[center][h1][color=firebrick]Liana Vestra[/color][/h1][/center]

[color=lightgray]

The smoke curled across the floor as Liana’s boots struck tile, her body blinking into existence with the sound of air swallowing itself. She landed off-center, weight faltering on her leg, and stumbled a step before catching herself against the nearest wall. Her hand braced flat against the cold wood, breath shallow, every pulse of her thigh a drumbeat of poison spreading.

The pain lit fire through her limbs, but she didn't care. Why would she? 

A sharp breath hissed through her teeth as she straightened. Her wound throbbed with each heartbeat, but there was something stronger crawling through her than pain. Her eyes flicked to the satchel clenched in her other hand, the blood-slick leather warm beneath her fingers. She had fucking won. 

She laughed... She couldn’t help herself. After everything. After failures and fragments and all of the blood and the corpses that had been left in her wake… she had it.

She set the bag down on the table, movements careful, measured, reverent. She stared at it like a holy thing, letting the moment linger. Her fingers unfastened the strap with aching slowness, savoring every breath.

Inside was her destiny. 

She opened it with more anticipation than she had ever felt…And suddenly, she stopped breathing.

There, nestled in the center of the bag, sitting like the punchline to some cruel joke, was a single metal can. She stared. The color drained from her face as she reached inside with steady fingers, as if somehow the act of touching it would change its reality.

She lifted it, turned it over so her eyes could see the truth.

Beans.

It was a can of wretched, useless, cruel, disastrous, devastating, evil…fucking… [b]BEANS[/b]. 

Her eye twitched. She didn’t move for a long time. The only sound was her breathing, short and tight through her nose. Then came the softest exhale, the faintest narrowing of her gaze, the slow coiling of every muscle in her body.

Her grip tightened around the can until her knuckles cracked.

She said nothing.

Then suddenly, the bag exploded across the room, hurled with a snarl that split the silence like a blade. The can clattered from her palm and bounced off the metal floor with a clunk that echoed too long, too loud. It spun once, rolled, and settled. It didn’t even bust open.

Her jaw clenched.

The veins in her leg pulsed again, harder this time, like a tide turning inside her. Her hand trembled as it went to her ribs, pressing against the place that serpent bitch had struck, where the poison still flowed.

Her body was failing her, and fast. 

She wanted nothing more than to go back in that room and peel them apart with her bare hands, but it was too late, and despite all the rage she knew there was only one way to make it out alive.

She reached into her cloak with shaking fingers and pulled free a smooth black stone etched with arcane runes. She held it close, her voice low and precise as she whispered into it.

[color=firebrick]“I am initiating a full and immediate retreat.”[/color]

There was a pause, the air around her hung thick with rage.

[color=firebrick]“I repeat...We are to withdraw immediately. Rendezvous at designation nine.”[/color]

She lowered the stone. Her hand hovered there for a moment, shaking. Then she turned her eyes to the doorway.

Everything in her screamed to stay, but the toxin whispered a different truth.

She touched the small sigil burned beneath her collarbone, tracing it with two fingers. The rune flared faintly and her breath steadied. Her expression hardened as she took one last look at the bag. One last look at the scattered remains of her victory.

If vengeance had a face, it was hers in that moment.

And then, without another word, she vanished into smoke.

[i]The Devil had been deceived.[/i] [/color]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/uHRtcun.png[/img]

[hider=!!!!SPOILERS!!!!][img]https://i.imgur.com/MdJu7Yb.png[/img][/hider]