FLASHBACK
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She's seven the first time Selene hears a gunshot up close — so close the heat kisses her cheek and the thunder rattles her tiny bones.
The warehouse is cold, reeking of spilled oil and rat piss. Her father's voice is calm — too calm — as he tries to talk to the three men in black coats. They wear no insignia, no badges, but she knows who they are. Flock men. Her father's bosses, sometimes his friends, sometimes the shadows that come to the door when rent is late or secrets are too heavy to bury.
Selene hides behind a crate stacked with moldy ledger books, peeking through a crack. She watches her father's hands — shaking, open. He keeps saying he didn't talk, that the files are burned, that he did everything right.
One of the men — the tallest — doesn't even pull his gun like he's angry. He does it like he's clocking out for lunch. One shot, through her father's mouth. The man says something about "Loose ends rot. You cut them off."
Selene doesn't scream. Not then. Not when they walk past the crate without seeing her. Not when she crawls to her father's cooling body, tries to shake him awake, sticky red on her palms.
The scream comes years later — in nightmares, echoing through cold city alleys where the Raven sharpens her blades.
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NOW
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The rain is knives tonight. Dockside's side streets choke with rusted barrels and puddles that taste of diesel and iron.
Selene stumbles against a graffiti-tagged wall, hand clamped over a deep gash at her hip. Her wing-cloak is half shredded, mask cracked where Moloch Horn's backhand caught her jaw. Every rib burns. Blood drips onto her boot, washed thin by the rain but never gone.
She forces herself forward. One more block. An old maintenance tunnel — she can crawl in, patch herself with trembling hands. She's done it before.
Her vision tunnels. She misses a step. Her shoulder smacks the bricks. Her knees hit wet concrete. The city sways — she tastes iron, then cold nothing.
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Camilla Dupont isn't supposed to be here tonight. She's supposed to be home, chain-smoking in her crumbling apartment above a pawn shop, sorting fake IDs for a runaway kid who can't afford a real doctor.
But a deal went late. The pills didn't show. So she's cutting through Dockside's back end, rain pelting the duffel slung over her shoulder.
She nearly steps over the dark shape by the alley wall — at first she thinks it's a drunk, maybe a junkie. Then the lightning flickers — she sees the mask. The feathers, slick with rain and blood.
Her gut twists.
"No way," she whispers to herself. "No goddamn way."
She's heard the stories — the Black Raven who leaves gang lieutenants gutted in strip mall basements, who hangs child traffickers from abandoned cranes. A rumor with blades.
She should keep walking. She wants to keep walking.
Instead, she kneels. Two fingers at the throat — there's a pulse. Shallow, but stubborn. Camilla curses.
"You better be worth this, ghost girl."
She scans the alley — no footsteps, no Flock cars crawling by, no Umbra drones overhead. Good enough.
She grunts, gets her arms under Selene's shoulders. The woman's heavier than she looks — solid muscle, gear under the cloak. Camilla drags her down a side stairwell into an old subway access — rusted gate, chained door, the place she uses when her real clinic is too hot to touch.
Inside, the room smells of bleach and stale coffee. A flickering bulb swings overhead. Camilla kicks the door shut behind them. She lowers Selene onto a metal gurney she bought from a closed vet clinic for fifty bucks.
She peels back the shredded cloak — the gash at Selene's hip is ugly, bone-deep, but fixable. Her jaw is swelling purple, a tooth half cracked. More bruises bloom where the tactical suit's torn. Beneath the armor: scars. Old ones. New ones. Like a roadmap of other nights that ended like this.
Camilla swears again. She digs her kit from a dented locker — needle, sutures, local anesthetic. Her hands don't tremble, not anymore.
Halfway through stitching, Selene stirs — groggy, mask half hanging off.
Their eyes meet — one dazed, one tired but clear.
Camilla scowls down at her. "Stay still, yeah? You rip this open, I'm not doing it again for free."
Selene's voice is gravel under water. "You… shouldn't…"
Camilla snorts. "Don't tell me what I shouldn't do. I've stitched up worse bastards for half the money."
Selene tries to sit up — a wince snaps her flat again. Camilla presses her shoulder back down with surprising gentleness.
"Relax, feather girl. You got maybe five busted ribs, a cracked jaw, and a hole where your liver wants to be. Lucky for you, I hate watching people bleed out in my back stairwell."
Selene's eyes flick to the dark ceiling. Her breath rattles like paper tearing. "You don't know me."
Camilla ties off the suture, wipes her brow. "Nope. And I'd like to keep it that way. But rumor says you're a killer. Maybe. I don't care. I still see a person in there. So shut up and let me finish."
Selene's eyelids sag. The room blurs at the edges.
"Name…?" she rasps.
Camilla's hands pause — then keep working. "Camilla. That's all you get tonight."
She injects painkiller, sets gauze, tapes ribs as best she can.
When it's done, she sits back, lights a smoke under the busted fan.
Selene's breathing steadies. Her eyes flutter shut.
Camilla watches her — the infamous shadow that drags monsters into the gutters — and wonders if she's the biggest fool in Ashfall.
She flicks ash into a cracked cup.
"Don't make me regret this, ghost girl. Please."
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Somewhere above, the Bull King's roar still echoes in the Dockside's empty steel bones.
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END OF CHAPTER SEVEN