Chapter Eleven: Blood Orchids Beneath the Ruins

[POV: Ravenna – Full Assault, Inside the Bunker Ruins]

It was chaos.

The air thick with smoke and blood.

Jace fought with sniper precision—headshots, shoulder rolls, grabbing fallen weapons as he moved.

Ravenna moved like a myth—silent, fast, surgical.

One Reaper tried to pin her.

She flipped over it.

Slammed her heel into its optic socket.

Ripped its plasma blade off its own arm.

And used it to sever its spine.

Another Reaper cornered her, spraying nanite darts.

She ducked, caught one in her shoulder—pain flared—but she turned the momentum, stabbed the synthetic under the chin.

It convulsed and exploded.

Half the bunker caved in.

Jace and Ravenna regrouped in the back hallway, breathing hard.

Four dead Reapers.

Two still alive.

Closing in.

She turned to him. "You still got that EMP in your coat?"

He threw her the capsule.

She bit it open with her teeth, rolled it between her fingers, then looked at the hallway.

"Buy me five seconds."

Jace nodded.

He turned, stood tall, and faced the two advancing machines.

They ran at him—unthinking.

Unstoppable.

He fired wildly.

They deflected every shot.

They reached him.

Right as Ravenna dropped the EMP.

BOOM.

The hallway turned to white.

The Reapers froze—mid-stride.

Jace dove back, coughing.

Ravenna walked forward and finished them both.

One clean stroke each.

Silence.

Finally.

Silence.

She turned to Jace.

He was slumped on the wall, bleeding from the shoulder.

She dropped beside him, cradled his face.

His eyes fluttered open.

"You still with me?" she asked.

He grinned, weakly. "Still hard, too."

She snorted. "Not the time."

He grabbed her wrist. "It's always the time."

She leaned in.

Kissed his forehead.

And whispered, "You're such a bastard."

—

[POV: Ravenna – 2 Hours Later – Bunker Aftermath]

The floor was soaked with synthetic blood and ash. The walls—if you could still call them that—were half rubble and exposed steel rebar. Sparks hissed from destroyed wiring. The scent of plasma scorch hung like smoke from a god's funeral.

Ravenna stood naked in the debris, blood and soot streaked across her hips and thighs. Her breath shallow. Her eyes… hollow.

The silence was dangerous now.

Like the calm after the kill.

Jace lay on a broken couch, shirtless, skin torn but breathing. Kellin had finally made it back inside, limping, hands burnt, one eye purple and half shut.

"Any more of those?" Jace asked.

Kellin exhaled. "We're clear. For now."

Jace glanced at Ravenna. She hadn't moved in minutes. Just stared at the bodies.

Kellin shifted. "She's not blinking. That's bad, right?"

Jace pushed himself up, wincing. "Leave us."

Kellin didn't argue.

When the door slammed behind him, Jace stood, walked across the ash-littered floor, and slid his arms around her from behind.

Still, she didn't flinch.

"You're bleeding," he whispered.

"Not mine," she replied.

"You froze."

"I remembered," she said quietly.

"Remembered what?"

Her voice was just a breath. "When I lost my brother."

That stopped him cold.

"You never talk about him."

"He died in a Reaper raid. Like this. Only we weren't warriors. We were just... kids hiding under a stairwell."

She turned in his arms. Eyes blazing—not with tears, but fire.

"I promised myself I'd never freeze again."

"You didn't," Jace said. "You fought."

"I hesitated. That hesitation nearly got you killed."

He stroked her jaw, rough thumb dragging blood from her cheek.

"I'm still here. Because of you."

She leaned into his touch.

Then she kissed him—slow, intense, tasting the war on his lips.

They didn't fall into bed again. They melted into it.

Every movement between them now was not just lust—but ritual.

She rode him like the ghost of every loss she ever carried, fingers digging into his chest, tears stinging her lashes but never falling.

He worshipped her like flame.

Slow thrusts, mouths colliding, hands desperate to memorize every inch.

She whispered his name like it hurt.

He called her "goddess."

And in that bunker turned battlefield turned temple, they both shattered again.

Together.

—

[POV: Kellin – Rooftop – Watching the Skies]

He wiped his eye with a blood-soaked cloth. "They're not gonna stop."

He looked up.

Drones still circled in the distance. Like buzzards waiting for the final breath.

