The moon was a full disk, pale and grey like salt and basalt, and cold like snow on barbed wire. Moonlight poured like gauze from the sky, casting a hoary sheen upon the tranquil city below. There was an edge to the peacefulness of the night, the city holding its breath. As if it was waiting for the sky to split and rain fire, or the earth to crumble where it stood.

Hansel was standing in the middle of a crossroads at Heart City Central, boxed in by a square perimeter of zebra crossings that painted stark white strips against the depthless black of the night. He checked his watch compulsively, consulting it every other second, and frowning every time he found that its hands were a minute closer to midnight.

Time was running out.

Where was Felix?

Hansel had been wandering the streets for hours, waiting for Felix to return, but so far there had not been any signs of him. Hansel couldn't go back to his house. He had gotten back from his encounter with Mata and Donovan to find the inside of his house trashed. Someone must have found out his address and broken in to look for him. By the time Hansel arrived the intruders had already cleared the scene, and Hansel deducing that it was unsafe for him to stay at the place any longer moved out soon after. He had been living in an abandoned apartment at the outskirts of the city for the past two days.

He wondered if Felix hadn't found him yet because he wasn't at home. He had thought he would walk back to find out, but he still had a long way to go. And he was tired of walking.

Still, wasn't Felix the king of the Night? Couldn't he find Hansel anywhere at night?

As more time passed Hansel felt a sense of dreadful uneasiness unspooling in the pit of his stomach.

Why wasn't Felix coming?

Did something happen to him?

Or was it because he was planning to break the promise he made to Hansel?

Because he had no plan?

Time kept ticking away steadily.

Why wasn't Felix coming?

Second by second, minute by minute the time passed, until all the needles in his watch aligned perfectly, pointing at the spoke that marked the number twelve.

Midnight.

The deadline had arrived.

Anxiously, Hansel watched the night around him, expecting activity. Everything remained still. He could see buildings in the distance, the lights in their windows on, glowing like illuminated honeycombs. No one was sleeping. Everyone, like him, seemed to be waiting for something to happen, only it didn't.

What now?

The change happened slowly. Even though Hansel's eyes were well-adjusted to the night it still took him a full minute to notice the shadows on the walls of the buildings around him beginning to twitch. All around him blackness rose up from the ground like smoke from volcanic vents.

He could see a small squat house wedged between the corner of the crosswalks and two larger buildings. Right before his eyes he saw the shadow of the house move. It lifted itself from the floor, the shadow of its chimney thickening and elongating towards the moon, then curving lithely like the neck of the Loch Ness monster.

Darkness gathered above him, filling up the sky like rain clouds. They swarmed over the moon, blocking out its light. The shadows had returned and they were everywhere. Things with teeth and claws—stretching and awakening, then taking claim of the world.

Hansel wished, desperately, that what he feared would not happen. That Griffin would forget his wicked promise and leave the city alone. He wished and wished even as he felt himself getting drunk on dread, wished even when the shadows around him perked up as if they had been given a command, then spread out upon the city like a blight.

When he heard the first scream split the night like an arrow, and felt his own heart seize in his chest, he wished still.

But what good could wishing do? The storm was already unleashed.

When Hansel heard the screams for the first time he was confused. He wondered if anyone else had been out on the streets like him. But who would put themselves in danger like that, on a night a massacre was promised? Anyone sane would have stayed inside their houses.

But then his attention went to an old five-storey apartment to his south and he realised what was wrong.

The apartment was occupied, every window lit with yellow light. He noticed the silhouettes of a couple of frightened residents darkening the glass of the balcony doors, watching the night for signs of trouble just as he was.

And then his eyes went upwards, until they settled upon the crouching shape of a shadow on top of the roof. He opened his mouth, as if to shout a warning, but no sound came out. The shadow moved as if it were possessed, one of its limbs swinging downward like the arm of a bulldozer, bashing into the balcony doors. Cries of alarm pierced the darkness as glass shattered and the people behind the door scurried backwards, stumbling over one another in their frenzy to retreat.

Hansel watched, paralysed, as another shadow climbed the side of the building. This one looked like a large crab, its ascent agonizingly slow. It had a body as flat as a pan and its eyes stuck out like a pair of spring dolls. Even from where he stood he could hear the clicking of its pincers.

The wrongness was this: the crab crawled all the way up until it reached the balcony doors, but it wasn't shying away from the high intensity lights. It wasn't stopping. Aghast, Hansel watched it lift itself onto the balcony with ease, then creep through the broken doors to where the others were waiting in fear.

