A little more than six months ago...

The tinted glass bottle stood on the table, small, fragile, and almost unnoticeable. To Brendan, however, its presence was overwhelming—as if it was screaming at him, slapping him in the face, scolding him for all the mistakes he had ever made in his life. He pinched his nose and let out a slow sigh.

"Why on Earth would you do something like that, Lyn?" he asked, picking up the bottle of truth serum.

This cursed concoction had not been easy to obtain, and he had pulled so many strings to get his hands on it. It certainly served its purpose, but still, it backfired on him.

Just like everything else in his life.

He lifted his head to look at the auburn-haired woman, who had been silent ever since her confession. The usual proud lift of the chin had withered away, while the spark in her eyes was replaced by a lifeless void. As the enforcers cuffed her hands and bound her ankle with a magic suppressor, she put up zero resistance, her gaze glued to the ground.

"Do you have a lawyer you can contact?"

Again, Lyn did not reply.

"Lyn, letting an admitted blood magic user go is not something you can get away with easily," Brendan cautioned. "You need a good lawyer. I can help you get in touch with some if you need me to."

Lyn shook her head. "The rest of my team won't be affected, right?" she whispered. "They have nothing to do with this."

Brendan stared at her incredulously. She had dodged his questions and ignored his offers to help, only to ask about her other team members. Not to mention, she was in this unfortunate situation because she would rather break the law than turn in her wanted team member.

He sighed. This woman was just as insane and foolish as that person. "Of course not. If they have no part to play in this, nothing will happen to them."

Lyn nodded, relief washed over her face.

Brendan leaned against his table and watched as Lyn was ushered out of the room. Her head hung low as if the world had collapsed on her, but her back remained straight. Her eyes seeped with anguish as if her heart had been yanked out of her chest and torn into shreds, but her expression remained stoic and unreadable.

She reminded him too much of that person. Way too much.

He closed his eyes. "Rin."

"Yes, Mr. Oakley?"

"Inform the partners. We have a confirmed case of a blood magic user: Cydney Yen. Put her in our priority search list."

♞♗♞♗♞

Present...

Brendan took a sip of the coffee as he read the headlines in the newspaper: "Mystic Dragon Sapphire: Fifth Treasure to Go Missing This Month!" The bitter coffee lingered in his mouth before he pushed it down his throat. He could already imagine all the angry messages and heated meetings he was going to have about this. First the missing blood magic user, and now a barrage of high-profile thefts—his department could not catch a break.

"Mr. Oakley?"

He tore his eyes away from the newspaper. His assistant, Rin, had poked her head into the break room. She was holding a manila folder that was as brown as the hair bun on her head.

"S- Sorry, Mr. Oakley, I didn't mean to intrude on your break, but- but just a reminder, you have a briefing with the questers in fifteen minutes, in- in conference room C."

Brendan gave her an encouraging smile. "Thank you, Rin," he said as he took the folder. "Who are the teams on this commission again?"

"We have a team from each of the Big Three, and we also have two additional teams that are recommended by them. Disciples recommended Free Wielders, a young guild that consists of enhancer mages, so we have a team from them. The other team is an independent team that is recommended by both Dawn Avengers and Blue Cross."

"Recommended by both Dawn Avengers and Blue Cross?" Brendan raised his eyebrows. "What team is that?"

Rin shuffled her feet uncomfortably. "You actually know them, Mr. Oakley. It's- It's the lightning mage's team."

"Ah, Lyn Bronte's team?" Brendan's voice faltered a little. "I see, so her suspension is over."

"Very recently. I'm sorry, Mr. Oakley, at- at first, I didn't think it was a good idea to rope her in this soon, seeing how the last commission with her went, but... I can't say no to two big guilds."

"I understand, Rin, and don't worry about it, you made the right decision. Her team will be a good addition to this quest. Thank you for organizing this."

A smile of relief overtook Rin's nervous face. She stuttered out a string of appreciation before scampering out of the break room.

