Dockside smelled of blood and wet metal. The rain had stopped, but steam rose from the cracked asphalt where Moloch Horn had stomped the life out of three patrol cars in his bid to break through the city's rusted ribs.
Detective Iris Calder stood behind a barricade of half-panicked uniforms, breath fogging the night as her partner Navarro checked his sidearm for the third time. Captain Voss barked orders into a radio that hissed back nothing but fear and static.
Navarro flicked his eyes at Iris. "You ever seen anything like that? I mean — the Bull King? This ain't a perp with a bad attitude."
Iris's jaw clenched. Her knuckles whitened around her service pistol. "Doesn't matter what it is. It bleeds, it falls."
She tried to believe that. She tried not to think of Liam and Maya Cadee huddled at home, Nathan pretending calm. She tried not to think of Selene's quiet smile when they'd been something softer, years ago, before corpses and masks.
Captain Voss rounded on them, coat tails flapping like a judge's robe. "Navarro — you flank the far alley. Calder, you stick with me. If that freak breaks through, you take the shot. Head only. Body's a waste of bullets."
Navarro smirked, though his eyes said he'd rather be anywhere but Dockside tonight. "You think a bullet's gonna stop that?"
Voss didn't answer. He turned back to the barricade, where Ashfall's flickering streetlights cast Moloch Horn in glimpses — a nightmare stitched with muscle and rage, horns splintered from smashing iron beams.
Somewhere on a rooftop just beyond the barricade, Selene Kain crouched in the dark, ribs aching where the masked assassin's blade had kissed her bone. Her cloak dripped with rain and blood. Micah's voice buzzed her ear, soft as an old wound.
"You still alive?"
She smirked, eyes fixed on Moloch's silhouette as the Bull King swung a rusted street sign like a cudgel. A squad car folded under the impact.
"Alive enough," she whispered.
"That blade-ghost — you kill him?"
She tasted blood on her lip. "He'll wish I had."
Below, Moloch bellowed — the sound a raw, thunderous ache. Selene's eyes flicked past him to the street beyond: Silas's escape route. He'd slipped out in the chaos, but she'd caught enough — a partial phone number from his pocket, a whispered name: The Herald.
Umbra's mouthpiece.
She ran the name over her tongue like a promise.
---
On the other side of the barricade, Iris caught the flicker of movement on the rooftops. Just for a heartbeat, the ragged shape of black feathers against the sodium haze. Her heart stuttered.
Navarro followed her stare. "You see her too, huh?"
Iris didn't look at him. "You saw nothing."
Navarro lifted his hands in surrender. "Hey, you won't get an argument. Just wondering whose side she's on."
Captain Voss didn't wonder. He stormed down the barricade line, barking at the SWAT lead to move up. His voice hit the night like a hammer on wet stone. If he knew the Black Raven danced above their heads, he said nothing. Voss didn't have time for ghosts. He hunted the living.
---
At the Calder house, Liam sat cross-legged on his bed, a battered old tablet cracked in the corner. He'd taught himself to listen — to slip past his father's firewalls. He didn't know the name Umbra, but he knew the dark shape of secrets when they coiled through encrypted calls.
In the other room, Maya Cadee scribbled furiously on her drawing pad — lines turning heavy, wings darker, the stick-figure Raven now perched above blocky trucks and tiny stick people locked inside cages.
Liam leaned out his bedroom door. "Maya — why'd you draw that?"
She looked up, her eyes wide and far away. "It's what the Raven does. She opens the trucks."
Liam's stomach twisted. He didn't know how she knew. He only knew they weren't safe — not really.
---
Silas Madox stumbled down a back alley slick with trash and oil, one shoe missing, his cufflinks gone. He pressed a burner phone to his ear, voice cracking.
"I did what you asked," he hissed into the dark. "I paid for the bird's head. That freak you sent — he failed. Now she has my scent."
A voice on the line — calm, honeyed, inhumanly patient. The Herald. Umbra's voice in the city's veins.
"Mr. Madox, you misunderstand. You are not paying for her death. You are paying for your continued existence. If the Raven wants you… you should run faster."
The line went dead.
Silas stood alone in the rain. The wind whispered feathered shapes in every shadow.
---
Rowan Pierce slipped through the Molted Wing's crooked door, shaking rain from her leather jacket. Reggie Slate looked up from counting the till, his face unreadable as ever.
"Pierce," he rumbled. "You look like the cat that almost got eaten by the dog."
Rowan slumped onto a stool. "That thing at Dockside — Moloch Horn. It's real, huh?"
Reggie slid her a glass, no questions asked. "Everything's real if the city's scared enough."
She traced a line through the condensation. "You ever think maybe the Raven's not the monster?"
Reggie's eyes flicked to the sawed-off shotgun under the bar. "Maybe the monster's the one paying monsters to make more."
---
On a rooftop across the street, Selene pulled her cloak tighter, feeling the blood stiffen in the fabric. Micah's voice hummed again — no judgment, no comfort.
"You gonna rest? You're three cuts from collapse, Kain."
She scanned the street below — Navarro gesturing to Iris, Voss yelling orders to push the barricade tighter around Moloch's rampage. Civilians herded like cattle behind police tape. The city's heart thundered under her boots.
"There's no rest," she murmured. "Not while Silas breathes. Not while the Herald whispers."
She flicked her blade open — a feather of death waiting to fly.
Micah sighed through static. "At least let Camilla stitch you up before you bleed out on my data feed."
Selene almost smiled. Camilla Dupont — the reluctant underground medic. The last place she could fall without questions.
Her eyes caught Iris again — a brief glimmer of a life that could've been soft, normal. She shut it down before it hurt.
Below, Moloch Horn roared — steel beams buckled. Ashfall's night swallowed the echo whole.
---
END OF CHAPTER SIXTEEN