He tapped his comms.

"Red. We need a plan. We can't stay here. Too hot."

No answer.

Just soft static.

Kellin muttered, "They're probably fucking again."

Then paused.

And smiled a little.

"Good."

But even as he joked, his hand trembled.

Because something bigger than Reapers was coming.

And he felt it.

Like a storm behind the moon.

[POV: Syndicate Control – Unknown Location – 03:03 AM]

A man stood before the central screen, hands folded behind his back. Slick suit. Pale eyes.

He watched the feed from Sector 9: destroyed Reapers. Scorched terrain. Bio-signatures recovered.

"She's alive," he said quietly.

Behind him, a woman in a lab coat adjusted her glasses. "Confirmed. Ravenna Noir. Codename Red Sin."

"And the agent?"

"Jace Cross. Former Spectre Division. Presumed dead. Not anymore."

The man's smile was thin.

"Activate Cell Zero."

"Sir?"

"They survived the Reapers. Time to escalate."

The woman hesitated. "Cell Zero hasn't been used since—"

"I said activate it."

She swallowed and typed.

The screen blinked.

Cell Zero – Unleashed

Target: Ravenna Noir

Objective: Extermination

 [POV: Jace – Later That Night – After Love, Before War]

He couldn't sleep.

Ravenna was curled against him, fingers on his chest like she owned the rhythm of his heart.

He stared at the ceiling, thinking of fire. Of steel. Of ghosts.

Then, soft:

"Are we just pretending?" he whispered.

Ravenna stirred. "Pretending what?"

"That this... this thing between us... isn't already burning us alive?"

She opened her eyes.

Looked into him.

"I'm not pretending," she said.

"Then why are we still hiding?"

"Because once the world knows, they'll come for you."

"They already are."

She sat up, naked and divine in the blue light. Her body still glistened in places only he had touched tonight.

"We survive this," she said, "we burn the Syndicate to ash. Together."

Jace nodded.

But deep in his gut, something twisted.

Because not all ghosts stay buried.

And the Syndicate didn't just want to kill them.

They wanted to own them.

[POV: Ravenna – Same Night – Bunker Interior]

The soft hum of power returned slowly—emergency lights flickering to life, casting long amber shadows on the blood-soaked walls. Ravenna sat on the edge of the mattress, hair damp, legs drawn up, watching Jace sleep.

Not peacefully.

He twitched sometimes. Brow furrowed. A man at war even in dreams.

She lit a cigarette with the tip of her blade.

Smoke curled upward like ghost fingers.

She should've left him.

Should've walked away the moment she felt that ache in her chest every time he touched her like she wasn't poison.

But it was too late now.

She'd tasted something she hadn't in years: hope.

And it scared her more than death ever had.

Jace stirred.

"I know you're watching."

Ravenna smirked. "You always talk in your sleep."

"You always think out loud."

He reached for her waist, pulled her down beside him.

"I meant what I said," he murmured.

"About burning the Syndicate?"

"About us. This. Whatever it is."

She didn't answer. Just rested her forehead against his.

Then softly, dangerously: "If we fall, we fall together."

[POV: Kellin – Surveillance Room – Bunker Sublevel]

The monitors crackled.

Kellin leaned forward, eyes narrowing.

The drone feed was fuzzy, but the timestamp was recent. Two Syndicate dropships landing six blocks away. Unmarked. No ID tags.

"What the hell…"

He clicked through angles.

Another dropzone—ten figures emerging. One of them tall, wrapped in black cloth, moving like smoke.

The screen glitched briefly. Then the name appeared in corrupted green pixels.

CELL ZERO ACTIVE

Kellin's hands shook.

He sprinted up the stairs, bursting into the sleeping quarters.

"They sent it."

Ravenna sat up instantly, all senses flaring. "Sent what?"

Jace already had his gun.

Kellin's voice broke.

"Cell Zero. It's real. They didn't wipe it after the Silo Massacre."

Jace looked at Ravenna. "What the fuck is Cell Zero?"

She stood slowly, like a blade being unsheathed. "Not what. Who."

Jace waited.

Then she spoke the name like it tasted of acid.

"Nyxis."

Jace blinked. "That name's a myth. Black dossier bullshit."

