly focused on their aim below.

  “Agh—!”

  “My head!”

  Cries of raw pain erupted from behind the windows.

  The punishing hail of gunfire that had just forced Pandora to dance went utterly, completely silent.

  Then—

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  Gunfire spat again.

  This time, the direction was reversed.

  It came from the large-caliber backup pistol in Pandora’s hand, firing up toward the ambushers—now stalled or writhing behind their dark windows.

  This pistol was her secret. Its model and specs were a perfect match for her primary “Colt,” and its flawless finish showed the same obsessive care. Completely different from her first warning shot, these bullets weren’t aimed at the glass.

  They flew, with terrifying precision, through the narrow, finger-width gaps the gun barrels poked through.

  Right inside.

  It seemed impossible. To keep their ambush hidden, Iron Hand had ordered his men to seal every other source of light in those rooms. Apart from those slim slits, the interiors were pools of protective darkness.

  Theoretically, no one outside could see a thing.

  Yet Pandora’s bullets seemed to have eyes.

  What he didn’t know was that she didn’t need to “see.” Her spiritual power had already painted a combat map in her mind—more real, more three-dimensional, and far more detailed than anything eyes could provide. The shapes hidden in the dark, the rigid postures of shooters frozen in pain… in her psychic sight, they were perfectly clear.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  Each shot was chillingly steady. Each bullet was a roll call from the reaper, finding its target through those impossible gaps. On the other side, ghastly flowers of gore bloomed on faces still locked in shock and pain.

  Had someone been in those dark rooms then, the scene would have been pure carnage. Blood and worse sprayed across dusty walls. Bodies slid down silently, missing chunks of skull or with neat holes punched through foreheads.

  The silence of death filled the spaces where aiming and trigger-pulls had been.

  “How is this possible?!” Iron Hand’s eyes went wide, real horror flashing across his face for the first time. His mind raced, but it couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing.

  How did she do it? How could she place every shot?

  If he’d seen Pandora’s “Death Sprint” challenge that very day—even just the end—he might have understood. But he hadn’t. While the crowds in the Quarry cliffs were cheering, he and his squad had been here, in this abandoned market, setting their trap.

  It never occurred to him that Pandora would be armed. Their intelligence was clear: her pistol was at the Blacksmith’s, undergoing ritual engraving. It couldn’t possibly be back in her hands for hours.

  They didn’t know about the backup.

  A perfectly matched copy, maintained with the same flawless care. She’d never had the habit, or the need, to use two guns publicly. Now, this hidden card was revealed, enabling a swift, one-sided slaughter.

  The situation reversed completely in a handful of seconds.

  Just as the last thread of his composure snapped, a voice—cold, calm, and eerily soft—drifted to his ear.

  “Why the surprise?”

  Before the words finished landing, the roar of a muzzle followed, point-blank.

  A custom-made, searing-hot bullet spun toward his slightly lifted forehead, still frozen in shock.

  A hair from death.

  Every hair on Iron Hand’s body stood on end. Instinct, moving faster than thought, screamed. He mobilized every ounce of his Corpse-Plague ability, forcing the subcutaneous bone layer on his forehead to harden instantly to its absolute limit.

  Ting—!

  A faint, sharp, metallic ping, nearly swallowed by the gunshot.

  The bullet, capable of piercing a normal skull, deformed against the instant, layered bone scales on his forehead, before dropping spent to the ground with a clatter.

  A cold sweat drenched his back. In that moment, he could almost hear the faint, stressed creak of the scales on his brow.

  If he’d been a fraction slower… that one shot would have been it.