The data-slate cast a cold, blue light across Elias's face in the silent dark of the Crow's Nest. For days, he had been a ghost in the machine, chasing a phantom through the digital archives of the Crown, lost in a storm of conflicting data points and dead-end trails. He replayed the fight in his head a hundred times, a brutal, intricate dance. Then, something clicked. A single, forgotten detail from the chaos, a specific counter-strike that defied logic. His eyes narrowed, the world outside the glowing screen ceasing to exist. The storm in his mind went still. A single, clear path appeared through the fog. The ghost now had a name.
A week later, rain fell in a steady, mournful rhythm over the old mill district, a forgotten part of Aethelburg where rusted factories stood like the skeletons of forgotten giants. The air was thick with the smell of damp plaster, wet metal, and the ghosts of industry. In a derelict tenement building, on the top floor where the roof had begun to surrender to the sky, a woman stood staring out a grimy window at the weeping city. The room was bare, a spartan hideout, containing only a simple cot and a small table with maps and tools. It was a place for a soldier, not a home.
"I know you're there," she said, her voice clear and calm, without turning. "I've felt you hunting me all week."
Elias Corvus stepped from the deepest shadows of the room, his dark Cogwork field uniform making him a part of the gloom. He wasn't here as the Wraith. He was here as the law. "Then you know why I'm here."
She turned, her eyes sharp and assessing. They held no fear, only a weary readiness. "I know a Cogwork agent has been sniffing around my past. What I don't know is how." She shifted into a low, balanced combat stance, a predator ready to spring. "So, tell me, Agent. How did you find a ghost?"
Elias remained perfectly still, his presence a heavy, cold aura in the room. "Knowing you were a woman was the first key," he began, his voice a low, steady cadence. "That narrowed the field from thousands to hundreds. I then asked myself, how many of the Crown's departments produce fighters of your caliber? The Army, the City Constabulary, and the Cogwork. The list gets shorter." He took a deliberate step forward. "Your targets told me the rest. Their connection wasn't to the underworld, as my superiors believe; it was to the Uprising of '78. That eliminated everyone but the military. So, a dishonorably discharged female officer from that era. A very small list. Thirteen names."
He saw a flicker of grudging respect in her eyes. "Impressive deduction."
"I wasn't finished," Elias continued, his gaze unwavering. "I reviewed the combat assessments for all thirteen names. Your file noted an expert in a rare variant of military CQC, one that emphasizes acrobatics. That left only two names on my list. For a moment, I was at a dead end." He paused, letting the silence hang in the air. "But the fight… you parried a specific strike of mine with a move that was faster, more natural, than any right-handed fighter could manage. In that super small data set, Agent, there was only one officer whose file noted she had a dominant left hand. So, connecting all the dots... here I am. It was difficult to get to you. You are a master of stealth, Seraphina."
She didn't flinch at the use of her name, her combat stance softening almost imperceptibly. "All that work, just to arrest a patriot?"
"You are an assassin," Elias countered, his training and his duty warring with the questions in his gut. "The men you killed were decorated heroes of the Crown. They were respectable figures, loyal to the very end."
Seraphina let out a short, bitter laugh that echoed in the empty room. "Loyal? To what? To profit? To their own careers built on the bones of innocent people?" She took a step towards him, her eyes blazing with a righteous fire that had smoldered for years. "You want to know what happened during Operation Hearthlight? I was there. A young lieutenant, a true believer, just like you probably are. I saw it all. The Millworkers' strike was peaceful. They were starving, Elias, asking for a living wage for their families. General Valerius, your 'respectable' man, was a primary shareholder in that factory. He, and the others, staged an attack on their own supply convoy and blamed it on the strikers. They created a reason to do what they wanted to do all along."
Her voice trembled with a rage that was still raw after all these years. "They gave the order. To fire on unarmed men, women, and children who were waving the Crown's own flag. It wasn't a suppression; it was a massacre. An execution to protect their investments and send a message. I refused the order. I stood with them. For that, they court-martialed me, disgraced me, and erased me. They buried the truth under a pile of medals and lies while the families of the dead were branded as traitors."
Elias stood frozen, the foundations of his world cracking beneath his feet. He had served the Crown his entire life, believing in the 'greater good' he was protecting. But what if that good was a lie, a beautiful facade built over a cellar full of skeletons? Could it be true? The men he'd been taught to admire… were they monsters?
He felt his certainty slipping, his duty his only anchor in a sea of doubt. His posture shifted, his voice becoming cold and official, a desperate retreat into the man he was supposed to be.
"Whatever the truth of the past, you are a murderer. In the name of the Crown, I, Elias Corvus, Senior Agent of the Cogwork Directorate, order you to surrender."
The fire in Seraphina's eyes was instantly replaced by a look of utter shock. The aggression vanished, leaving something that looked like pity. "Corvus..." she whispered, the name a ghost on her lips. "I should have known. You have his eyes."
"What are you talking about?" Elias demanded, his voice tight, the name a key to a door he'd long thought sealed.
"Your father," she said, her voice now quiet, heavy with a terrible truth. "I knew him. Doctor Aran Corvus. He was the senior field medic assigned to my unit during the Uprising. He wasn't just a good man; he was a brave one. He saw what they did. He refused to falsify the death certificates. He documented the real wounds, gathered evidence from the bodies, and was going to expose the entire cover-up to the war council."
She took one last step, her eyes locked on his, delivering the final, devastating blow.
"That's why his transport had a 'tragic accident' on its way back to the capital. They didn't just disgrace me, Elias. They murdered your father to keep their secrets."
The room spun. The rain against the window, the distant hum of the city, his own heartbeat—it all faded into a deafening roar. His father… a hero who died exposing the truth? Then why was he in a photograph with Kestrel? Why had he joined the Vultures? Was Seraphina telling the truth? Was the government the real evil? Or was his own father a monster who had faked his own death?
He was caught in the crossfire of two impossible truths, his entire life a lie, his gun feeling impossibly heavy in his hand. Who was the enemy? And who was he even fighting for anymore?