The club entrance rose before me in sharp angles that once shimmered with neon, marking the boundary between ordinary and extraordinary. Though dark now, its presence still commanded attention.

Whispered legends clung to these walls. Here, power had shifted over expensive cocktails, while alliances formed and fractured between sunset and sunrise. The Tiger Claw didn't just welcome risk—it demanded it. You came ready to lose everything, or you didn't come at all.

The darkness had stripped away its glamour, leaving something more threatening in its absence. Yet I could still feel its former glory—the energy, the rhythm, the way it had made the world's largest metropolis feel like it orbited this single point.

I approached, my footsteps crunching over debris. The door stood open like an untended wound. My hand found the doorframe, feeling the deep gouges in the metal—desperate marks from those fighting to enter... or escape.

The interior reeked of dormant machinery and rot. Overturned tables dotted the floor, their once-pristine surfaces dulled by time. The bar remained, a monument to excess reduced to a hollow frame, its mirror backdrop a constellation of broken glass.

I walked past empty booths where secrets had been traded and loyalties betrayed. The walls seemed to hold memories like bruises, echoing with phantom voices.

Then I noticed something wrong—something that didn't belong in this tomb of excess.

Light.

Steady and intentional, seeping through a doorway's edges at the club's rear. Not the random flicker of failing electronics, but something purposeful. Living.

My heart rate increased. Recent visitors. Perhaps current ones.

My hand found my knife's grip, familiar and reassuring. In places like this, silence had substance, and the Tiger Claw was holding its breath.

I did too. And so I moved forward.