The warehouse district gave way to a skeletal structure of steel and shadows—an unfinished construction site on the edge of the river. Huge concrete pillars rose like tombstones into the night sky, and the air was thick with the smell of wet cement and cold iron.

  ?By the time I reached the center of the site, my lungs felt like they were filled with needles, and my Ichor was pulsing violently in my temples. I had been running for twenty minutes at a pace that would have killed a world-class athlete.

  ?I stood in the middle of a vast, empty floor, surrounded by piles of rebar and shadows. I scanned the darkness, my eyes shifting to the Ichor spectrum, desperately hunting for the golden heat signature of a human. But the construction site was a void. There was no heartbeat. No warmth.

  ?"I'm here!" I roared, my voice bouncing off the concrete slabs. "Show yourself!"

  ?From behind a massive support pillar, a figure stepped into the moonlight. She was in a simple summer dress, looking like she had just stepped out of a campus cafe, but the way she moved—weightless, predatory—shattered the illusion.

  ?"Hello there, Kang Eun-Woo," Hana said, a playful tilt to her head. She didn't look like a teammate anymore. In the monochromatic vision of my hunger, she looked like a walking nuclear reactor. "You don't look so surprised to see me, do you?"

  ?Her voice was the same cheerful tone she had used in the lounge, but now it made my skin crawl. Her Signature was no longer hidden; it felt like a heavy, pink fog of suffocating pressure filling the construction site.

  ?"Where is he?" I hissed, my hands balling into fists. "What did you do to Leo?"

  ?"He’s fine," she said, waving a hand dismissively as she hopped up to sit on a stack of steel beams. "He’s just sleeping. Humans are so fragile, you know? They lose a little bit of blood and they just... poof. Lights out. I’ll finish him after I’m done with you."

  ?The words hit me like a physical strike. I’ll finish him... "...You." I couldn't even form a sentence. The betrayal, the fear for Leo, and the sheer audacity of her smile were brewing a storm in my chest.

  ?Panic flared in my chest, hot and blinding. My instinct was to scream, to rush her, to beg.

  ?But then, Vaughn’s voice echoed in the hollows of my skull: 'You are a house cat. Perfection has its flaws.'

  ?If I acted like a human now, Leo would die. I had to suppress the 'Eun-Woo' who delivered food and apologized for existing. I had to become the thing I feared.

  ?I forced a breath I didn't need, pushing the human fear down and letting the cold calculation of the Ichor take over.

  ?"Ahaha! Are you angry?" Hana laughed, the sound echoing chillingly through the empty building. She stood up, her eyes flashing a deep, hungry crimson. "Good. I picked this place just for you, rookie. It’s quiet, it’s private, and there’s no Jin or Vaughn to stop me from tasting that B+ quality of yours. I'm going to play with you until there's nothing left."

  ?In the heavy silence of the construction site, we both took our stances. The moonlight filtered through the skeletal steel beams, casting long, jagged shadows across the dusty concrete.

  ?She was a Rank C Augmenter. I knew the theory: I had to keep my distance, use my threads, and never let her get into a pocket where her physical superiority could end me in a single heartbeat. But knowing the theory and surviving the reality were two very different things.

  ?“?!”

  ?As expected, she didn't just move; the distance between us simply ceased to exist. She was a pink blur, her summer dress fluttering like a mocking butterfly as she closed the gap in a fraction of a second.

  ?Her attacks were nothing like Vaughn’s blunt-force trauma. Vaughn was a natural disaster—a hurricane compressed into a fist. Hana was different. She was a surgical blade. Her strikes possessed the finesse of a high-level martial artist, but each one carried the hyper-pressurized kinetic weight of an Augmenter.

  ?My instincts screamed. I couldn't let her dictate the rhythm. I needed space.

  ?Struggling to dodge left and right, I found myself suffocated by her proximity. I barely ducked under a roundhouse kick that whistled past my ear with a sonic crack. Out of pure desperation, I bit the tip of my finger.

  ?"Back off!"

  ?I flicked a spray of blood toward her eyes—a crude distraction—and didn't try to be graceful. I slammed my heels into the ground and launched myself backward with raw, explosive force, skidding across the dusty floor to reset my position.