Brendan turned his attention to the folder. As he scanned through the pages, Lyn's cold expression and hardened posture burned into his mind.

"The rest of my team won't be affected, right? They have nothing to do with this."

Her friends. That was all she had cared about, even though she was the one who was receiving the brunt of everything. Why were some people so reckless with their own lives? That was something that Brendan could never comprehend.

He downed the rest of his coffee in one giant gulp and walked out the break room. The hallway was as busy as usual, with employees bustling around the corridor, clutching thick folders of documents. Miraculously, he avoided clashing with anybody as he made his way to the conference room.

Inside the modest room, Rin stood quietly in the corner, while the five team leaders sat around the wooden table, chatting among themselves. Their casual small talk came to an abrupt halt when Brendan entered.

"Good afternoon everyone, thank you for coming at such short notice." He dropped the folder on the table and looked around. The Big Three had sent people he was familiar with: Emily Enric from Dawn Avengers, Carina Tutti from Blue Cross of Clerics, and Jung-Soo Park from Disciples of Destiny. He gave each of them a nod before he faced the auburn-haired woman sitting next to Emily.

"Welcome back, Lyn, good to see you."

Lyn flashed him a giant grin. "Good to be back."

She appeared to be back to her confident, upbeat self, but behind her twinkling, emerald eyes, Brendan could still see remnants of weariness.

"Glad to have you back," he said.

He greeted the last person at the table, who was Ed Alm, the representative for the Free Wielders' team, before plunging into the real issue at hand.

"Alright, let's go straight to business. This is going to be a rather unusual commission, so bear with me. Our target is the Witches, which some of you are familiar with since they are a group we've been watching and trying to capture for a while now." He cast a pointed glance towards Carina and Lyn, who had been involved in the previous joint commission for the Witches. Their brows furrowed as they nodded solemnly.

"But this time, our priority has shifted. We still want to capture them, yes, but our focus is now narrowed. I'll explain more in a bit."

With a wave of his hand, an image was projected on the wall behind him. It showed a close-up view of a middle-aged woman, with thick, platinum blonde hair braided into a flower crown around her head. Her eyes were as grey as the rain clouds, while her lips were upturned ever so slightly, in a friendly yet mischievous way.

"Just for a quick background, this is Sybil Dalman, the leader of the Witches, and the most powerful subjugator known throughout history. We've known about her for decades, but as her magic improves and her little gang grows over time, it's been harder and harder to nab her. We've also known about the existence of an illusionist within the Witches, but other than that, we don't know much about them or their goals."

Brendan flicked his hand, and Sybil's portrait changed to a fuzzy image of seven people. "In our last attempt to capture the Witches, we've learned some crucial pieces of information. We now know that there are a total of seven people in the Witches. Among them are a necromancer, a potential soothsayer, a fighter, and a healer who does metamorphism: a type of magic that can change how one looks.

"Ever since that commission, we've been focusing on developing an antidote against Sybil's subjugation. Without her magic, the Witches seemed to only have the fighter, the illusionist, and the necromancer as their defenses, which is manageable for us to defeat. However, about five months ago, they started doing something... unexpected."

Brendan held up the newspaper that he was reading. "I'm sure all of you have been hearing about the recent high-profile thefts of treasures. Gemstones, unicorn horns, rare items, world wonders, and national treasures; in the news, they are all being reported as going missing. But the truth is, we know what happened to them." He threw the newspaper down on the table and let out a tired breath from his nose. "They are stolen, and the culprit is this person."

The image on the wall shifted again, revealing a masked woman. An oversized hooded cape draped over her, hugging her small stature. Peeking out of the black hood was a bed of straggly, auburn hair that looked just like Lyn's. But, most strikingly, her eyes—the only facial feature not hidden by her veil—was the color of blood. With her bright red irises paired with her dark red hair, she resembled a demon drenched in human blood.

The air inside the conference room became eerily tense. Brendan could practically feel the shivers from everyone in the room, as he muttered with a low voice, "We call her the Crimson Witch."