Ashfall never really slept — it just shut its eyes and pretended. By the time midnight folded into dawn, the city's bones rattled with the things that prowled under the skin — men who owed too much, women who sold too little, and shadows that cut deeper than any debt collector's knife. And in that hush between streetlight flickers, the Black Raven hunted.
---
Selene moved through Dockside's dead veins, boots silent, coat brushing crates stacked with stolen chem-lab barrels. Umbra's new shipment. She'd followed whispers from a dealer's loose tongue — three broken fingers and the promise she'd come for the rest of him if he lied.
Selene Kain knew how fear worked: cut it open, let it bleed confessions. Micah fed her crumbs from the dark net — phone taps, account pings, a name buried in encrypted invoices. But the meat of the hunt was hers alone. The city talked if you pressed the knife in the right place.
Tonight, the knife was real. A feather-shaped blade rested cold against her wrist, snug in a hidden sheath. Her other hand traced the grip of a collapsible baton, its steel hungry for bone.
She slipped through a half-open door. Inside, the warehouse hummed with low voices — Flock muscle, three men, big arms, no brains. One man leaned against a crate, scrolling messages. Another counted cash on a metal table. The third kept his back to the loading dock, shotgun loose on a sling.
Selene moved fast — silent, like smoke under broken lights.
First man: knife under the chin, whisper at his ear, "Scream and I'll gut you." The phone clattered to the concrete.
Second man turned too slow — her baton cracked his kneecap sideways, teeth bared as he crumpled, a ragged gasp echoing through the crates.
Third man fumbled the shotgun — never got to fire. She slammed his wrist to the crate edge, bones splintering, barrel spinning out of reach. He fell against the table, eyes wide with the truth — she wasn't here to talk him to sleep.
Selene pressed the edge of her blade to the first man's throat. She leaned close — breath calm, voice the ghost she wore like armor.
"Where's the shipment going next? Who's paying for it?"
"I—I don't know—"
She twisted the blade just enough for the cold kiss to draw a bead of blood. His eyes rolled back — heart hammering.
"Try again. Lie, and you'll see your tongue hit the floor before your knees do."
The man spat a name — Silas Madox — and a street number off Midtown's north edge. Chemical drums headed to a clinic Umbra ran through three shell companies. Flock cash, Umbra's ink, same old disease.
She left him alive. Mostly. The second man wheezed on the floor, kneecap folded the wrong way, cursing between sobs. She bent low — a hand tangled in his sweat-slick hair.
"If you run your mouth about me," she murmured, "I'll cut your throat open and use your last breath to make a promise to your boss. Understand?"
He nodded — or tried to. He'd remember the cold in her eyes longer than the break in his leg.
---
Outside, the rain hit like a baptism, cold washing blood from her boots. Micah's voice crackled through her wire — patient, the only voice she trusted that didn't tremble when she spoke.
"Did you get it?" he asked.
"More than enough." She cracked her knuckles, adjusted the blade back into its sheath. "You're sure the lab ties back to Madox?"
Micah's soft laugh was static. "I don't lie to you, Kain. I feed you breadcrumbs. You break the necks."
She half-smiled — or what passed for it. Micah stayed hidden behind screens, bouncing IP ghosts through half a dozen city blocks. The Raven? She stepped through doors nobody else would open, cut answers from the city's throat.
---
Across town, the Molted Wing glowed like a bruised eye behind Dockside's ruined warehouses. Reggie Slate leaned on the bar, polishing a row of chipped glasses, the sawed-off shotgun resting under the counter like a rumor that'd been true once.
Tonight, Rowan Pierce was at her usual corner table, notepad open — the same page she'd rewritten three times over. A witness, half-drunk, spilled that a winged shadow tore through the old freight yards last week — left a man hanging upside down from a crane, bleeding out secrets. A detective's rumor — a joke if you didn't know how many bodies that truth cost.
Rowan didn't know the Black Raven was real — not yet. But her gut did. One day she'd press too close to that truth and the shadow would come to pull her back from the edge — maybe by saving her life, maybe by threatening her not to ruin the plan. Either way, the byline would stay buried until Ashfall's veins dried up.
---
At Ash TV's headquarters, Director Marcus Fenn watched the news feed flicker across his tablet. Aria Morgan's voice smoothed over the evening horror — "...a chemical storage site near Midtown suffered extensive damage. No suspects have been named. Councilwoman Pryce promises tighter oversight…"
Behind the camera, Evan Holt's hands smelled like Dockside rain and cigarette ash. He caught the flicker in Fenn's eyes — a man who knew which murders to bury under soft headlines and missing tapes.
---
Nathan Calder's phone buzzed under his coat pocket. A message from an Umbra liaison — a soft warning that Iris was sniffing too close. He pocketed it before Liam saw. But Liam saw everything these days — twelve-year-old eyes, hungry for secrets. And secrets were the one thing Nathan couldn't kill.
Iris sat awake at the kitchen table, folder open, a feather pinned inside. Black ink on cheap paper — The Flock's promise. Navarro's number scrawled in the margin. One day, she thought, one day they'll slip. And I'll put my badge through their heart.
---
Selene's boots dripped on Camilla Dupont's scuffed linoleum an hour later. The medic swore under her breath as she poured antiseptic over the cut on Selene's shoulder — old bruises layered under fresh ones. Camilla hated her for dragging blood into her little backroom, hated herself for never locking the door tight enough.
"You keep tearing your stitches open like this," Camilla muttered, "I'll start charging you by the pint."
Selene didn't flinch. "I bring trouble. You keep fixing it. You want me to stop, say so."
Camilla's hands paused over the gauze. She looked at Selene's eyes — dark, unblinking, the same eyes that once nearly died in her alleyway, the same eyes that dragged her back in every time she swore she was done. Camilla pressed the gauze tight. Selene hissed — but didn't move.
"Next time you bleed out," Camilla said, voice tight, "I'm leaving you in the gutter."
But they both knew she wouldn't.
---
Midtown's rooftops glowed with the city's lie — neon warmth over rotting brick. Selene crouched at the edge of an old billboard, wind chewing at her jacket. Below, Silas Madox's chemical shell company sat behind wire fences and three bored rent-a-cops whose guns wouldn't save them when she came through.
Micah's voice slipped through the wire. "It's your show, Kain. I'll kill the cams for twenty minutes. Don't waste it."
Selene flexed her fingers over the feather blade. The city sprawled under her boots — sick, coughing secrets. And if threats didn't work tonight, if whispers weren't enough — then steel would do.
She didn't just ask questions.
She carved the answers herself.
---
END OF CHAPTER ELEVEN