Chapter 11 - The Crow’s Smile
Kieran didn't sleep.
He sat in the dark with his back to the crumbling wall, the strange sigils still glowing faintly behind him. Mira was curled up nearby, one hand wrapped around a knife, the other resting protectively over the pouch of unbound Cards. Her breathing was even.
Too even.
He knew she was faking it.
Neither of them trusted the dark anymore.
The city whispered in its sleep—distant screams, flares of light, and something worse beneath it all. A low, rhythmic pulse, like the heartbeat of a buried leviathan. Not sound. Not motion.
Just pressure.
Kieran had begun to feel it everywhere now. A weight behind his eyes. A second pulse behind his own heartbeat.
He stood quietly and moved to the shattered window.
The sun was rising.
Or trying to.
A copper haze bled across the sky, spilling through the Gate overhead like rust-colored tears. There was something wrong with the clouds—like they weren't moving, just stretched across the heavens, warped into impossible spirals.
Kieran watched the light bend, and thought of the words again.
The ones he heard sometimes in that dreamless black between seconds.
"Open the lock. Bleed the sky."
He didn't know what it meant.
But he was starting to suspect the Gate hadn't brought monsters through.
It was the monster.
By midday, they were moving again.
The city had grown quieter—too quiet.
The major factions were still carving territory, but they'd begun to slow. Groups vanishing. Outposts going silent. Rumors of something worse than beasts slipping through the cracks. Not fast. Not loud. Just precise.
Kieran kept to the shadows, Mira trailing him close. They passed husks of old fire fights. Scorched vehicles. Melted weapons. There were no bodies.
Just marks.
Burns in the shape of wings.
And feathers.
Jet-black.
Every one of them twisted.
"Crows," Mira muttered.
He nodded.
But these weren't the gangsters from before.
No tags. No crude flags. No laughter.
These were something else.
They found the first corpse near sundown.
It was suspended.
Hung upside down from a rusted streetlamp by a thread of black wire, neck twisted at an unnatural angle. No blood. Just a Card embedded in its chest.
Tier II.
Bound.
The sigil glowed faintly with every breath of wind, pulsing in sync with something deep beneath the concrete.
Kieran approached cautiously, eyes narrowed.
The man had been a Red Hand.
High rank.
Armed.
He didn't go down without a fight.
But he still died with a smile carved across his face.
Literally.
Mira swallowed. "Why the hell smile them?"
Kieran didn't respond.
He was reading the Card.
The writing had changed.
Words weren't supposed to change after binding.
But this one had.
New lines shimmered faintly, only visible if you didn't look directly at them. Like a whisper caught in your peripheral vision.
"The price is memory. The reward is clarity. You'll see the feathers fall."
He stepped back slowly.
This wasn't a Card anymore.
It was a warning.
Or an invitation.
Either way, the Crows had stopped playing games.
And they were watching.
That night, Kieran dreamt of feathers.
They fell in silence across a black sky, spinning like blades.
In the dream, he was walking through a hallway without walls. Just a path, suspended in nothing, lined by countless doors. Some open. Some locked.
Some weeping.
He stopped at one.
It was red.
Dripping.
He touched the handle and—
Woke up gasping.
His hands were wet.
Not with sweat.
But with blood.
His own.
A perfect circle cut into his palm, where a sigil had been traced while he slept.
Mira was still asleep.
The wound was already closing.
No pain.
No explanation.
Just a knowing.
A direction.
He looked up.
North.
Toward the ruins of the old university.
He didn't know why.
But something was waiting for him there.
Something old.
Something that remembered his name.