I stayed home the entire Saturday. No food. No sleep. Just me and the Aetherion.

  Now, with a single thought, I command the mysterious dark energy. It flows effortlessly through the twelve chambers within me, threading its way like liquid fire. Outside the chambers, it splits—Virellum and Tenebris—two distinct forces born of the same core. When it returns, it fuses back into Aetherion, seamless and whole.

  Wherever it moves, heat blooms—focused, soothing, like a master’s fingers kneading muscle from within. It no longer feels alien. It’s mine. Claimed. Integrated.

  When I release it beyond my body, its effects are powerful and devastating.

  Virellum, a stream of mass-chameleon particles, bends the curvature of space-time.

  Tenebris, a stream of force-chameleon particles, repels matter with surgical precision.

  Together, they form a system—lethal in offense, impenetrable in defense.

  When the morning sun stains the sky in amber and gold, I step outside for a run. The Fragrance Hills behind my residence are laced with trails. One climbs to the summit—a path I favor.

  Energy surges through me. I could leap to the top of a Scots pine in a single bound. I resist the urge to do something reckless. Something that would draw attention.

  Instead, I glide past the Sunday runners one by one effortlessly. I carry my phone—not for music, but out of habit. I’m not here to tune out. I’m here to tune in.

  The air carries the distinctive fragrance of pine and wild apricot blossoms—so potent I can distinguish each note separately as they dance around me. My ears detect the subtle rustling of a Ruby ground squirrel hiding beneath fallen leaves twenty yards away. Morning dew on spider webs between fragrant bailan grass appears as intricate crystal lattices to my enhanced vision, each droplet refracting the sunrise into a spectrum of colors invisible to normal eyes. The calls of Beijing swifts and azure-winged magpies form complex harmonies that my brain processes as clearly as a musical score, their positions mapped precisely in my mind.

  But on the way back, something shifts.

  A sharpshooter lies prone beneath a wall of beauty bush. Its branches tremble in the breeze like a thousand whispering fingers. Pink petals drift down, settling on the matte-black barrel of his rifle like wedding confetti. I laugh silently at the obscenity—floral softness draped over the geometry of death.

  The bush is 1,800 yards from my home, just beyond the effective range of most sniper platforms. I planted trees to obscure the line of sight from the hill, but this position is still optimal. He’s waiting for me to step outside.

  My Fragrance Hills residence isn’t cloaked in secrecy like the villa buried deep in Jiufeng Forrest—but even so, few know its exact location.

  This isn’t the first attempt on my life. In the Ruby Republic, disappearance is the cheapest form of conflict resolution. It’s a cash business. Most assassins never learn who hired them.

  But this time is different.

  From its bolt handle and slender construction, I recognize the rifle: AMR-2. A long-range high-precision sniper system used by Red Party Army special forces.

  This weapon is tightly restricted—even within the military. Rifles and ammunition are stored separately, each requiring independent clearance. If I search his body after the kill, I’ll find an active military ID. I’m certain of it.

  And that's the problem. I must kill him.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I have no real options. From the moment he accepted the mission, his life became inseparable from its success. One of us must die. This is not a duel. It’s a terminal equation.

  But killing a military officer isn’t trivial. It triggers a tribunal. Even if I prove he intent to kill me, the evidence won’t matter.

  The Ruby Republic doesn’t operate on peer-based juries. Judges decide everything. The People’s Assessors are appointed by the court—decorative, not deliberative.

  A military court is worse. Sealed from the public. No civilian oversight. Verdicts handed down by uniformed judges behind closed doors.

  I can’t just kill him quietly.

  I need to make a scene.

  … …

  I stop beside the trail, hunched over, panting hard—feigning exhaustion like I’ve pushed myself past the edge. Sweat glistens on my skin, but my pulse is calm. Controlled. Deliberate.

  Two minutes later, he arrives.

  Middle-aged. Executive type. His Brioni technical jacket and handcrafted Italian running shoes scream wealth and vanity. He slows, eyes scanning me.

