The Marseille warehouse felt colder after the man's body went still.
Leo's hands clenched around the black hawk pendant until the metal bit into his palm. The weight of it wasn't just physical — it dragged memories from the shadows, half-formed images of a woman's voice, a lullaby hummed in the dark, a scent of gun oil and jasmine.
But that couldn't be real. He'd been told all his life — or all the life the Academy allowed him to remember — that his parents were dead before he could even open his eyes.
"Leo," Ava said softly, "what's going on?"
He shook his head. "I don't know. I didn't… I couldn't have…" He stopped. "We need to find her."
Jack gave him a look like he was reading every dangerous implication in that sentence. "And if she's the one running the Black Division?"
"Then I'll find out why."
---
The resistance contact in Marseille had more. The dead man — an informant codenamed Cedar — had been working undercover in the Black Division's European cell. His last transmission contained a location: coordinates in the Carpathian Mountains.
They flew in under cover of night in a resistance aircraft barely held together by welding patches and stubbornness. Snow fell in thick sheets as they landed on a frozen clearing.
Ava adjusted her rifle strap and scanned the treeline. "Who builds a base out here?"
"Someone who doesn't want visitors," Eleanor said.
---
The compound was half-buried in snow, its black steel walls vanishing into the mountain behind it. They watched it from a ridge through night-vision scopes. Guards moved in tight patterns, their gear uniform and pristine — not the mismatched scraps of mercenaries, but the discipline of a trained army.
"They've got automated turrets along the perimeter," Jack murmured. "We're not walking in there without a plan."
Leo kept his eyes on the central building — a dark spire that rose from the snow like an obsidian tooth. Something in his gut told him she was in there.
---
That night, Leo went alone.
Ava had argued. Jack had threatened to knock him out and chain him to the plane. Eleanor had simply said, "If you're going, be sure you're ready for what you find."
The snow was knee-deep as he made his way down the ridge. The cold bit through his jacket, each breath a cloud of ice. He skirted the perimeter, watching the turrets rotate in mechanical arcs, and found a blind spot where the cliff met the wall.
Inside, the corridors were lit by a dim, amber glow. Every sound echoed — his footsteps, the low hum of hidden machinery, the faint hiss of heated air.
---
She was waiting in a chamber that felt like a cathedral built for war. Steel columns rose into the darkness, and at the far end, on a dais of black marble, stood a woman in a long coat the color of midnight.
Her hair was silver, not from age but by nature, falling in waves around a face that seemed carved from the same material as the walls — cold, beautiful, unyielding.
"Leo," she said, and her voice was the same one from the scraps of memory.
He froze. "You're real."
"I'm more than real," Seraphine said, stepping down from the dais. "I'm the reason you survived long enough to be sold to the Academy. I kept you alive when they wanted you erased."
Leo's pulse pounded. "And then you let them take me."
Her gaze didn't waver. "I couldn't protect you then. But I can now."
---
She told him about Phoenix Ash.
"The Academy was weak," she said, pacing like a panther. "It existed at the mercy of governments and corporations. It was a weapon, yes, but a weapon with a leash. I broke that leash. The Black Division answers to no one. And with Phoenix Ash, we will reset the world's power structures in a single stroke."
"What does that mean?" Leo asked.
"It means the old order will burn. Every intelligence agency, every criminal empire, every warlord — reduced to ash. And from that ash, I will build something unbreakable."
Her eyes locked on his. "With you at my side."
---
"You're asking me to join you," Leo said.
"I'm telling you that you belong here," Seraphine replied. "The Academy forged you, but I made you possible. You are my blood, and together we could end the chaos forever."
Leo's mind spun. The offer was power — but power built on the same foundations as the place he'd destroyed.
"I need time," he said.
Seraphine studied him for a long moment, then smiled faintly. "Take it. But know this — the next time we meet, the world will already be burning."
---
When Leo slipped back into the snowstorm and up the ridge toward the waiting aircraft, his friends were there, their weapons drawn.
"What happened?" Ava demanded.
"She's leading the Black Division," Leo said. "And she's my mother."
Jack's eyes narrowed. "And you're not sure if you're with her or against her."
Leo didn't answer.