  ?Hana didn't even chase me. She just stood there, wiping a tiny speck of red from her cheek.

  ?“Not bad,” she chirped, her eyes glowing a more intense shade of crimson. “You’re clearly better than you were the other day. Still... nothing but a high-quality meal.”

  ?Before I could even stabilize my stance, she was there again. She didn't punch this time; she simply shoved me with the palm of her hand.

  ?BOOM.

  ?The impact felt like being hit by a speeding truck. The wind was forced out of my lungs as I flew backward, the world blurring until my spine slammed into a massive concrete column.

  ?“Ughh!”

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  ?My vision swam with static. Through the haze, I saw her fist coming toward my face.

  ?'Move!'

  ?I jerked my head to the side at the last possible microsecond.

  ?CRASH.

  ?The sound was deafening, shaking the fillings in my teeth. I looked back to see that her bare fist had completely pierced the reinforced concrete column where my skull had been an inch ago. Stone dust rained down on my shoulder. Rebar groaned and twisted as she casually withdrew her hand, dusting off her knuckles as if she had just tapped a glass window.

  ?“You’re kidding me...” I whispered, staring at the hole.

  ?“Hey, stop running, will you?” she asked casually, tilting her head. “It’s rude to keep your dinner guest waiting.”

  ?I felt the fear, cold and sharp. But underneath it, a strange clarity washed over me. I remembered the gym. I remembered the feeling of my ribs nearly shattering under Vaughn's lesson.

  ?That was a mountain. This? This is just a rock.

  ?“You know,” I panted, forcing a grin through the pain. “Compared to Vaughn... you’re really not that scary.”

  ?The playful atmosphere evaporated instantly. I had hit a nerve. Her smile didn't disappear, but it changed—it became sharp, jagged, and devoid of any warmth.

  ?“Is that so?” Her voice dropped an octave, vibrating with a predatory growl. “Ehhh. You think so? Maybe I can finally catch up to him after I devour you. What do you say, Eun-Woo? Ready to be useful for once?”

  This was it. The opening. She was angry, her "Signature" becoming erratic and loud. I decided to apply the lesson Vaughn pounded into my skull: Volume over Precision.

  ?I bit down on the finger that had just healed, tearing the wound open again. I didn't try to make a thread. I let the Ichor ooze out in a thick, pressurized stream, pooling it in my palm. Instead of a whip, I visualized a sphere—a condensed, unstable vessel of my own essence. I focused on Mass Density, packing the liquid until it felt like a lead ball in my hand.

  ?I threw it with everything I had.

  ?[Blood Art: Crimson Shroud]

  ?The orb flew true, hitting her squarely in the face. It didn't pierce her. It didn't explode with kinetic force. It simply burst upon impact, drenching her head and shoulders in a thick, heavy coat of my B+ quality blood.

  ?She stood frozen, the crimson liquid dripping from her chin and soaking into the delicate fabric of her dress. She looked at me through the red veil, her expression flat and unreadable.

  ?“You call this... a Blood Art?” she asked, her voice trembling with a mix of rage and disbelief. “You just threw a water balloon at me?”

  ?As she reached up to wipe the mess away, her tongue flicked out, tasting a streak of my blood from her lip. I saw her pupils dilate. The hunger.

  ?I felt a strange, cold sensation creeping up my spine. It wasn't fear anymore. It was a dark, primal resonance. My blood—the blood currently covering her face—was still mine. Even separated from my body, it was still connected to my will.

  ?Despite the pain racking my ribs, a cold, jagged smirk pulled at the corners of my mouth. I raised my trembling hand, pointing directly at the red-drenched mask that used to be her playful face.

  ?“You know,” I whispered, my voice steady for the first time tonight, “my attack didn’t actually end. Not yet, at least.”

  ?Hana blinked, the viscous liquid dripping into her eyelashes. “Huh? What are you—”

  ?[Command: Recall]

  ?I didn't just pull the blood back; I altered its physics.

  ?Surface Tension: Maximum.

  ?In a split second, the "Crimson Shroud" that had drenched her face transformed. It was no longer a liquid; it was a solid. As a Weaver, my gift wasn't just about creating whips—it was about sovereign control over any Ichor I had marked. By increasing the tension to its absolute limit and initiating a high-velocity Recall, the blood on her skin became thousands of tiny, microscopic hooks.

