Adrenaline coursed through Seraphina's veins like liquid fire. Her eyes, sharp as newly forged blades, analyzed every movement of the three targets that appeared before her in the ruins of the old underground station. The air was heavy, humid, and saturated with the penetrating smell of rust and mold. Shadows seemed to move with a life of their own between the corroded pillars and abandoned tracks, creating an environment where each footstep echoed like a warning.
She remained still for a brief second, just long enough to align her breathing with the beating of her heart. Her focus was absolute. She felt the weight of each hostile presence as if they were pulses vibrating in the cracked ground beneath her feet. Even though darkness dominated the place, her trained perception saw far beyond the visual limits. Every variation of sound, every change in the air current, informed her more than any beam of light.
"Calm down… breathe… remember what he said," she thought, her feet moving with feline lightness. She assumed a defensive stance not tense, but fluid, moldable, like water in a stream, constantly adapting. The lesson was etched into her mind.
The memory came like a blade slicing through her consciousness. "Seraphina," Elysian said, her voice controlled, like a scalpel slicing through the air, as she still panted after an exhausting workout in one of the variable-gravity rooms. "I'm not the strongest physically among the Ruin Remnants. But when it comes to fighting techniques… well, even Nyx has trouble with my precision."
He stepped closer, his clinical gaze assessing every detail of her posture, and gently tapped the center of her chest with two fingers. "Your potential is absurd. If you train with focus, you can surpass anyone. But don't try to copy. Learn, absorb... and transform it into your own style."
She exhaled slowly, feeling the cold air enter her nostrils. The first enemy, the tallest, advanced with a grunt. His movements were wide and careless, relying on brute strength more than technique. A fatal mistake.
Seraphina dodged with an elegant spin, letting the blow rip through the air inches from her face. She realized immediately: the man was an urban brawler, with no refined training. Ninjutsu. His muscles moved with precision. Her elbow met his jaw with a dull crack, stopping the momentum of his attack. Then a straight kick with her heel hit the knee joint at a diagonal angle. The dry sound of the rupture was accompanied by a piercing scream. The man's body collapsed like a puppet without strings, but she was already moving on to the second.
This one was more cautious. He had posture. His guard up. Ex-military, perhaps? Krav Maga, she deduced from the way his feet were positioned, prepared for short, quick movements. He advanced with a direct blow to the trachea, an attempt at a quick neutralization. But she was already inside his blind spot.
She dodged with the slightest movement, twisting her body like a snake, and responded with a precise punch to the solar plexus. The man gasped, instinctively bringing his arms to his stomach. That was what she wanted. Spinning, she caught his hand and applied a Line strike, a joint-breaking technique. The fingers of his enemy's hand gave way under the force applied, breaking with a grotesque sound.
The memory of Elysian's voice cut through the battlefield in his mind: "Lines and breaks. Never fight for impact. Fight for submission. Save strength, maximize efficiency."
The third man hesitated. Unlike the others, he was using a makeshift knife, made from a piece of rail. His eyes were wide, but there was still courage in his face. He was the most dangerous. Desperation combined with the weapon.
Seraphina smiled. Not a sneer, but one of recognition. She respected that kind of opponent. She decided to use Rough and Tumble, an unstructured, adaptive combat designed for real fights. She purposefully threw herself to the ground, taking her enemy with her on impact. The impact reverberated along the tracks, scattering dust.
As she rolled, she trapped his weapon arm between her knees and pushed her elbow back at an unnatural angle. His scream cut through the muffled air, but she was already moving, finishing with a Muay Thai strike to the collarbone. Another crack. Another fracture.
The mission was clear: capture them alive. And so she had done. Alive, yes. In one piece? Not so much.
She remained there, panting but firm. Sweat ran down her temples, mixing with the blood of her opponents and the dust in the room. The three of them were on the ground, groaning in pain, unable to react. Their joints were compromised, their blood vessels affected. Enough to ensure that they would not flee, even under adrenaline.
As she adjusted her hair with a quick movement and cleaned the blood from her gloves with a handkerchief from inside her coat, a shiver ran down her spine. Not from fear, but from instinct. She knew she was not alone.
Ethan watched her from the shadows, his body blending into the darkness like a cautious predator. He hadn't interfered. It was the deal.
"Not bad..." he murmured in English, a slight smile escaping his lips. Without taking his eyes off her, he activated the communicator with an almost imperceptible gesture. "Target 1, 2, and 3 neutralized. Agent Choi Eun-kyung... exceeded expectations."
But Seraphina didn't relax. Her pulse was still high, as if something was coming. The sound of the fight reverberated in her mind. The techniques used, the precise moments. Everything intertwined. She wanted more. She wanted to perfect.
"It's not perfect yet," she muttered to herself. "But I'm getting there."
She turned slowly, her gaze sweeping the scene. The battle was over, but the mission had barely begun. And the station, with its rusted tracks and cracked pillars, seemed to hide much more than just three enemies.
The lights in the warehouse flickered dimly, casting shifting shadows on the walls. Seraphina, disguised as Choi Eun-kyung, crouched beside the unconscious bodies, examining them one by one with the precision of a field medic. Her hands moved quickly but carefully, checking vital signs, removing personal items, inspecting for hidden transmitters.
Ethan leaned against a nearby wall, crossing his arms. He watched her with a look that was a mix of respect and unsettling nostalgia. The way she moved… it wasn't that of a rookie. It was the look and posture of a veteran. He'd seen it before, in war zones, among soldiers marked by loss and scars.
"Clean it up," he said, returning to his cool, businesslike posture. "No traces. We're not ghosts, but we have to look like we are."
