The city of Ashfall never slept, but it did bleed.
Rain fell in sheets across the cracked pavement of the industrial district, washing blood and grime into overflowing gutters. Neon signs flickered above shuttered factories and boarded-up tenements, casting sickly reflections on puddles that smelled of rust and decay. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed and died, swallowed by the perpetual storm that hung over the city like a shroud.
In the dim, sterile light of Eternal Rest Funeral Home, Elara Voss closed the eyes of the dead man on her table.
He had been thirty-two, according to the toe tag. Cause of death: multiple stab wounds to the torso and throat. The wounds were precise, surgical—clean entry, minimal tearing. Elara knew the pattern intimately. She had made them herself twelve hours earlier.
Her hands, steady and pale, moved with the practiced grace of someone who had spent more than a decade preparing bodies for burial. She wore black nitrile gloves, a dark green smock, and an expression that revealed nothing. Long raven-black hair was tied back in a severe knot, exposing the jagged scar that ran from her left temple to the corner of her jaw—a souvenir from the night everything changed.
She cleaned the blood from the corpse's neck with gentle, almost reverent strokes. To anyone watching, she was simply a mortician performing her duty. But as she worked, her mind replayed the kill.
The man had been a mid-level lieutenant in The Flock, the crime syndicate that ruled Ashfall's underworld. He had overseen a protection racket that targeted small businesses in the docks district—places like the one her father had worked until the day he was murdered. Elara had followed him for three nights, learning his habits, his routes, his weaknesses. Last night, in a dark alley behind a dive bar called The Crooked Beak, she had ended him.
No words. No warnings.
She had dropped from a fire escape, landed silently behind him, and driven a feather-shaped throwing blade into the base of his skull before he could turn. When he fell, she had knelt, drawn a second blade, and opened his throat to be certain. Then she had pinned a single black raven feather to his lapel with the first blade. Her calling card. Her promise.
Now, in the quiet of the funeral home, she finished suturing the Y-incision she had made for the autopsy the police had waived (another favor bought by The Flock). She placed a small cotton pad over the stitched throat, arranged the man's hands across his chest, and stepped back.
"You won't hurt anyone else," she whispered to the corpse. Her voice was low, flat, devoid of triumph or remorse. Only certainty.
Elara removed her gloves and disposed of them in a biohazard bin. The clock on the wall read 4:17 a.m. In two hours, the day shift would arrive. She would nod politely, exchange small talk about the weather, and no one would ever suspect that the quiet mortician with the scar was the nightmare haunting Ashfall's criminals.
She locked the preparation room behind her, walked through the empty chapel with its rows of empty chairs, and stepped out into the alley. The rain had eased to a drizzle. She pulled up the hood of her black raincoat and disappeared into the shadows.
Twenty-one years ago, when she was eight years old, Elara had hidden in a closet and watched three men beat her father to death with iron pipes. They had worn crow-feather pins on their jackets. One of them had knelt beside her father's broken body and tucked a single crow feather into his shirt pocket.
"For the protection you didn't pay," he had said.
Her father had been a dockworker, honest to a fault, trying to support a wife and daughter on wages that barely covered rent. The Flock had demanded half his pay. He had refused. So they killed him, slowly, while Elara covered her mouth to keep from screaming.
Her mother had died of grief less than a year later. Elara had been alone ever since.
That night, something inside her had snapped—not into pieces, but into a blade. She had vanished into Ashfall's underbelly, surviving on the streets, learning to fight in back-alley dojos and abandoned warehouses. Krav Maga from a disgraced Israeli mercenary. Muay Thai from a Thai boxer who had fled debts. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu from a former convict who taught in exchange for food. She trained until her hands bled, until pain became irrelevant, until she could kill with efficiency and silence.
At nineteen, she had crafted her first suit: matte-black tactical armor reinforced with carbon fiber, a cowl shaped like a raven's head with sharp, pointed "ears," and a long cape edged with flexible panels that allowed short glides from rooftops. She had taken the name The Black Raven—an inversion of The Flock's crow symbol. A promise that the hunters would become the hunted.
Now, ten years later, the city feared her. Criminals spoke of her in whispers. "Leave a black feather, and the Raven comes." The police called her a terrorist. The newspapers called her a myth. The poor and the powerless called her hope.
Elara reached the abandoned cathedral in the old quarter—a gothic monstrosity condemned after a fire twenty years ago. She slipped through a side door hidden behind ivy and descended a spiral staircase into what she called The Nest.
The underground lair was a fortress of her own design: reinforced concrete walls, surveillance monitors fed by hacked city cameras, weapon racks lined with feather blades and grappling gear, a training mat stained with years of sweat and blood. In one corner stood a wall covered in photographs and red string—her web of The Flock's hierarchy, with one name at the very top.
Victor Kane. King Crow.
She removed her raincoat and stood before the wall, staring at his photograph. Tall, gaunt, silver-haired, always impeccably dressed. The man who had unified Ashfall's criminal underworld fifteen years ago and now sat at its apex. The man who had ordered the hit on her father all those years ago.
"Soon," she said to the photograph.
A soft chime sounded from the computer console. A message from Wraith.
Wraith: New chatter on the dark channels. Flock moving a big shipment tomorrow night. Docks, Warehouse 17. High security. Want me to dig deeper?
Elara sat at the console and typed back.
Black Raven: Do it. I'll be there.
She leaned back in the chair, exhaustion finally settling into her bones. For a moment, she allowed herself to think of Mira Lang—the one person who had ever come close to piercing her armor.
Mira was a prosecutor in the District Attorney's office, thirty-five, sharp-tongued, and fiercely dedicated to justice the legal way. They had met six months ago when Elara left evidence anonymously on Mira's desk—photos, recordings, proof of police corruption tied to The Flock. Mira had tracked her down, cornered her on a rooftop, and instead of arresting her, had demanded cooperation.
Their first meeting had been electric. Mira had seen through the mask immediately, recognized the pain behind the cold gray eyes. Against all reason, they had begun a cautious relationship—stolen nights, whispered conversations in safe houses, moments of tenderness that Elara both craved and feared.
She couldn't afford attachments. Attachments got people killed.
But Mira was stubborn. And for the first time in years, Elara felt something dangerously close to hope.
She pushed the thought away, stood, and walked to the training mat. Dawn was still hours away. There was time for one more session—time to sharpen the blade that Ashfall had forged from a broken little girl.
Tomorrow night, Warehouse 17. Another step closer to King Crow.
Another feather would fall.
(End of Chapter 1)