The silence after his declaration hung thick in the air.
The masked men of the Guild stared, frozen between fear and calculation.
Power games were their domain.
But they were not used to being challenged so directly — and certainly not by someone they had not chosen.
The Count of Veyron tapped his cane once against the marble floor.
The sound echoed through the chamber like a pistol crack.
"Remove him," one of the masked men ordered, voice trembling under his mask of ivory.
Two enforcers stepped forward — hulking figures in tailored suits, moving like wolves in tight corridors.
Veyron smiled faintly.
With a casual motion, he shifted his grip on the cane —
and pressed a hidden catch near the guard with his thumb.
Click.
The cane's head popped loose with a mechanical hiss, revealing an inch of gleaming black steel beneath.
In a single, fluid movement, Veyron drew the sword free — a snake striking from concealment — the heated blade humming with electricity.
Blue arcs danced along the metal's edge, casting sickly shadows across the marble.
The first enforcer lunged — fast, trained, brutal.
But Veyron sidestepped, elegant and precise, and rammed the electrified blade straight through the man's thigh.
There was a burst of steam, a searing scream, and the enforcer dropped, twitching violently as the current locked his muscles in a brutal seizure.
Before the second could react, Veyron twisted the hilt, sending a stronger surge through the steel,
then yanked the blade free with a wet crack.
He pivoted — coat flaring — and slashed upward across the second man's ribs.
The shock left the second enforcer staggering backward, limbs jerking, mouth frothing.
He collapsed heavily onto the marble floor, the stink of burned flesh filling the room.
The Guild's inner circle recoiled in horror.
No magic.
No ceremony.
Just brutal, elegant violence.
Veyron wiped the blade clean with a silk cloth — slow, deliberate — then sheathed it back into the cane with a metallic snap.
He approached the central clockwork map without a word, electricity still faintly buzzing inside the shaft of the weapon.
"Your puppets fall too easily," he said, voice low and calm, as if he hadn't just carved through living men.
"Sit," a senior Guildmaster rasped, gesturing to an empty seat.
Veyron did not sit.
He leaned lightly on his cane — head cocked, eyes glinting with merciless amusement — and smiled the way a predator smiles at prey.
Later That Night
The broken cane had served him well, but he wanted perfection.
London's black arteries led him to Old Harrow's forge, where metal still obeyed the will of true men.
Old Harrow reforged the weapon — damascus steel tempered anew, the electric coil inside refined.
Now, when Veyron pressed the hidden button:
The blade superheated instantly, capable of melting through flesh and even light armor.
Electric currents licked along the edges, able to stun even the strongest foes with a well-placed strike.
But blade alone was not enough.
Down another alley, Veyron visited the gunsmith — a hollow-eyed woman who sold death in polished steel.
A Webley revolver changed hands — six chambers of brutal certainty.
Veyron slipped the weapon into the folds of his coat and returned to the gaslit streets.
He carried the old world and the new.
Steel and gunpowder.
Honor and brutality.
And soon, the city would bleed for it.