Seraphina nodded slightly. She pulled a cloth soaked in chemical neutralizer from inside her coat and began to erase their footprints, clean up the blood, and remove any trace that could be traced. Her body ached, but she didn't stop.
With surgical precision, they burned the documents they found, destroyed electronic devices, and applied the neutralizers to the surfaces they had touched. In the end, the three men were handcuffed, sedated and placed in the trunk of a modified car, camouflaged for field infiltration.
Hours later, they were in a hotel Ethan had booked. An old building on the outskirts of Lyon, France, in an area forgotten by time. The room was spacious, with heavy curtains and reinforced soundproofing, tailored for agents on missions.
Seraphina slumped into an armchair, exhausted. The battle had taken its toll, but there was more to come. Ethan adjusted the surveillance and monitoring devices with the dexterity of someone who had done it a hundred times.
"Aren't you going to rest?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Only after you've accomplished what's left," Ethan replied without turning around. "The Order demands proof that you're good in all areas, not just combat."
Seraphina already knew. But hearing it out loud made her face harden even more. "Interrogation," she muttered, standing up.
Ethan nodded. "Show them you can do this. Show them you're not here to play around."
The makeshift interrogation room seemed to have been carved from decay itself. The rough concrete walls were covered in old stains from water infiltration, the low ceiling created a claustrophobic atmosphere, and the only point of light was a bulb hanging by an exposed wire, swaying gently in the wind that escaped through a crack in the locked window. Each flicker of the light cast unstable shadows on the faces present, like specters lurking, alert to what was to come.
The three captured men were arranged in rusty steel chairs, their hands cuffed behind their backs and their legs tied. The sedation was beginning to wear off. One of them coughed with difficulty, spitting saliva mixed with blood. The other two were still trying to maintain some dignity, their eyes half-closed, searching the room for an exit they knew did not exist.
Seraphina entered the room with slow but steady steps. Her dark coat swung gently against her slender body. She was no longer the soldier from the underground station; she was now the cold, meticulous instrument the Order had expected. But behind her brown eyes, Celeste Callahan's wounded spirit still pulsed, shaping each choice with a silent, precise, calculated fury.
Ethan positioned himself in the back, next to the monitor where a camera recorded everything. The mission was not just to extract information; it was a test. They were being watched by unseen eyes. The Order wanted to see if Choi Eun-kyung could do this efficiently… or cruelly.
She pulled out a simple chair and placed it in front of the first prisoner, the youngest, the one wielding the makeshift knife. She sat down slowly, crossing her legs elegantly, and stared at him in silence for long seconds. The tension was a thread stretched to its limit. No words. Only the sound of the watch on Ethan's wrist, ticking away with an almost cruel cadence.
"Name," she said finally, her voice neutral, almost monotonous. The man laughed, even with his jaw dislocated. A grotesque sound. "Fuck you, you fucking bitch."
She sighed. She stood up unhurriedly, walked to the makeshift table next to the wall, and picked up a pair of pliers. She said nothing. She just came back and knelt in front of him, staring intently at his bound hands. The silence was so oppressive that the other two prisoners held their breath.
"You think I'm like them," she said, slowly turning the tool in her fingers. "That I'll scream, that I'll hit… that I'll make a scene. But listen to me…"
She looked him in the eye. "What they taught me most was to understand human limits. The most detailed ones, specifically. I know how far your pain goes before you pass out. And I know how to stop that from happening."
And then, with clinical precision, she clamped the pliers onto the prisoner's little finger, a sharp snap, a strangled cry, and then silence forced by a handkerchief stuffed into his mouth. He writhed in a cold sweat, while she simply wiped the blood from the tool with a white handkerchief. "Now let's do it again." She gently removed the handkerchief from his mouth. "Name."
"…T-Tarek…" he gasped. "Tarek Khaled…" She nodded slightly. "Good choice."
For the next two hours, Seraphina was a meticulous orchestrator of pain and relief. There was no rush, no chaos. It was all a silent dance, psychological torture interspersed with measured doses of physical stimulation. Every response was mentally noted. The base they guarded, the shifts, the supply routes, the names of the supervisors, it was all laid out like a bloody map.
The second captive collapsed after seeing what she had done to the first. A tall man, ex-military, his eyes remained cold until the moment Seraphina whispered something in his ear, words that Ethan could not catch, but which made the man pale as if he had seen a ghost.
The third resisted longer. But time was a luxury she had. And patience was a weapon she had learned from the best.
At the end of the interrogation, Seraphina washed her hands in the bedroom sink, the water mixed with blood and sweat running down the cracked porcelain sink. The reflection in the mirror trembled slightly under the flickering of the lightbulb. Her eyes were dark, but calm. There was no guilt. There was focus.
Ethan, standing in the doorway, watched without saying anything. When she turned, he raised a slight smile. "If it was a test... you passed." "It was not a test," she replied, drying her face. "It was necessary."
He nodded, acknowledging not only the answer, but the woman before him. Seraphina was no ordinary recruit. She was the kind of warrior forged by tragedy and sculpted with purpose.
Shortly afterward, the extracted data was encoded and sent to the internal channels of the Order of Erebus. At the same time, a telepathic message was received directly into the center of the Primeval's mind. "Mission complete. Interrogation completed. Information extracted successfully. Choi Eun-kyung will be useful."
The Primeval did not respond, but a slight movement in his eyes betrayed something else. Beside him, in a secluded spot in the Order's headquarters, the supreme leader, whose presence was as powerful as it was ethereal, silently observed the report.
Without saying a word, she simply extended her hand over the black symbol of the Order of Erebus carved into the metal of the table. Choi Eun-kyung would make her next move. And they would be watching.