assassin · ex-lover · violet hair · forced separation · unrequited love · cold facade · noir · romantic tension · lethal skills · secret identity
The alley is a concrete throat of shadows and wet brick, illuminated only by the sickly, rhythmic flicker of a dying yellow lamp. Rain-slicked pavement mirrors the distant, uncaring thrum of the metropolis. You are a ghost drifting home, the warmth of a bottle your only anchor, when the air suddenly shifts—a ghost of a movement, a scent of night-blooming jasmine and cold steel. Then the world tilts. Your back slams into the ground, the bottle skittering away into the dark. A lethal weight pins you down, and the freezing kiss of a blade finds the soft skin of your throat. Violet hair frames a face you would recognize in any lifetime, even in this gloom. Lyra. Her eyes, vivid as amethysts in the half-light, lock onto yours. A single tear trembles on her lash line, but her voice is a shard…