Hansel's throat felt dry.

The shadow was inside.

It was inside a room.

The final rule was broken.

There was nowhere a shadow couldn't go now.

There was nowhere left that was safe.

The screams around him rose in number and volume. People were running out onto the streets, fleeing from shadows that had broken into their houses. People were being slashed through, crushed against walls, skewered in their beds. People were being flung out of their thirteenth storey windows.

It was pandemonium—a maelstrom of blood and panic, and Hansel alone stood in the middle of it, untouched, undisturbed, unanimously ignored by the army of shadows. Hansel didn't need to run. No shadow was going to attack him, because if he must suffer from regret, he must stay alive. Right now, he alone was safe in this city.

He did not know what to do now.

All of this...it was his fault.

Again.

He was once more responsible for the loss of life. And this time he did not have an excuse of an unexpected death. He knew what was going to happen if he did not kill himself.

He sank to his knees, weighted down by crushing guilt.

Was everything over for this city?

Was it really too late?

Where was Felix?

His eyes blurred, as if with tears. What was he to do now?

I'm sorry, he thought. I'm sorry I was selfish.

Through his hazy vision he saw a pinprick of red light between a pair of buildings. He focused on it until it grew larger, its edges more distinct.

"Please, give me another chance," he wished upon the blood dragonfly. "Please. Just one more."

People ran past him, not giving a second glance for his kneeling figure, only focused on saving their own lives. They ran blind through the night, screaming and sobbing, caught in an inescapable nightmare. But the shadows caught up too fast, and Hansel watched men and women being hacked down before his very eyes, cut to pieces like loaves of bread.

The dragonfly was disappearing, dissolving back into the night. Hansel's voice cracked with a broken plea. "Please."

The sky televisions in the city flashed to light in a burst of static, the screens a whizz of colours after being unused for so long many years. They winked against the walls of skyscrapers, as if in response to Hansel's wish; the screams dwindled, as if the shadows were taking a break.

Hansel did not lift his head to look at first, but then he heard Griffin's voice utter his name and his eyes snapped onto the sky televisions, his stomach bottoming out. There, lit up on dozens of giant screens were the grinning face of Griffin.

"Hansel Schwein," he called again in an unnervingly saccharine voice. "Was there something you wanted to tell me?"

A hush fell over the city.

The sky television closest to Hansel was built against a tall business building to his left. Slowly, he climbed to his feet and turned to face the screen.

"You must feel very guilty right now," guessed Griffin. "All these people dying because of you..."

More people walked towards the middle of the crossroads from every side, trying to get a better view of the giant screen. In the darkness Hansel couldn't make out any of their faces. They lined up messily to watch Griffin talk.

"You asked for another chance," said Griffin, his smile cruel. "As it happens, I'm a generous person. I will give you one more chance." His eyes glittered emerald onscreen. "Kill yourself, Hansel. I won't ask you again. The moment you kill yourself this bloodbath will end."

All of a sudden, floodlights came on atop three of the buildings hemming the crossroads, every one of them turned Hansel's way. They blinded him, dousing him in a hemisphere of powerful white light. The people who were standing closest to him stumbled away from the beams of light as if repelled by them, and Hansel was left alone—trapped like an apparition inside a binding circle.

Dazedly he let his eyes wander, searching his surroundings even though the lights had plunged them into unbreachable blackness. He could feel the searing gazes of the others all over him, hear the smattering of murmurs that had started to spread. He felt exposed, shameful, like a criminal on trial.

"One more thing." Griffin had not stopped talking. "The other rules still remain. Hansel has to kill himself. No one else is allowed to kill him, although you are free to persuade him using any means. If anyone tries to kill Hansel, I would kill that person myself." His expression sobered ever so slightly. "This is your last chance, Hansel. Use it well."

Hansel thought the people around him were now pointing at him; he could sense the surprise, the recognition and the visceral animosity directed his way. He could feel the agitation beginning to grow around him, encircling him in a ring of hazard. He was not safe here.

"By the way," Griffin interjected. "Felix is not going to come back. You can stop waiting for him."

Hansel's lips parted. What? Why wasn't Felix coming? What happened?

But then the screen went blank and Griffin was gone.

And a deathly silence fell.

Stifling like a catacomb.

Awful and maddening.

It lasted for a minute, before a man's rough voice yelled to the others. "Get him!"

And the silence was broken in the worst possible way.

