Chișinău, Moldova – 03:04 AM
The city slept on. Cobblestone streets stood empty under flickering amber lights.
A man stepped out from a third-floor apartment—barehanded, no armor, no weapons.
He was a Black Pawn under Fireline. Codename: Dusk—a camouflage expert and signal disruptor. His job tonight had been to intercept Phoenix traffic across the Balkans.
But he already knew—tonight wasn't about gathering intel.
> He'd been found.
He didn't run.
He walked into the middle of a vacant intersection, letting the streetlights expose his face.
On his collar: the Fireline sigil—a burning mark.
> Fireline was never afraid to be hunted.
---
Across the street, on a rooftop—V-1 watched.
No wind. No sound.
His scope wasn't mounted to any weapon.
He used his own eyes—not due to lack of tech,
but because he preferred to feel his target… breathe.
> "White Knight, target confirmed.
Clearance to fire?"
No reply.
> V-1 didn't wait for orders.
He was the order.
---
03:07 AM – Contact Begins
Dusk stared straight at the rooftop.
> "I don't know your name.
But I know you're not here for Phoenix.
You're here for something else."
V-1 said nothing.
But this time—
> he descended.
Step by step. No urgency.
No cover.
No distance kill.
Two men stood facing one another on an empty road—
One, fire sealed in flesh.
The other, a blade sheathed in silence.
> Dusk: "You think you're a Knight?
No. You're the beast Phoenix keeps in a leash—just until they can't."
> V-1: "A beast doesn't need to know what it is.
It only needs to know—
who bleeds first."
And he moved.
---
03:09 AM – 13 Seconds of Combat
Dusk didn't defend.
He countered by instinct—using knives, glass shards, metal debris, anything that created space.
But V-1 didn't fight like a man.
He fought like a machine carrying old blood grudges.
Blood spilled—not much.
But enough.
> Enough for Phoenix to flinch.
---
Zurich – Simultaneously
Haruka stared at V-1's biometric feedback.
> "Heartbeat spike. Reflexes exceeding trained parameters.
Uncontrolled reaction detected."
A Phoenix handler asked:
> "Do we disconnect the neural leash?"
Haruka closed her eyes. Shook her head.
> "No.
Let him finish.
If we pull him back now—
he'll turn around.
And come for us."
03:09 AM – A wordless war, written only in blood.
Dusk spun his blade in circular patterns, trying to maintain space between him and the monster in white. But V-1 didn't stab—he pressed, maneuvered, folded space like he was slicing through the fragments of Dusk's memory.
Every strike was a memory erased.
Every advance, a piece of history severed.
V-1 didn't fight to win.
> He fought to wipe clean.
---
03:10 AM – Blood spilled. But not Dusk's.
> Click!
Dusk's knife landed clean—right into V-1's chest.
But there was no gasp. No recoil.
No fear. No pain.
V-1 grabbed Dusk's wrist—keeping the blade buried in his own flesh—and finally spoke:
> "Pain…
can be reprogrammed.
But the memory of the first pain—
never leaves."
Then he pulled the knife out.
Handed it back.
> "Take it.
I don't need your weapon."
Dusk was breathing hard.
This wasn't a soldier.
This was a resurrected relic from a war project that never should've restarted.
---
03:11 AM – The first gunshot echoed.
It wasn't from Phoenix.
It wasn't from Fireline.
A sniper, hidden, fired once—targeting V-1.
The bullet landed just millimeters from his temple—lethal to most. But V-1 simply tilted his head and looked toward the shot's origin.
> "Third party."
---
London – 03:11 AM
Echo stood beside Hermes, monitoring the battlefield remotely.
> "Moldova. Unidentified fireteam just entered.
Not Phoenix. Not ours."
Hermes narrowed his eyes.
> "Black Rip?"
Echo gave a slow nod.
> "Or worse…
one of the Free Pieces Rip released from the Outer Ring."
Hermes stepped closer to the board.
The icon for the White Knight flickered—no longer a hunter.
> Now bait.
For something else watching the game.
---
Chișinău – 03:12 AM
Dusk had vanished into the alleyways, bleeding.
V-1 didn't chase.
He was staring upward—toward the rooftop where the sniper had disappeared.
> This was no longer a hunt between two sides.
> This was a game of three… maybe more.
Lviv, Ukraine – 04:23 AM
Inside an abandoned warehouse where no streetlights reached, the sniper who fired at V-1 disassembled her SR-93 rifle—each part packed into weathered leather boxes.
No insignia.
No backup gear.
No codename in use.
Only a faint scar on her left shoulder—a shattered pawn emblem, etched beside the tag: R-0.
---
Her file inside Black Rip's archive read:
> "Null Piece – No allegiance. No response. No protocol.
Hire price: Non-negotiable.