  ?I clenched my fist and yanked my hand back.

  ?The Ichor screamed back toward my palm. It didn't slide off her skin.

  ?It took her face with it.

  The sound was sickening—like wet parchment being torn in half. The blood, now a solid jagged mass, ripped away, leaving behind a raw, horrific landscape of exposed muscle and bone where her porcelain skin had been.

  ?“AAAAAARRRGGHHHHHHHHH!”

  ?Her scream was primal, a high-pitched shriek that shattered the silence of the construction site and echoed off the concrete pillars. She collapsed to her knees, clutching her head, blood—her blood this time—fountaining between her fingers.

  ?I stood there, watching the mass of Ichor return to my hand and dissolve. A cold shiver ran down my spine. I... I didn't think it would be so brutal. But as I looked at her, the person who had threatened to "devour" me and kill my best friend, I couldn't deny the dark, pulsing truth: It was satisfying.

  ?“So, Hana,” I said, stepping over a pile of rebar toward her. “If you don’t want any more of this, stop right now. It’s still not too late to tell me where Leo is and walk away.”

  ?Hana looked up, or at least she tried to. One of her eyes was clouded with gore, the other wide with a mixture of agony and pure, unadulterated shock. Her predatory "Signature" had completely collapsed into a chaotic mess of fear.

  ?“Youuu... You...” she hissed through the remnants of her lips. “What... What is your rank? How can a rookie...?”

  ?“Oh, this?” I flicked my wrist, activating the obsidian watch. The holographic display cast a soft blue light over the carnage. “You caught me just yesterday. I was actually raised to Rank E.”

  ?I stared at her through the haze of my one good eye, the other swollen shut from her previous strike. I stood my ground, my fingers trembling as I forced my remaining Ichor to stabilize.

  ?“Will you... give up?” I panted, my voice sounding foreign to my own ears.

  ?Hana didn't answer immediately. I watched, mesmerized and horrified, as the skin on her face began to knit back together with a wet, squelching sound. She rose from her crouch, her summer dress stained crimson, her aura no longer playful. It was a jagged, suffocating weight that made the very air feel sharp.

  ?“E-rank,” she spat, her voice trembling with a cold, focused malice. “I will definitely kill you. No... I will leave you in such pain that you will beg to die. And your friend? Yeah, he’ll share the same fate. I’ll make sure he watches every second of it.”

  ?She lowered her center of gravity, her muscles coiling like high-tension wires.

  ?“Tch. If you don't give up,” I hissed, trying to mask the terror clawing at my throat, “I'll just keep doing it until you do.”

  ?[Blood Art: Crimson Shroud]

  ?I threw the condensed orb of Ichor with everything left from the earlier attack. It streaked through the air, aimed perfectly.

  ?But Hana didn't even flinch.

  ?At the last micro-second, she tilted her head—a movement so subtle, so casual, it was almost insulting. The crimson orb sailed past her ear and burst uselessly against the concrete floor behind her.

  ?“What? I didn't even see her prepare to dodge...”

  ?[Blood Art: Max Circulation]

  ?As she whispered the technique, my Sixth Sense flared with a blinding, white-hot intensity. Through the lens of my vampire vision, her body transformed. The blood within her vessels didn't just flow; it erupted. I saw the Ichor concentrate purely into her limbs, her arteries pulsing with a hydraulic pressure that would have exploded a human heart instantly.

  ?She wasn't just fast anymore. She was a glitch in reality.

  ?Slash.

  ?I didn't feel the pain at first. There was just a sudden, cold lightness at the end of my arm.

  ?I stared in utter confusion at the space where my right hand was supposed to be.

  ?It wasn't there.

  ?My forearm ended in a clean, jagged red stump. Blood began to pulse out in rhythmic spurts, painting the dust at my feet. My hand—and the blood I was trying to weave—was lying on the concrete five feet away, fingers still twitching.

  ?I looked back at Hana. Her face was now fully healed. Her eyes were devoid of anger, replaced by a cold, clinical desire to erase me from existence.

  ?The predator had stopped playing.