People rushed at Hansel like a hurricane, ramming into him from every side. They were shouting, grabbing at his arms, his hair, his clothes, pushing and pulling. They were hitting him, slapping him on his face, begging, coaxing, screaming at him to kill himself. Hansel tried to fight back, to find an opening to break free, but he was hopelessly outnumbered. There was nothing he could do.

Even if he told them that he would do it, that he would kill himself, no one was going to hear him over this melee. From this hell, he had no escape.

The weight of the bodies made him topple. He fell on his back, the others falling on top of him in a sweaty, scuffling mass. He couldn't breathe and the lights from the floodlights were burning his retinas white. He was too weak to push the bodies off of him, too winded to utter a word in protest. He thought he would die right there, crushed under the pile of bodies.

"Get off of him you bastards," Felix's angry voice pierced through the clamour, startling them all, and even in his state of disorientation Hansel felt his soul lifting. Felix was back. He couldn't have misheard that voice, could he?

The weight on Hansel's body began lessening. By the time he wriggled his way out from under the last body and managed to pull him to a sitting posture he found out that the rest of them had been literally hurled away from him. Felix grabbed Hansel's hand and pulled him up, then looped his arm around Hansel's back protectively. Shadows arose from the ground where the two of them stood, curving up around them like the petals of a black flower, making a makeshift fence that encircled them. Felix's eyes flashed red when he snarled at the others. "If you touch him you will die."

The others halted; hesitating.

The dizziness had not passed. Hansel looked at Felix, half in relief because he was back, while the other half remained guarded, because even though he was back he was back late and Hansel could not shake the worry that Felix had lied about having a plan at all—that he had never had any intentions to save anyone else.

He wanted to ask Felix where he had gone. Why it had taken him so long to reappear. What did he do in the past two days?

"Hansel, are you alright?" asked Felix, holding onto him tightly. Hansel couldn't see his face very well, but he sounded apologetic. "I...I was late."

Hansel decided it wasn't Felix fault. He could have stopped this disaster from happening. If Hansel had made a different choice no one would have had to die.

It wasn't too late yet. He could still make it stop. Hansel wrapped his hand over Felix's, trying to unclasp it from around his wrist.

Felix looked at him in confusion.

"Which of them is Hansel Schwein?" demanded someone from the crowd.

"Isn't it the white-haired boy?"

"But the other one looks just like him."

"It doesn't matter. Catch them both."

Another surge of bodies. The shadows around Felix and Hansel spiralled out, and for a moment Hansel thought Felix was going to attack them. But Felix made a noise of annoyance and called the shadows off at the last second. He snapped his fingers and the blood dragonflies appeared, making a thin red corona around the two of them. They spread out and grazed the skins of anyone who tried to charge them, dropping them to the ground with agonised cries.

Felix tightened his hold around Hansel's wrist. He tried to run with him while the others were distracted. But then a great shadow appeared above them, blotting out the shafts of the floodlights. The shadow was in the air and it struck downwards with its many sharp appendages. The crowd screamed as blood was spilled. They started to scamper, but more shadows appeared out of nowhere.

The beams of the floodlights were out of control. They swung up and down, side to side, as if they were being manipulated by a drunkard at a DJ party. The dancing columns of lights revealed the mayhem unravelling below—the humans trying to flee and the shadows attacking them, cringing whenever one of the spotlights came their way. Hansel squinted to where the lights were stationed, only to find hordes of shadows attacking them like a murder of crows, rolling the lights this way and that, unable to put them out.

A group of women screamed and scattered as blades of shadows windmilled towards them. The shadow caught one of them, stabbing her through her heart.

"Help them!" Hansel screamed at Felix. He wrenched his wrist out of Felix's hand. "Stop running away!"

"I am trying to help."

Hansel turned and saw the mass of dragonflies attacking the shadows, shaped like red crescent moons. They scythed through the shadows one after another to no avail. Where one shadow fell, two took its place.

"It's useless," Hansel said in defeat.

"I can't save them all," Felix told him desperately.

"But you promised—"

"No," Felix cut him. "I was never going to be able to save all of them."

"Then do your best!" Hansel said, his panic rising. "Stop wasting your energy on me and help as many of them as you can."

The mob rushed towards them and Hansel found himself being ripped from Felix's side.

"Hansel!" Felix screamed.

The crowd was dragging him away. "Help the others!" Hansel screamed back. "I will be fine!"

