Reckoning Ciphers and Control

The night never offered real rest in Nocturne. Lucien Blackmoore moved through its grime as if soaked into it, stitched into its threadbare fabric. His coat stuck damp and heavy across his shoulders, rain still dripping from the collar. Last night's downpour hadn't washed away anything—not the streets, not the ghosts crawling beneath his boots, and certainly not him.

Holosigns flickered over busted doorways and collapsed vendor stalls. They blinked half alive, clinging to life by sheer stubbornness. Lucien's Ledger pulsed steady against his ribs. Not a quick flutter, not a panic—it beat with the calm of something that already knew the night's sums: what would be traded, stolen, and what would quietly bleed out before dawn.

LEDGER ACTIVE: Collection Due — Tarek Murn, 3 cycles overdue. Contract Violation Logged — Kivra Ashen: Risk to non-signed civilians. Query flagged: "Your boons burn innocents."

Lucien blinked once. The last line throbbed softly in the corner of his vision. A warning. Or a reckoning waiting to happen.

His stride slowed. His boots caught in oily puddles shimmering with sickly light. He paused at a melted gutter and leaned against the collapsed stairwell's edge, fingers dragging down his face like he could wipe the weight away. Somewhere back in the last district, a soul-marker flared sharp and wrong. Civilian. Wrong place, wrong fallout. The cost of his hustle.

"Innocents paid for my win," he muttered low, bitter as the cold wind threading through the scaffolds above. "Ledger doesn't forget."

The pulse answered once more, quieter this time.

"But you press on."

Lucien ducked down a side street off Marrow Avenue, where the Obsidian Veil parked muscle like broken statues gripping rifles. Two bruisers blocked his path—broad shoulders wrapped in patchy armor, cybernetic mods humming faint beneath cracked plating. They looked built for show more than fight—muscles and blank stares, probably clueless whether a dataport was a door handle or a deathtrap.

Lucien didn't slow. One hand hovered near his belt, fingers twitching, the other flicked open a battered brass lighter. The flame danced for a second, sputtered, and died. He shook it once. An old habit, useless distraction but enough.

"Cal, my man," he muttered, eyes flicking to a busted utility door hanging half open at the alley's far end. "These two are a pain. You're the ace. Crack those codes, drinks on me."

Inside, tangled cables and flickering holo-junk lay like discarded bones. Cal crouched over a console, fingers moving so fast they blurred. Sweat glimmered on his temple beneath his visor's glow. His face was taut with nervous energy and adrenaline.

"You think I'm some miracle worker on a street corner, Blackmoore?" Cal shot back without looking up. "Their drone signals are double-encoded. I'm hacking through a firewall that bites back."

Lucien smirked, sliding silently behind him. "You always loved a challenge."

LEDGER TASK LOG – Active

Infiltration: Nocturne Sector 12 — Scan cipher signature. Contact: Cal Virel — Informant active. Drone Sweep: Predicted reactivation window — 11 minutes.

Outside, a goon kicked a crate hard. Wood cracked and splintered sharp as broken bone snapping through silence. Lucien crouched beside Cal, eyes flicking to the alley's mouth. His breath came short, shallow.

"Cal?" he whispered, low and tense.

"Almost there. Two drones down. One more sniffing around."

Lucien pulled a worn strip of soul parchment from his coat pocket, fingertips brushing frayed edges. Mostly useless now but it grounded him—old debts, old power. The Ledger throbbed louder.

A red beam of drone light flashed past the door crack, then paused.

Cal cursed low, slamming a final command. The drone blinked once, then died. All three went silent in two heartbeats.

Cal slumped back, exhaling hard. "System reset. Deaf and blind for ten minutes."

Lucien patted him on the shoulder. "Beautiful. Drinks on me once we're not getting shot."

He stepped out.

The Veil goons twitched like they'd just realized backup went dark. One reached for his comm. Lucien moved fast. A silver coin spun between his fingers, charm whispered low and binding.

The comm sparked and fizzled, shorting in the guy's hand.

The other lunged but was too slow.

Lucien slipped past them, spinning through a puddle, boots slapping wet stone as he vanished down another alley.

"Another cipher?" he called without turning. "This guy's got no class."