  “You alright?” he asks, turning toward me.

  I nod faintly, pretending my heart is pounding too hard to speak. My chest rises and falls in exaggerated rhythm.

  “I thought you were flying,” he says with a smile. “Best thing now is to walk it off.”

  I straighten slowly, nod again, and begin walking beside him.

  “Need a ride home?” he offers, too quickly. His gaze lingers—hungry, distracted—on the swell of my breasts pressing against my Lululemon sports bra. He thinks he’s being charming. He’s not.

  I smile. Let him believe I’m warming up. Behind us, more runners approach. Ahead, an elderly couple climbs the trail. I calculate the timing precisely—when they’ll pass by us, when we’ll enter the sniper’s kill zone.

  Then I act.

  A sudden cry. I stumble toward the executive, arms flung around his neck, breasts pressed against his chest. My movement is loud, erratic—designed to stir the shooter’s reflex.

  I know what I look like through the scope: auburn hair, tall, full-figured, Caucasian, beautiful. A target impossible to miss.

  I turn just enough to show half my face. Let him confirm. A petal drifts down and lands on his cheek, clinging there like the bush itself is trying to interrupt him.

  Then he pulls the trigger.

  He’s 1,200 yards out. The bullet takes just over a second to reach me.

  I time it perfectly—my knees buckle, my body shifts. The round misses me by a centimeter and tears through the executive’s face. Bone and blood explode across the trail.

  I scream louder. Push forward so the corpse collapses in full view of the elderly couple. The woman gasps, her cry rising—but before it peaks, the second shot comes.

  I summon Virellum, just enough to bend the bullet’s path. It whistles past the old woman’s side and buries itself in a tree trunk.

  A runner approaching us sees the chaos. “Gun!” she shouts.

  Another voice echoes, “Gun! Get down!”

  I pivot, dodge the third round, then drop and roll down the slope beside the trail. Dirt and pine needles fail to scratch my skin. I vanish from view.

  The shooter knows he’s lost the moment. He collapses his bipod, shoves the AMR-2 into its case, and bolts.

  “Look!” a woman yells, pointing. A young man lifts his phone and captures the fleeing figure—matte-black rifle case, tactical gear, face half-covered.

  I slip away in the confusion.

  … …

  He drives a 4×4 high-mobility tactical jeep, plate marked RA—Red Army. He’s pushing 70 miles per hour on a winding mountain road, heading north toward the Great Wall.

  I wait.

  Two seconds before he meets a 16-wheeler barreling down the opposite lane, I reach from the back seat and cover his eyes.

  His scream is raw, panicked.

  I leap from the jeep a heart beat before impact.

  The truck hits him head-on. Steel crushes steel. The jeep folds like paper. The shooter is reduced to pulp—bone, blood, and silence.

  The truck’s brakes shriek against the asphalt as the driver spins the wheel, desperate to hold the line. For a moment, it looks like he might—until a delivery van slams into the truck’s rear, too fast to stop.

  The force is enough.

  The truck and the wrecked jeep lurch forward, then sideways, then over the edge.

  They vanish.

  A second later, the slope erupts in fire. The fuel tank ruptures on impact, flames swallowing metal and flesh. Inside the cabin, the driver pounds against the jammed door, his screams drowned by the roar of the inferno.

  I perch high in the canopy of a pine tree, hidden by its dense needles, surveying the wreckage below. Smoke coils upward, thick and bitter, painting the sky in shades of warning.

  I calculate my next move.

  My appearance makes me dangerously memorable—a striking foreign woman. To be seen at both the shooting site and the crash scene, twenty miles apart, would be fatal. I must vanish without leaving a trace. And that's the easy part.

  The real problem? This hunt is far from over. More shooters will come. Someone has declared war—a fight to the death—and I was caught unprepared. Returning home is not an option. I need a secure location to formulate a strategy. Not just a stopgap measure, but a permanent solution that removes me entirely from this lethal game.