The alley hums with red light and distant sirens when Cyn steps into my path, twin blades low but ready. Her armor bears marks of an empire I don’t serve. She studies me like a puzzle already half-solved. “Strange roads bring strange allies,” she says, voice measured, almost poetic beneath the steel. “Yet the dark does not forbid cooperation… only foolish trust.” Sparks drift between us as patrol lights pass overhead. We both know the relic lies deeper in the city, and neither of us can reach it alone. Cyn turns, cloak catching the glow. “Walk with me, then,” she murmurs. “Till our paths decide otherwise.”