Silence descended upon The Crucible, thick and absolute, broken only by the slow, rhythmic drip of Kestrel's blood onto the steel floor. Elias Corvus stood over the body of the first Talon, his breath a ragged saw in his chest, his body screaming from a dozen different wounds. The adrenaline was already fading, leaving behind a deep, bone-aching exhaustion. He limped to the wreckage of the desk, his boots crunching on shattered metal, and retrieved the photograph and a sheaf of documents, shoving them into the deep inside pocket of his coat. He ripped another strip of cloth from his ruined shirt and pressed it to the gash on his head, a desperate, flimsy barrier against the pulsing pain.
That's when the silence was shattered. The distant roar of the mob from the fighting pit below had morphed into a wave of angry, confused shouts that grew louder with every second. Heavy, running footsteps thundered towards the chamber. The massive iron doors began to rattle violently in their frame. They were coming for him.
His eyes darted around the room. The door was a death sentence. He was wounded, bleeding, and they were a legion. His gaze shot upwards. To the darkness. To the high, skeletal rafters and the labyrinth of pipes and gears that was the foundry's ceiling. It was his only way out.
With a grunt of pain, he fired his grappling hook. The claw bit into a steel beam high above just as the chamber doors burst open. He hit the ascent trigger, his body lurching violently into the air as a sea of enraged foundry workers flooded the room below. A collective roar of fury went up as they saw their fallen champion. Elias was a swinging target in the darkness, a ghost revealed. Tools, chunks of metal, and curses were hurled at him as he scrambled onto a narrow catwalk.
The escape was a desperate flight through an industrial hellscape. He ran, his vision blurring, his wounded leg screaming in protest. He moved through clouds of scalding steam that hissed from leaking pipes, the heat searing his lungs. The colossal gears of the foundry's main drive turned like silent, grinding titans beside him, threatening to snag his coat and pull him in. The mob was a beast below him, their lights and shouts echoing through the cavernous space.
He saw two guards ahead, blocking his path on a high gantry. There was no way around. He charged, a wounded animal running on pure instinct. The fight was a blur of brutal, close-quarters combat. It lacked his usual precision; it was clumsy, savage, and fueled by the last of his reserves. He used the environment, shoving one guard into a jet of high-pressure steam, blinding him, before using his blade-stick to trip the other over the gantry's edge. The man didn't fall, but it gave Elias the opening he needed. A swift, disabling strike, and he was past them, not even looking back. He reached the far wall, found an open coal chute, and threw himself into the suffocating darkness, landing hard in a transport car as it rumbled out of the foundry.
The journey was a fever dream. He lay in the choking coal dust, drifting in and out of consciousness, his wounds throbbing in time with the rattling of the train car. When he finally arrived in his quiet, forgotten hometown, he was a wraith of a different kind—a spectre of pain and exhaustion, barely able to stand. He stumbled through the familiar streets to a butcher's shop.
A mountain of a man with a scarred face, Gunnar, looked up from his work. His eyes, which missed nothing, took in Elias's condition. Without a word, he wiped his hands on his apron, flipped the sign on the door to 'Closed,' and led Elias through the back. They passed hanging carcasses into a walk-in freezer. Gunnar pulled open a false wall, revealing a set of stone steps leading down into a clean, brightly lit clinic.
Dr. Alistair Finch, a man whose calm, precise nature had always been the opposite of Gunnar's barely contained force, was waiting. "You look like hell, Eli," Gunnar stated, his voice a low rumble.
"Get him on the table," Alistair ordered, already preparing sutures and antiseptic.
For two weeks, Elias was a prisoner of his own broken body. Alistair, with a surgeon's skill, stitched the deep gash on his head, set his fractured ribs, and treated the festering knife wound on his arm. Gunnar stood guard, a silent, immovable guardian. In this hidden sanctuary, stripped of his mask and his mission, Elias was forced to confront the memories the pain had held at bay. On the last day, a specific memory returned, as clear and sharp as shattered glass.
He is a boy, no older than ten, standing in the doorway of his small home. His father, a kind man with a healer's hands, is in his army doctor's uniform, packing a medic's bag. He kneels, his eyes full of a sad warmth. "I have to go away for a while, Eli," he says, his hand gentle but firm on his son's shoulder. "It's an important mission. You be brave for me." The memory blurs, shifting to the grim-faced soldiers on that same doorstep weeks later, the carefully folded flag, the hollow words: "He died a hero… a tragic accident…"
The memory faded. In his mind's eye, he saw the inferno of his house in Aethelburg, and he watched a single photograph on the mantlepiece—of the boy and his father—curl into black ash, erasing his past forever.
He was back in the Crow's Nest now. Healed, stronger, but colder than ever. He pulled the photograph he had taken from Kestrel's desk from his coat. He stared at the face of the older man—the calm, intelligent eyes, the meticulous hands. He stared at the face that had haunted his dreams since childhood, the face he had just watched burn in his memory.
His breath hitched, a broken, ragged sound in the silent clock tower. He looked at the face in the picture, the face of a Vulture, and his voice was a choked whisper, a single question aimed at the ghost of his entire life.
"Why, father?".