Red and white lights lit up the area, slicing through the moving darkness like a demented light show. The small group of people who had caught Hansel was now manhandling him, punching him and pushing him around like before. Someone looped their arms through Hansel's armpits, pulling him against a hard chest. Hands closed over his neck, choking him.

A batch of blood dragonflies attacked Hansel's captors, forcing them to release him. Felix was suddenly there, picking Hansel from the floor before he could get caught in the stampede. But the moment he was on his feet Hansel darted between the bodies. He rushed behind a group of men and called for their attention.

"I'm Hansel Schwein," he said urgently. "I want to kill myself, but my brother won't let me." He pointed towards Felix who was forcing his way towards them. "That's him. Stop him at any cost."

The men moved like engines in synchrony. They pounced upon Felix and tackled him to the ground. Felix struggled beneath them, trying to shove them away, but the message seemed to be spreading, attracting more and more people towards Felix until he was trapped by the sheer volume of them. He shot out a dark ribbon like a grappling hook, catching Hansel. Hansel twisted his wrist violently and somehow, unbelievably, the ribbon snapped. He wheeled away.

Hansel felt a little guilty for abandoning Felix to fend for himself. But he was certain Felix was going to be fine.

The entire crossroads was in disarray. Hansel let his gaze sweep left and right, then he chose the path that was going westward and started running.

Soon the noise and the madness were behind him, and he found himself alone once more, running through the nighttime streets like he had done on so many occasions before. Only, back then he had run to feel alive, but this time he was running to end his life.

Street after street, block after block he ran, bloodthirsty shadows whooshing above him like airborne wendigos. The shadows, however, left him alone, either by Griffin's command or Felix's. Several minutes later Hansel arrived at the foot of the Spade Building, breathless and light-headed.

Spade Building was tall and unoccupied. It towered over Hansel like a haunted castle. He burst into its lobby, his shoes skidding over ancient dust. The lift was out of order, which forced him to take the stairs. By the time he dragged himself up all thirty floors his legs were wobbling with pain and exhaustion.

Cold air hit his face the moment he opened the door to the roof and staggered out into the open. From this height he could see a great distance in every direction. He could see the white and yellow squares of lights filtering out of windows, flashes of torchlight in the hands of the panicked city folk, the fiery red streaks of blitzing blood dragonflies. Lights blinking, burning, streaking, like stars and comets in a void.

His gaze slid sideways, to the far horizon where the city seemed to be ending. There was a colossal humanoid shadow there, standing as tall as a hundred storey building, so tall that its head nearly eclipsed the moon. Hansel's muscles clutched. The shadow was walking towards the city. If it kept advancing it was going to raze everything in its path.

He shouldn't let that thing come closer.

There was no time to waste.

Hansel raced towards the edge of the roof, preparing to hurl himself off the side. He almost made it there, but right when he was about to jump off something black whizzed at him through the air and slammed him backwards.

It was a shadow, cut like an enormous vulture, and riding on its back was Felix, his face like a blizzard, white and furious, and his eyes like burning strontium. The force of the collision sent the two boys and the shadow careening towards the rooftop. They tumbled and rolled, disoriented.

Hansel scrambled back to his feet and sprinted towards the drop once more, but Felix was faster. In the blink of an eye he had moved to block Hansel's path.

Hansel lurched to a halt to prevent another collision. His voice was calm. "Step out of the way."

"Are you insane?" Felix looked like he was about to have a seizure. "Move out of the way so you can stroll to your death?"

"Yes." Hansel's voice remained steady. "Let me do it."

Felix looked pained, lost. "Why?" There was a hitch in his voice. "After all this time why do you still think of dying?"

"Because that's the only way left for me."

"That's not true."

"The longer I stay alive the more the number of people who will die."

"Let them die then! I don't care how many of them die so long as you keep living. How selfish of you to die and leave me alone!"

"This," said Hansel, looking Felix right in his blood-red eyes. "This is what I don't understand about you. You seem to care nothing about humans, but for some reason you just won't let me be. You don't want me to get hurt, you don't want me to die. But why? Why? It's not like we knew each other before. I have done nothing for you. I am not a good person. I'm not the kind of person who anyone would want to save from anything. No matter how I look at it there is no reason for you to have come into my life or interfere with it. There is no reason for you to want to protect me. What am I to you really? A crazy boy you met one night? Someone you thought it would be lovely to mess with? How am I supposed to even trust you when I know nothing about you? I don't know what your intentions are or what you plan to do with me. You said you'd save the others, but they are all dying right before my eyes. At this point I'm not even sure if we are on the same side."