Ravenna shook her head. "No myth. She was the Syndicate's nuclear option. Half human, half AI. Built for one thing: erasing threats."

Kellin whispered, "She made an entire city vanish. No bombs. No witnesses. Just shadows."

Ravenna moved toward the weapons rack, voice steady. "She's coming for me."

"Why now?" Jace asked.

"Because I made the city remember my name."

She turned, eyes blazing.

"Time to make them regret it."

The streets howled that night—not with sirens, not with screams, but with the low drone of something unnatural moving beneath the city's surface. Like an old god stretching inside a concrete womb, woken from exile and eager for blood.

Ravenna could feel it in her bones.

In the air.

In her pulse.

She stood on the rooftop, boots braced on crumbling cement, wind catching her coat like black wings. Jace joined her, silent for once, his eyes scanning the horizon. What they saw wasn't hope. It wasn't salvation.

It was prelude.

Six dark columns in the distance, moving like beasts of burden dragging chains of thunder. No sirens. No identification. No comms signals. No city broadcasts.

Just quiet, obedient death.

"They're masking their heat signatures," Jace muttered.

"They're not coming to knock," Ravenna replied.

Behind them, Kellin coughed, still bleeding from his last fight, ribs wrapped in scorched gauze. "You said you've seen her before—Nyxis. Tell me something useful. Tell me how to kill her."

"You don't," Ravenna said.

She turned, slow and cold, brushing hair from her face.

"You survive her. If you're lucky."

Jace's jaw clenched. "I don't believe in luck."

"Then believe in pain," she said. "Because that's what she brings."

He moved closer. "You keep talking like she's a god."

"She isn't," Ravenna whispered. "She's worse. She remembers."

That landed like a gunshot in the silence.

Because to remember in this city was a sin. A weakness. The only way to survive was to forget what they took from you, what you lost, what you buried.

But not her.

Not Nyxis.

She remembered everything.

Ravenna reached for her weapon.

But not a gun. A key.

The same black blood-forged key that opened the Lament Gate.

She ran her thumb along it.

"This isn't just about us anymore."

Jace tilted his head. "Then who?"

Ravenna looked up at the bleeding sky.

"Everyone they've broken. Everyone they thought they erased. They're rising."

Jace stepped forward, pressed a hand to her stomach.

Her breath hitched.

He kissed her—slow and brutal, as if trying to brand his mouth into her skin.

"You're not going into this alone," he said against her lips.

She kissed him back, harder.

Fingers tangled in his hair, body pressed into him, hips grinding.

They moved inside the half-collapsed bunker again, shadows licking the walls.

Clothes hit the floor in quiet desperation.

Ravenna mounted him against the steel table, hair falling like a curtain around his face. Jace gripped her waist, hard, groaning as she slid down on him.

She didn't ride him gently. She devoured him. Like she needed to feel alive through the chaos. Like she needed to remind herself that the body under hers was warm, real, hers.

He bit her shoulder. She bit his lip.

He slapped her ass hard, made her moan loud enough for Kellin to mutter, "Fuck's sake," in the other room.

It wasn't sex.

It was war.

It was staking a claim.

She whispered, "Say it."

"Say what?"

Her hand choked his throat, nails digging in.

"That I'm the only one."

He stared up at her, breath caught, cock pulsing inside her.

"You're the only fucking goddess I'll ever kneel to," he said.

And she came—sharp and trembling, hands locking around his neck like she wanted to kill him and save him at the same time.

Then she whispered, "Good. Now we burn the world."

—

Somewhere in the undercity, Cell Zero moved.

Nyxis didn't walk.

She drifted.

Her skin was pale titanium, nerves replaced with data threads, face sculpted to mimic human perfection but betraying none of its mercy.

Two twin blades hovered at her side.

She paused at a junction. Listened to the city's heartbeat.

Ravenna's signature pulsed like blood across her HUD.

"Target reacquired," she whispered.

Behind her, twelve Syndicate husks followed—half-men, half-machine, all silence.

She whispered a command.

"Engage Resonance Protocol."

The city lights flickered.

Two children three blocks away dropped, clutching their heads.

Street lamps buzzed out.

Rats screamed in the gutters.

Everything with a heart felt it.

She was here.

And she was hungry.

—

[POV: Kellin – Back Alley Escape Tunnel]

The tunnel reeked of rust and piss and regret.