Directive: Balance the game through chaos."
Her former name was Velvet Sin—a top-tier sniper from Phoenix, purged after the "Tokyo Clearance Incident."
Everyone assumed she was dead.
No one knew Rip kept her inside the "Outer Ring."
And now—no one knows why she's hunting V-1.
---
Zurich – Phoenix HQ
Haruka replayed the footage—the single bullet missing V-1's temple by mere centimeters.
> "Not our signal.
Not a rapid-response squad.
Whoever it was… knew exactly how V-1 would react."
One analyst asked:
> "Can we trace it?"
> "No. Bullet's alloy is untraceable.
The trajectory...
It's Null Piece work."
Silence.
Because everyone in Phoenix knew—
> even Black Rip doesn't like to speak of Null Pieces.
---
London – Hermes & Echo
> Echo: "Velvet Sin. Former Knight under Phoenix. Purged.
Rip kept her as a backup blade… buried in the dark."
Hermes murmured:
> "So now we have three factions on the board…
and one rogue knight who serves no one."
> "Shall I track her?"
Hermes shook his head.
> "No.
She's not hunting V-1 for money.
She's doing it for memory.
Let them tear each other apart.
We'll reclaim the board—once the blood dries."
---
Chișinău – 04:31 AM
V-1 stood alone at the same intersection.
Blood still streamed from his wound, but he didn't bind it.
Instead, he muttered a phrase—like a system-wide reboot command:
> "Target realignment.
Priority override:
Not Dusk.
Not Fireline.
…Velvet Sin."
A White Knight had been unleashed.
A rogue Knight had fired.
And Fireline remained silent—but their silence would soon become a storm.
Lisbon – 04:52 AM
Inside a soundproof room beneath her private estate, Black Harrow sat before a blank, unmarked screen.
Only a single line of code appeared:
> blackrip:secure.node.established
She said nothing.
She placed one object onto the table—a broken Black Rook, cracked clean through the center.
The back of the piece held an erased name.
> This was not a normal negotiation.
It was a non-encrypted exchange protocol—reserved for those who knew how to interpret silence.
---
The screen responded after 41 seconds.
> cassian.durell/active:
"A broken piece is not meant to reenter the game."
Black Harrow typed three characters:
> V-S.
This time, the screen paused for two full minutes before responding.
> "She is not mine. She chooses her own moments to appear."
> "I only keep what others throw away. If it still functions—then it belongs to all sides."
Harrow closed her eyes.
That was the voice of Black Rip's Black King, Cassian Durell—a man who issues no commands, passes no judgment, and only lets the world bleed into controlled chaos.
---
She typed again:
> "I need a balancing unit—one without ownership."
> "I need a piece that doesn't know who it serves."
The response was simple:
> "Send coordinates."
Harrow entered a string pointing to the Turkey–Greece border.
No explanation.
Just location.
---
Five minutes later, the final response appeared:
> "A Knight has left the Outer Ring."
"Balance will have no fixed form."
"Let the blood find its own path."
---
Black Harrow stood, taking nothing but the broken Rook.
She placed it into a velvet box—the one where unnamed pieces were kept.
> "If Hermes is rebuilding a chessboard…"
"…then I'll flood it with pieces that can't be ruled by laws."
---
Meanwhile – Somewhere Between Izmir and Thessaloniki
A man in a porcelain mask stepped off a cargo train.
No known name.
No voice.
No identifiable DNA.
In his hand: a Black Knight that had never been listed in Phoenix, Blood Chess, or even Black Rip's open directories.
> A piece that was never registered.
Which meant—
it could never be removed from the game.
Across the board, three truths emerged.
The White Knight was no longer loyal.
The Null Piece had fired without permission.
And a new player—unregistered, unnamed, unclaimed—had stepped onto the field.
Each one, a ripple.
Together, a storm.
---
In Zurich, Phoenix's internal systems flashed yellow—threat level elevated, anomaly confirmed.
But they had no name to input. No code to blacklist.
Only the flicker of a heat signature that didn't match any file ever created.
> "Ghost piece," someone whispered.
---
In London, Echo stared at the satellite feed.
One dot.
No call sign.
Moving west, toward Berlin.
> "He's not on the board," Echo muttered.
> Hermes, behind him:
"No.
He's under it."
---
In Lisbon, Black Harrow closed the terminal.
> "We wanted to draw blood quietly," she said.
"But someone changed the color of the board."
She turned to the velvet box where her broken pieces were kept.
> "Let's see how long they can keep playing…
when the rules no longer exist."
---
And somewhere in the dark, under no flag, under no faction—
A man with no voice,
holding a Black Knight never born in any system,
walked across the night-soaked land between states,
with only one goal:
> "Erase everything that remembers the old game."