Felix listened to him to the end, hurt growing in his eyes with every word Hansel spoke. And even after Hansel stopped talking, he looked hesitant to speak. "I told you...it would be impossible to keep everyone alive. Not if I wanted you to live too. It's that the only way you can destroy a shadow is to cut it with blood dragonflies. I need blood to create blood dragonflies. Blood that has to come from a human. Some of them have to die for me to save the rest."

"And are you saving them? Can you guarantee that when this night gets over there will be anyone at all in the city who would still be alive?"

Felix swallowed. "I don't know. There are too many shadows. I will do everything I can—"

"It's okay," said Hansel. "I will do the rest."

He started to walk forward, headed for the roof edge, but once more Felix was there to stop him.

"Please," he begged, grabbing Hansel's shirt. "I told you I would deal with it."

Hansel tried to step past him.

Felix fell to his knees right in front of him. He braced one of his hands against one of Hansel's legs, as if to hold him in place. He kept his head bowed deep when he said again. "Please."

It stunned and horrified Hansel to see Felix kneeling before him, to hear him plead. Proud, regal Felix who would bend for no one was now bowing before him. This time Hansel truly was lost for words.

"I know you can't trust me. I...I..." Felix trailed, struggling for words himself. His grip on Hansel's leg tightened and he heaved in a great nervous breath. He lifted his chin and looked at Hansel, his face awash with moonlight and sadness, eyes gone back to bottomless black.

"I needed a friend," he said, holding Hansel's gaze. "I was lonely, being the king of the night. I had no friends. No one to keep me company. The shadows revered me as their king but they did not love me. The humans feared the night, they never stepped out. For years I felt so alone.

"But then you came to Heart City and you didn't fear the night like the rest of them. You walked out into its arms every night as if you were surrendering yourself. You let the shadows cut and slash bloody trails on your skin every night, and yet the next night you would still return. I thought you were foolish, an idiot who did not know what was best for him, and for a while I just watched you.

"But one night you started talking. You began talking to the night as if it were a friend. You did not speak much, just enough for me to make me curious about you. I learnt that you were not happy, that you were as lonely as me, perhaps lonelier. I began to understand your recklessness, your willingness to hurt yourself over and over again. But somehow, you being there, made me feel a little less lonely.

"I started liking you. I looked forward to seeing you. Every night I would wait for you, right outside your house, and when you came out, I'd follow you. I ordered the shadows not to touch you. If one of them ever hurt you I would stop your bleeding. I would then wish I could take away your pain too. The one in your heart, especially. I wished you wouldn't look so gloomy every day. That I would get to listen to you say happy thoughts. But we belonged to different worlds. There was nothing I could do for you."

Sweat glistened on Felix's face. Exertion lined every part of his body. Hansel looked over his head to the city below, where the dragonflies were still fighting while Felix talked.

He's pushing himself again, Hansel realised.

However, Felix was not done talking.

"After a while you stopped running out into the night recklessly. I was happy and sad at the same time; happy that you might be taking better care of yourself. Sad that I wouldn't be getting to see you. I hated myself for missing you so much, you, a mere human. I told myself to move on.

"But one night you ran out of your house again. I was so used to not seeing you I didn't sense your presence until your blood was spilled in the night. I came to you, only to find you standing on the edge of a building, wanting to kill yourself. Seeing you like that frightened me. I wanted to stop you. But how was I supposed to do that? You couldn't even see me. I sent a dragonfly out to you, thinking that perhaps seeing it would take away your harmful thoughts. But still you were determined to jump.

"I didn't want you to die. I didn't want you to die so badly I broke the rules of my kingdom to save you. I borrowed your shadow to take a human appearance, then I spoke to you for the first time. You were so surprised to see me that you fell, but I caught you. I felt so blissful that you could see me, that I could hear you talk to me. But I was not used to human interactions. All I did in the beginning was to treat you harshly. I am afraid I might have added to your pain.

"But I was glad, so glad that you were living and breathing. I loved sleeping inside your house. I loved your frowns and half-frowns. I loved having my existence acknowledged. You were always so stiff that in the beginning it made me want to tease you so much. But back then and now I never wished you any ill. Back then and now I do not want you to die. I want you to live Hansel, because you are my only friend. I gave up so much of my power, I gave up my right to rule; if you died on me too, I might have nothing left for myself."

