Chapter 1: The City That Never Sleeps
Rain falls like judgment.
Nocturne City glows beneath the storm—neon lights bleeding into flooded streets, sirens echoing like distant screams. From above, the city looks alive. From the ground, it's rotting.
In an alley between two abandoned buildings, a man is running.
Blood drips from his mouth. His suit jacket is torn, his phone shattered in his shaking hand.
"Please… I paid already," he gasps, stumbling over trash bags.
Four men follow him, laughing.
"Wrong people," one says, cocking his gun. "You skimmed Crowe's money."
The man trips and falls. He scrambles backward, eyes wide with terror.
Then—
The lights above flicker.
The laughter dies.
A shadow moves across the brick wall.
One of the gunmen frowns. "Did you hear—"
CRACK.
The man is pulled into the darkness, his scream cut short. The others whirl around, guns raised.
Too late.
A figure drops from above.
Fast. Silent. Violent.
The first gunman is disarmed before he can blink—his wrist snapping with a dull crunch. The second fires blindly into the rain, but the bullets hit nothing.
The figure moves like a ghost.
A knee to the ribs. An elbow to the throat. A gun twisted away and slammed into its owner's face.
The third man runs.
He makes it three steps before something whistles through the air—
A metal baton strikes his knee.
He collapses screaming.
The last man backs away, trembling, gun clattering to the ground. His eyes lock onto the figure standing beneath the broken streetlight.
A mask. Matte black. Featureless except for narrow white eyes that reflect no emotion.
"The Wraith…" he whispers.
The figure tilts his head.
"You work for Darius Crowe," the Wraith says, voice low, distorted. "Tell him this."
He steps closer.
"His city is shrinking."
The man passes out before the Wraith finishes speaking.
Sirens approach.
The Wraith is already gone.
From a nearby rooftop, Kael Voss watches police lights flood the alley. He removes his mask only after retreating into the shadows, rain soaking his hair, his breath steady despite the violence.
No satisfaction. Never satisfaction.
Only necessity.
He turns and disappears across the rooftops, moving with practiced ease.
Across the city, in a high-rise apartment cluttered with files and glowing screens, Iris Han rewinds a video frame by frame.
Grainy footage. Security camera. An alley. Four men enter.
One man leaves on a stretcher.
Three don't leave at all.
She pauses the video.
Enhances the image.
Zooms in.
A blur. A shape.
"Not a gang hit…" she murmurs. "Too clean."
Her phone buzzes.
UNKNOWN SOURCE:
Another Crowe crew wiped out. Same signature.
Iris leans back, eyes narrowing.
"The Wraith," she whispers.
She's been tracking disappearances for months—dealers, enforcers, fixers. All connected to the same criminal network. All erased without witnesses.
Until now.
She opens a city map. Red dots bloom across the screen, forming a pattern.
A hunting route.
"Who are you?" she asks the empty room.
Meanwhile, deep beneath Nocturne, in a private lounge bathed in gold light, Darius Crowe listens quietly as his lieutenant finishes speaking.
"…four men hospitalized or missing. No suspects. Same as the others."
Crowe swirls the ice in his glass, unbothered.
"So," he says calmly, "the ghost is real."
"Yes, sir. The streets are calling him the Wraith."
Crowe smiles.
"Fear spreads faster than bullets," he says. "Good."
The lieutenant stiffens. "Good, sir?"
Crowe stands and walks to the window, overlooking the city.
"Because now," he continues, eyes gleaming, "I know what to hunt."
At the precinct, Detective Elias Thorn slams a case file onto his desk.
"Six incidents. Same pattern," he snaps. "Highly trained, tactical movements, zero forensics."
His captain sighs. "Vigilante nonsense."
"This isn't nonsense," Elias says coldly. "This is a professional."
He stares at a still image pulled from a traffic camera—a shadow on a rooftop.
"I know this kind of man," Elias mutters. "And he doesn't stop."
Back in the darkness, Kael removes his gloves, hands shaking for just a moment.
A flash—
A car crash. Screaming. Fire.
His wife's hand slipping from his.
His child's eyes, wide with fear.
Kael clenches his fist until the memory breaks.
"This city doesn't deserve mercy," he whispers.
Rain washes over Nocturne.
And somewhere between fear and hope, a legend begins.
END OF CHAPTER 1