Ashfall's streets steam under a dawn that never really comes. Smoke coils up from broken rooftops where something new burns — old debts paid in fire.
---
Detective Iris Calder stands on cracked concrete in front of what used to be an apartment block. Now it's an open ribcage of blackened steel and caved-in floors. Fire hoses snake over wet ash. Steam ghosts off soaked bricks.
A little girl sits wrapped in a grey blanket on the tailgate of an ambulance — soot on her cheeks, eyes wide and dry. Her mother is somewhere in the crowd, screaming at the firefighters to tell her where the rest of her family is.
Iris pockets her notebook, steps carefully through scorched rubble, pushing past the arson techs and the half-awake uniform cops. A burned mattress pokes out of a splintered doorway like a tongue.
She crouches near the charred wall. There, painted in sloppy black spray: a broken bird with its wings dripping down like tar.
A uniform cop clears his throat beside her. "Flock tag, Detective. They're saying it's payback — a warning. They want people to know the 'bird lady' can't save everyone."
Iris rubs her temples. "The Flock torches whole families to send a rumor a message. Perfect. Run the accelerant patterns — they hit three exits at once. That's professional."
"We think they used kids to light it," the cop mutters. He gestures at a small burned backpack by the curb. Iris's stomach clenches.
She flips her notebook closed. Her phone vibrates — Nathan, probably. She ignores it. Somewhere in her pocket, the black feather sits like a promise she can't keep.
---
Across town, under flickering basement lights, Micah Torres curses softly at three lines of corrupted data. His safe house stinks of instant coffee and the mold in the carpet that he gave up fighting last year.
He flips between the fire's live drone feed — thick plumes, half a block gone — and an old Umbra internal memo flagged Project MINOTAUR: Additional Biomass Acquisition. He knows what that means: bodies that shouldn't be bodies anymore. Or muscle they're building from the scraps Umbra leaves behind.
His fingers dance on cracked keys, rerouting feeds from city cams to loop the spots where Selene might move tonight. He's learned her rhythm — morgue at dawn, whiskey at dusk, black wings at night.
He pings her phone:
— ARSON. FLOCK. WEST BLOCK. EVIDENCE CLEANUP.
He adds a second line:
— PROJECT MINO. THEY'RE MOVING IT.
He hits send. The message sizzles through layers of stolen frequencies. Somewhere, Selene will see it in a sliver of silence — the calm before she flies.
---
Selene Kain stands in the cramped locker room behind the Ashfall City Morgue. The overhead bulb flickers like a dying eye. She peels off her scrubs, slides into a battered old jacket, tugging at the sleeve to hide a fresh cut on her forearm.
Rourke's voice booms from down the hall — barking at a delivery crew about "special crates" that Umbra men dropped off with fake names and bigger lies.
Selene glances at her cracked phone: Micah's ping glows like static in the dark. ARSON. FLOCK. WEST BLOCK.
She exhales slow. Her bruised ribs protest as she buckles her boots. The memory of the burned girl on the gurney last winter flickers through her head — fingers curled like charred claws, eyes boiled blind. The morgue's cold didn't hide the smell.
She locks the morgue door behind her. The city outside breathes fire and rot in equal measure.
---
At The Molted Wing, Reggie Slate wipes down the bar for the fifth time that hour, just to keep his hands busy. Rowan Pierce, Ash TV's too-honest reporter, hunches at the far end with her cracked laptop open, earbuds jammed in.
"You heard about West Block?" she asks when Reggie tops off her coffee.
He nods. "I heard. Flock wants to remind everyone who feeds the rats in this city."
Rowan types something fast, eyes flicking to the bar door. "You think she'll show tonight?"
Reggie doesn't answer. He just polishes the same glass again. He knows Selene's routine. She won't drink tonight. She'll bleed for them instead.
---
Under a burnt-out streetlight near the West Block ruins, a pair of Flock arsonists stand guard in black jackets and cheap knockoff sneakers. One flicks a lighter on and off, the flame trembling in the wind.
The other taps out a text on a burner phone:
— Fire's done. Next block tomorrow?
He never sends it.
The darkness above them shifts. A whisper. A drip of shadow down broken brick.
Selene drops between them like a knife through wet paper. Her talons catch the lighter boy's wrist — bone cracks, flame dies. She pivots, shoves the second thug's face into the wall — teeth scatter like cheap dice.
She doesn't ask questions yet. She drags them behind a dumpster, ties one hand with zip-cord, jams her knee into the first kid's gut.
"Who ordered it?" she rasps through her mask.
The kid spits blood. *"We don't talk—"
She backhands him with the talon's blunt edge. Teeth clatter.
"Try again."
The other one sobs. *"King Crow wants the block. Wants the bird to come out. Says if you fly, the Bull stomps. Please — please — we just light the doors—"
She freezes. The Bull. She's heard Micah's files. The Project. The muscle that shouldn't be muscle. She leans in, visor inches from the kid's trembling eyes.
"Where."
"Dockside lab. East end. Big tanks — they feed it — they made it—"
She hears the crack before she sees the blood. The kid's eyes glaze, breath bubbles red — cyanide tooth. The other one howls, tries to crawl — she drops him with a quick wrist flick that snaps him into sleep.
The rumor of the Bull King bleeds under her gloves now. She wipes the blade clean on the boy's jacket.
---
Above the city, in a room nobody rents at the old Halden Hotel, King Crow stands by cracked glass, tapping ash from a slim black cigarillo. His masked lieutenants stand behind him like rotted statues.
At the far wall, chained in iron thicker than any prison bar, Moloch Horn shifts in the shadows. He snorts, rattles his cuffs. The mask over his face is part muzzle, part restraint — but even Crow knows it's temporary.
"You feel her yet, Bull?" King Crow whispers to the caged thing. "Feel the bird scratching at our nest?"
A deep growl rumbles in the dark. Moloch's horned silhouette bulges against the chain.
Crow smiles thinly. *"Good. When she plucks my Flock again… you'll run free. Let's see her wings block horns."
---
In her hidden Nest, Selene wipes blood off her talons, Micah's voice a ghost in her ear from a burner earbud.
"You hear it too, right?" Micah murmurs. *"They made something they can't chain. You keep swinging those pretty blades — what you gonna do when the Bull comes for your ribs?"
Selene looks at the city's jagged skyline through broken glass.
"Then we break the chain," she whispers. "And break him, too."
Below, Ashfall breathes — hungry for fire, for rumor, for monsters in feathers and horns.
---
END OF CHAPTER THREE