By the time Felix was done speaking, both him and Hansel were equally breathless. What Felix had said hadn't sunken in for Hansel yet. He looked at him dazed, not knowing how to react to his confession.

"What a touching and heartfelt story," Griffin's silky voice said from somewhere close by. "My heart is moved."

"You," said Hansel, catching sight of him beyond the roof edge. For a moment Hansel thought Griffin was levitating—he seemed to be standing on air in the space between the buildings—but then he looked closely and saw the rope of shadow beneath Griffin's feet, stretching between two other buildings. Griffin's sense of balance was as impeccable as a bird's. He held himself in the middle of the rope with the ease of someone standing on solid ground.

"What a long night," drawled Griffin. "I was starting to think the mess down there was not interesting enough, only to come up here to find the King of the Night kneeling before human trash." Mockery mingled with his false lamentation, flowing into one another seamlessly. "Felix, oh, Felix, how you have fallen."

Felix shot to his feet with a snarl. He made a slashing motion at Griffin with his right hand. Blood dragonflies cut towards him, but they passed through his body harmlessly.

Griffin let out a noise of pity. "Those things are useless against me. You should know already."

"Damn you," Felix retorted.

"So, Hansel," said Griffin, completely ignoring Felix. "Aren't you going to jump? What are you waiting for?"

Hansel walked a few steps towards the edge of the roof. Felix reached out and grabbed his wrist in panic, but Hansel stopped when there was still a step left between him and the drop. He gazed at Griffin and said softly. "You are so much more terrible than me."

"Who are you calling terrible?" Griffin snapped back. "You see the slaughter down there? I know you think you can pin it on me. But it's all on you, Hansel."

"Don't listen to him," advised Felix, bringing up his hands to cover Hansel's ears. "You should never listen to what dubious dark creatures tell you. It won't end well."

Griffin scoffed at Felix. "As if you are not a dubious dark creature yourself." He glared at Hansel. "It's your fault Felix is this way too. You heard his story. He stepped out into your world to stop you from dying. Everything started going wrong when he left his kingdom. And it's all because of you. Felix shouldn't have saved you that night. You should have died that night. And yet here you are, living on shamelessly on undeserved time. The problem that started by you evading death can only be solved by you meeting death. So, jump, Hansel. Do it. It's the only way for you to set things right. You know you should have done it a long time ago."

Hansel's voice was as quiet as a whisper. He stared into the distant darkness and said to no one in particular. "I...I want to live."

He heard the sharp intake of Felix's breath at his side. Felix turned his face to him, eyes full of raw emotion. "Do you really mean that?"

Hansel bit his lips. "Yes."

Griffin looked at Hansel incredulously. "So are you going to let everyone else in the city die?"

Hansel closed a hand above the crook of his elbow, his fingernails digging into his flesh. "I don't want that." He looked at Felix helplessly. "I don't know what to do."

Felix met his gaze with new determination. "I won't let them die. I won't let you die either." His eyes glittered brilliantly. "I have a new plan."

Griffin narrowed his eyes. "A plan? At the eleventh hour? I suspect there is anything you can do now."

Felix gave him a look of wrath, but only for a moment. Then he smiled beatifically, his voice going smooth and flowery. "The villains always make a mistake at the eleventh hour, or haven't you heard?"

Griffin's gaze hardened.

"Aren't you going to swallow your pride and ask me what the plan is?"

"You are bluffing," said Griffin. "You have no plan. You are stalling for time."

"Why would I stall," asked Felix. "If I had no plan?"

He put out a hand to the moonlight, holding it above the gorge beyond the building. Darkness gathered above his palm, condensing into the shape of a knife. A shadow knife, blacker than midnight; so dark that it made the rest of the night seem faded like the back of a carbon paper.

"What's that knife for?" Griffin sounded suspicious.

"Why are you looking so anxious," said Felix, his smile ghoulish. He did not look distressed or powerless anymore. Instead, he looked like his old cunning self, dangerous, victorious, a trickster revealing a hidden card, a monster on a blood trail. "You said I had no plan."

Griffin's unease was evident in his tone. "Wh-what are you going to do with that knife?"

Felix smirked. "Nothing very concerning."

He tossed the knife into the air once, catching it as it came down. He played with the knife a bit more, spinning, teasing, and when he stopped, he was still smiling. He held the knife steady. Then, slowly, he turned it on himself. He paused for a moment, hesitating, staring at knife with a resolve tinged with regret.

Then, giving hardly a warning, he drove it straight into his heart.