There was always something about silence after the rain.Not peace. Not calm.Just... an uncomfortable honesty. The way the city held its breath, like it knew something was about to happen.
Jack Stone sat in the back booth of a crumbling jazz bar where the whiskey was older than the furniture and the music was always too sad to be background noise. A single lightbulb buzzed overhead, flickering like it couldn't decide whether to live or die. He understood that.
The bartender called him Shadow. Everyone did now.
His real name had been buried with his badge two years ago.Buried—alongside a body.One he still saw when he closed his eyes.
He lit a cigarette with the same mechanical grace he used to draw a gun. A reflex now. He didn't smoke for the nicotine. He smoked to remember he could still burn.
"Bad day?" asked a voice. Smooth. Female. Playful, but dangerous.
He didn't look up immediately. That voice didn't match the footsteps he'd been listening to. She'd approached too quietly. Meant she was trained—or confident. Or both.
Jack took a slow drag. "They're all bad days. Some just bleed slower."
She sat across from him without asking. Just like that. No introduction. No name. Drenched trench coat. Black gloves. Rain still clung to her eyelashes like tears that hadn't made up their mind.
Her eyes?Too familiar.Far too familiar.
Jack stared.
The resemblance was impossible.
"You look like a ghost," he said finally.
Her lips curved into a subtle smile. "Maybe I am."
He watched her. Her face wasn't just familiar. It was identical. The same woman he'd buried. The same woman who'd broken him. The woman who'd vanished with an artifact worth more than a small country and left his career in ruins.
Her name was Elara Vane.
But this wasn't her. Couldn't be. Elara was dead. He'd seen the blood. He'd heard her last breath.
"Name," he demanded quietly.
The woman's smile didn't change. "Rhea. Rhea Alvand."
The name meant nothing. But the eyes did.
"You're not her," he said. "But you want me to think you are."
Rhea leaned forward, gloved fingers resting gently on the table between them. "I want you to take a case, Mr. Stone. A relic's been stolen. Again. But this one's... different."
"I don't do that anymore," Jack replied.
"You do. You just pretend not to."
He said nothing.
Rhea slid a photograph across the table. Jack hesitated, then looked.
It wasn't just a relic.
It was the relic.The one tied to the Elara case. The one that had vanished with her—and ruined everything.
A golden tablet, ancient and pristine, covered in cuneiform inscriptions that historians called a map to forgotten gods. But there was something new about this photo. A detail he'd never seen before.
Scratched into the tablet's corner—deliberate and violent—was a symbol.
A raven, wings curled inwards.The mark of a syndicate, Jack thought he'd imagined during the worst months of his exile.The Raven Circle.
His hand tightened around the edge of the photo.
Rhea watched him. Calm. Controlled. Studying.
"You thought it ended, didn't you?" she asked."No," Jack whispered. "I thought she ended it."
Rhea leaned in closer. "What if I told you Elara Vane might still be alive?"
Jack didn't blink. Didn't breathe.
"I'd say," he answered, voice like gravel, "you're two years too late."
And somewhere in the quiet between them, the city exhaled.