The sunrise bled a harsh crimson across Harbor's docks, transforming the secured barrels into silent, accusing sentinels that gleamed wetly under the emerging light. Rico loomed over the zip-tied Draven thugs, his wrench tapping rhythmically against his palm as their curses dissolved into sullen growls, the air thick with the acrid tang of spilled neuro-toxin. Alex flexed his hand experimentally, feeling the shadows still tingling beneath his skin, a persistent backlash throbbing up his arm like ink seeping through damp paper, insistent and unyielding.Elena knelt gracefully beside a cracked barrel, her fingers tracing the etched runes with the reverence of someone deciphering an ancient curse. Her face hardened as recognition dawned—these were marks of old weaver craft, perverted into the elders' forbidden brews, poisons designed not just to kill but to unravel bloodlines from within.Razor paced a tight circuit nearby, one hand pressed to his bandaged gut, his loyalty no longer flickering but forged solid in the heat of shared battle, his gaze now locked unwaveringly on Kane. "That blond one's Silas," he muttered, voice rough with gravel. "Draven's premier ice hound. He sniffed out your power back there, sent specifically to test the waters, see if the rumors held weight."Lena worked the edges of the scene with practiced efficiency, her camera capturing discreet angles while she murmured a voice note into her hidden phone app: "Shadow syndicate saves the harbor from poison dump, or emerging weaver cult turns tables on Draven—either way, this is pure gold." Her words hung in the salt-laced air, sharp as the gulls wheeling overhead.Alex drew her aside to a stretch of pier where the waves lapped hungrily at weathered pilings, their foam whispering secrets against the wood. "No headlines yet," he said quietly, his breath misting in the chill dawn. "We can't handle that kind of heat drawing eyes from Skyline." She arched a single brow, the fire in her eyes undimmed, challenging. "Hiding what you are just turns you into more of a myth, less of a man anyone can trust." As she spoke, their shoulders brushed inadvertently—or not—sending a warmth through him that cut the lingering cold like a struck match, carrying the unspoken promise of deeper entanglements.Scarface hauled Silas to his feet with a grunt, the blond man's hair matted and streaked with drying blood, faint ice flecks crystallizing along his split lips even as he sneered defiance. "Talk, viper," Scarface growled, knuckles popping. "What elders? What's this core?" Silas spat a glob of frost-laced phlegm, summoning a sudden chill gust that staggered the nearby crew members backward. "Weaver brat," he hissed, voice echoing unnaturally, "your blood's the prize Draven claims it all—the core returns to its rightful hands."The retort ignited chaos anew, but Rico's pipe came down swift and true, cracking against Silas's temple and silencing the laugh before it fully formed. Elena drew Alex close amid the settling dust, her voice a urgent thread weaving through the tension. "The core is what Vinny stole from Draven years ago—a relic that binds the weavers' powers, amplifies or destroys them. He's been hunting all the heirs ever since, pruning the bloodlines one by one." The journal weighed like lead in Alex's pocket, its pages practically itching with secrets clamoring to unfold under his touch.Back at the gym as the sun climbed higher, the interrogation dragged on under the harsh fluorescents, Silas's resolve crumbling under prodding shadow tendrils that Alex instinctively summoned to tease at the edges of the man's fractured mind. Glimpses flooded in: Draven's towering Skyline fortress, its spires piercing the clouds, and behind it all, a veiled council of elders cloaked in perpetual, swirling dusk, their eyes hungry for the core's return.The crew swelled organically through the day, Razor's most loyal Vipers folding into the fold seamlessly, pushing their numbers past two dozen as whispers rippled through Harbor's veins, crowning Kane not in fear but in shadowed awe. Night draped the district in its familiar shroud, but for Alex, rest evaded—his arm now visibly blackened with pulsing veins snaking beneath the skin, the power demanding more fuel, his control fraying dangerously at the edges like overtaxed wiring. Lena noticed first during cleanup, her touch gentle yet firm as she wrapped fresh bandages around the afflicted limb, her fingers lingering just a beat too long like an anchor in storm-tossed seas. "Train with me tomorrow," she murmured, voice low and steady. "Off-record, just us—figure this out before it figures you."Across the neon-sprawled city, in a penthouse of glass and frost, Victor Draven crushed a crystal tumbler in his fist, the shards fracturing outward like brittle ice under unrelenting pressure. "Silas failed spectacularly," he murmured to the empty air, his smile a razor-thin line. "Unleash the full pack. The weaver falls, and the core returns to me."Around Alex, the shadows coiled ever tighter, their hunger sharpening into something undeniably alive, patient, and ravenous.
