#8 – Realm of Death

The heart of this seemingly tranquil home was not where anyone would expect it. Behind the bookshelf, with a press on the worn leather cover of War and Peace, the shelf silently slid aside, revealing a small but fully equipped room.

This was Elina’s private domain—a deadly art gallery. The Remington sniper rifle rested on its stand like a tuned instrument waiting to be played. Beside it, a Colt 1911 with an ivory grip gleamed, and titanium knives, each in its own custom foam mold, were lined up in succession. Every blade, every magazine, every bullet bore the mark of “the Blacksmith’s” hands; Malek Abubakar packaged death and entrusted it to Elina’s hands without a single question.

One of the knives, however, was slightly different from the rest. Its handle bore a deep groove—a scar from a stray bullet, a souvenir from a mission in Prague that had nearly been her last. This knife had once been sent back to Malek for repair, but he returned it without fixing it. He had said: “A wound on a weapon, like a wound on its owner’s soul, carries wisdom. I will not repair it.”

In this room, everything was clean and oiled, but it was not merely an arsenal. In the side drawer, counterfeit passports from seven different countries lay stacked and categorized. Each passport offered a ready-made life for escape. Among them was an Argentine passport with a photo of Elina at nineteen—short hair and a gaze brimming with a holy fury that had long since subsided over the years. Beside the passports were stacks of cash and anonymous credit cards. Elina could change her identity and her life within ten minutes and vanish forever.

For her, this order was not just a habit. In a world where at any moment a stray bullet might ricochet out of the darkness and find its way back to her, this room was the only place where she could feel, completely and without compromise, that she held everything under control.