Chapter 45: Chapter-45

The bath itself was more like a small lake than a tub, easily surpassing a community swimming pool in size. Smooth marble tile lined the floor and walls. Steam rose in lazy curls from the heated water, filling the vaulted ceiling with mist. Ornate oil lamps cast wavering golden light across the surface.

Heena reclined against the pool’s edge, dark hair unbound and floating around her like ink in water. Her eyes were closed, one arm draped over the rim, fingers loosely holding a crystal wine glass. She looked utterly, perfectly relaxed.

System 427 materialized beside her, wings flapping frantically. “Why—why are you so ’calm’?! Just think about it! What if they really ’kill’ you? What if this is a bad decision?!”

Heena didn’t even open her eyes. “Enough,” she said lazily, taking a slow sip of wine. “If you disturb me one more time, I’ll kill you before the assassins even arrive.”

The system’s ears flattened. “But—”

One of Heena’s eyes cracked open. Cold. Sharp. Absolutely serious.

System 427’s mouth snapped shut.

His worry wasn’t unfounded. There was one iron-clad rule every host learned on day one. One thing that made these missions truly dangerous.

If a host died while inhabiting a world—if they were killed by another character, caught in a plot collapse, poisoned, stabbed, ’anything’—they died ’for real’.

No respawn. No second chance. No “return to your original world and try again.” Just… gone. Soul scattered. Existence erased.

The Bureau kept records: hundreds of hosts lost to villainous schemes, malicious heroines, yandere male leads, collapsing plot threads. Once you died in the mission world, you were finished. The system would have to find a new host and start over.

’That’ was why System 427 was so frantic. His previous hosts—the ones before Heena—had all died. Horribly. He’d watched them fall, one after another, unable to save them.

And now Heena was lying in a bath, alone, ’waiting’ for elite assassins to come kill her.

Heena lifted one finger to her lips—a silent command. System 427 froze mid-breath.

Then they came.

Five figures exploded from the mist in perfect synchronization, blades singing through steam. Their speed was *inhuman*—even System 427’s tracking barely caught the motion blur. Three converged on Heena from different angles, swords aimed for throat, heart, spine.

Heena moved.

In one fluid motion, she grabbed the wine glass and *hurled* its contents directly into the nearest assassin’s face. The liquid splashed across the black cloth mask—

—and the fabric *sizzled*. Smoke curled up as the assassin stumbled back with a muffled scream, clawing at their face. The “wine” ate through the mask like acid, revealing blistered skin beneath.

The other two assassins hesitated for half a heartbeat.

That was all Heena needed.

She surged upward from the water, droplets scattering like diamonds in the lamplight. Her body was completely bare—no armor, no fabric, just pale skin gleaming wet and vulnerable in the golden glow. But there was *nothing* vulnerable about the way she moved.

Her left hand snapped to the pool’s edge where it had rested all evening. Her fingers closed around something hidden beneath the waterline, obscured by steam and shadow.

A sword. A full-length imperial blade, its hilt wrapped in waterproof silk.

She’d been holding it the entire time.

Heena pulled the weapon free in one smooth arc, water cascading off the steel. She stood ankle-deep in the bath, hair plastered to her shoulders and back, eyes alight with savage glee.

“Made me wait quite a while, didn’t you?” she said, voice carrying over the hiss of steam.

The assassins froze, shock rippling through their formation. They exchanged rapid hand signals—*how did she know? abort? proceed?*—but training overrode hesitation.

The leader signaled: *kill her*.

They struck as one.

The first assassin came low, blade sweeping for her legs. Heena leapt—actually *leapt*—from the water, feet finding purchase on the pool’s marble rim. The blade passed harmlessly beneath her as she spun mid-air, her own sword descending in a vicious overhead slash.

*Clang!* Steel met steel. The assassin blocked, but barely, forced to one knee by the impact.

The second attacker lunged from her blind side, dagger aimed for her exposed ribs. Heena twisted, impossibly fast, her wet hair whipping around like a black curtain. The dagger skimmed past her skin—so close she felt the cold kiss of the blade—and she countered with a brutal elbow strike to the assassin’s throat.

The figure choked, stumbling back.

No time to recover. The third and fourth assassins attacked in tandem, coordinated strikes from opposite directions designed to pin her between killing blows.

Heena dropped low, letting their blades cross above her head with a metallic *screech*. Then she *exploded* upward, driving her sword pommel into the third assassin’s jaw with bone-cracking force. Teeth shattered. Blood sprayed.

The fourth assassin recovered faster, slashing horizontally at her midsection. Heena arched backward, spine bending like a bow, the blade passing a hair’s breadth from her stomach. Her wet skin caught the lamplight, water droplets glittering as they fell.

She snapped back upright and drove her knee into the assassin’s solar plexus. The figure doubled over, gasping.

Five on one. All elite killers. And Heena was *naked*, *unarmed* except for a single sword, fighting on wet marble with steam obscuring half her vision.

She was *smiling*.

The fifth assassin—the leader—finally moved. Faster than the others, blade coated in something dark and viscous. Poison. A single cut would be lethal.

Heena saw it coming. Couldn’t dodge in time.

So she didn’t dodge.

She stepped *into* the strike, closing distance so fast the leader’s eyes widened behind the mask. The poisoned blade skimmed her shoulder—drawing a thin line of blood—but she was already inside the assassin’s guard.

Her sword drove forward, angled upward beneath the ribs.

The leader gasped, body going rigid. Heena’s face was inches away, water still dripping from her hair onto the assassin’s mask.

“Wrong target,” she whispered.

She twisted the blade and *yanked* it free. The leader collapsed, blood pooling on the white marble.

The remaining four assassins regrouped, forming a defensive circle. One of them reached for their molar—the suicide capsule—

“Ah-ah,” Heena chided, flicking blood off her sword. “None of that.”

She moved again. A blur of wet skin and flashing steel.

The first assassin tried to block. Heena’s blade shattered their guard and opened their throat in one stroke. They crumpled, clutching the wound uselessly.

The second lunged desperately. Heena sidestepped, caught their wrist, *twisted*—the bone snapped audibly—and drove her elbow into the back of their skull. They hit the floor and didn’t get up.

Two left.

They tried to flee.

Heena was faster.

She caught the first with a thrown dagger—pulled from gods-knew-where—that buried itself in their calf. They fell hard, skidding across the wet marble.

The last assassin made it three steps before Heena tackled them from behind, dragging them down into the shallow water at the pool’s edge. They thrashed, tried to reach the poison capsule—

Heena grabbed their jaw, fingers digging in with inhuman strength, forcing the mouth closed.

“Not today,” she hissed.

She struck a precise nerve cluster at the base of the skull. The assassin went limp, unconscious but alive.

Silence fell.

Five Crimson Veil operatives. Four dead or dying. One captured.

Heena stood slowly, chest heaving, blood—some hers, most not—mixing with the water streaming down her body. Her sword dripped red onto the white stone. Steam curled around her like a shroud.

System 427 stared, jaw hanging open. “You… you just…”

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