A sharp laugh broke from his throat as he ducked beneath a half-collapsed awning where a vendor strung glitch-charms like dead fireflies on copper wire. The woman behind the stall was wiry, veins dark as roots inked along her arms, metal teeth jagged in her mouth. She shot him a glare but stayed silent. Lucien nodded. She rolled her eyes and spat to the side.

Fog leaked from a ruptured vent and curled around the corner. Lucien spotted it—a scorch mark burned into a vending crate. Twisted lines spiraled so your eyes ached staring too long. The smell was faint but sharp—singed leather and ash. A cipher burned in half faded. Cassian's signature, no doubt.

Lucien crouched, frowning. Fingers hovered hesitantly over the mark. The edges were ragged, like the magic had fought back before dying.

Cal caught up, breathing fast. "That his?"

Lucien nodded. "Either him or one of his puppets."

Cal squatted, pulling a micro-lens to scan. "Half the glyphs are glitching. Whoever left this didn't plan to stick around."

Lucien stood, jaw tight. "No finesse, no subtlety. Just brute force and bad habits. Cassian's fingerprints all over it."

LEDGER THREAT ANALYSIS – ACTIVE

Cipher Type: Chaos-Burn Signature. Glyph Pattern: Disruptive entropy with corrupted root sigil. Ledger Annotation: "He hunts me."

The words etched across his vision settled cold in his gut. This wasn't just a tag. It was a message. Maybe a mirror. And not meant for drones.

From behind a rusted screen, a voice broke. "You break something?" A kid maybe fifteen stepped from crates, dirt streaked across his face but his eyes sharp.

"Just found a note," Lucien said, smile thin and sharp. "Terrible handwriting."

The kid squinted at the mark, nose wrinkling. "Smells like burnt wires."

"Yeah," Lucien agreed. "That's the smell of someone trying way too hard."

The kid melted back into shadows.

Lucien glanced at Cal. "We better get out before the Veil circles back."

They zigzagged through blackout alleys and broken code corridors. Cal pointed out blind spots; Lucien added a few—holes where Watcher drones never flew, gaps even AetherCorp's eyes missed.

They passed a stall where a woman sold charm-thread bracelets woven from old tech cords and fragments of soul residue. Lucien stopped.

"Help me lock down a route?" he asked.

She gave a hard look. "Got coin?"

Lucien pulled out a faint blue soul fragment, warm in his palm. She nodded, passing a map burnt onto barkskin, treated to resist ash.

"Avoid the third stair off Grail Street. Drone nests there."

Lucien slipped her an extra cred.

At last, they slipped into The Tin Ember's back door, a dive for fringe hackers and washed-up enforcers. The air inside hung thick with smoke and louder lies. Lucien dropped onto a cracked leather stool and flagged two drinks. The stiffer one went to Cal.

"To code and chaos," Lucien toasted.

Cal raised his glass. "And to not dying."

They drank deep. The burn was a welcome distraction.

Nearby, a jittery informant was halfway through a bottle of red gin. Lucien leaned close.

"What's the buzz?"

The man blinked, eyes glassy, voice rough like a broken radio. "Cassian's tokens showing up at dockyards. Drones dropping without a trace. Word is he's got something big… something stitched between realms. They call him the faceless broker."

Lucien's eyes narrowed. "Branding himself now?"

The informant just nodded, eyes unfocused.

Later, when the bar had faded to a dull hum and Cal had slipped out through a safer exit, Lucien stepped back into the alley. The night smelled fresher—cleaner—but it was a lie. The stink of burned sigils and creeping war clung to cracked walls like mildew.

He pulled the cipher-marked token from his coat and rolled it between his fingers.

Cassian was clawing at the edges of the game board, breaking rules he didn't understand. Or maybe he did and just didn't care.

Lucien stared at the skyline—jagged towers slicing the night like broken glass—and smiled without warmth.

LEDGER UPDATE:

Soul contracts updated: 3 activeActive collection routes: 2Warning: "You're bound to me."

Lucien exhaled sharply. Muttered almost a confession, almost a curse.

"Hustle's breaking me."

But he didn't stop. Couldn't.

He flipped the token, tucked it away, and moved toward the next rendezvous. Nocturne still bled, and someone had to make the cuts count.