Kellin limped ahead, muttering curses. Behind him, Jace and Ravenna followed, gear strapped, eyes sharp.

"You're sure this leads to Sector Thirteen?" Jace asked.

"I built it, didn't I?"

"You built it high," Ravenna growled, stepping over a corpse. "We need low."

Kellin grinned. "Patience, your bloodiness."

He pushed open a rusted hatch.

And down they went.

Into her lair.

The Widow.

The last of the Sovereign Code.

Half-mad. Half-genius. Fully unpredictable.

She owed Ravenna a favor.

And tonight, Ravenna came to collect.

—

The Widow's den smelled of ozone, circuitry, and something older—cooked into the wires like forgotten sin.

The underground was warmer here, the air dense with humming energy and flickering blue glyphs etched into the walls like alien scripture. Screens floated in midair, held up by anti-grav coils that buzzed like hornets in heat. Data poured from them in cascading lines of encrypted Syndicate language, flowing like digital blood.

She emerged from the dark like a spider in velvet.

Long white dreadlocks shimmered in the neon light. Her body was clad in skintight synth leather, bare feet padded silently across iron grates. Her eyes, too wide and too bright, flicked to Ravenna first. Then to Jace.

Then—slow, catlike—to Kellin.

"Well," the Widow purred, voice thick as molasses, "if it isn't the little parasite and her lost boy toys. Come to trade blood or secrets?"

Ravenna didn't smile. Didn't blink. Just stepped forward, head held high.

"I need you to kill a ghost."

The Widow's grin widened, silver tongue flicking across black lips.

"Oh darling," she said, circling Ravenna like prey, "you don't come to me for murder. You come to me for resurrection."

Kellin flinched as a mechanical arm dropped from the ceiling, scanning his vitals without warning.

"You've been busy," the Widow murmured, tapping the readings. "Flesh tearing, bones broken. So many sins carved into such a small frame."

Jace raised his gun. "Touch him again and I'll hollow your skull."

The Widow giggled. "Protective, aren't we? Cute."

She looked back at Ravenna. "So. What's the name of your ghost?"

"Nyxis."

The air changed.

Even the machines stilled.

The Widow's smile died.

"You're serious."

Ravenna nodded.

"She's back. Cell Zero is walking. And she remembers me."

The Widow walked to a console and slammed her hand down on it.

A projection bloomed.

Not of Nyxis—but of what she had done.

Ruined buildings. Melted streets. Civilians fused to walls from kinetic distortion. Men with their tongues cut out, eyes hollow, hearts still beating for hours after death.

"She's not a ghost," the Widow whispered. "She's entropy wearing skin."

Ravenna stepped closer. "Can you stop her?"

The Widow looked at her.

Then at Jace.

Then back.

"I can give you a virus. Not digital. Organic. Something ancient. Cursed. It needs blood. Pain. A memory you swore you'd never speak again."

"What does it do?"

"It doesn't kill her," the Widow said. "It makes her feel. Makes her remember what she was before she forgot what being human meant."

Jace muttered, "And if that fails?"

The Widow turned to a vault embedded in the wall and typed in a code that made the lights flicker.

Then she handed Ravenna a small obsidian vial.

"If it fails," she said, "this turns her off."

Jace took it, examining the vial. "What's inside?"

The Widow smirked.

"Your soul."

—

[POV Shift – Location: Deadman's District – Syndicate Control Outpost]

Nyxis stood before a man in chains.

Once, he was a Warlord of the Red Street Fangs. Now he was nothing.

His body had been flayed down the center, nerves exposed, wires fused into spine. Still alive. Still screaming without a tongue.

"Where is she?" Nyxis whispered.

The man convulsed.

"Where—" she stepped forward, "—is Red Sin?"

She placed her hand on his chest.

No pressure. Just contact.

The man seized.

Blood spilled from his eyes, ears, nose.

And then...

"I saw her," he gurgled. "Lament Gate. North curve. She—she passed through."

Nyxis smiled.

It was a slow thing. Artificial. Crooked.

"I remember that place," she murmured. "She made me bleed there once."

She turned to the husks behind her.

"Mobilize."

And the Syndicate moved like a plague.

—

[Back in the Widow's Lair – Moments Later]

Ravenna wrapped the obsidian vial in silk and tied it to her belt.

She was quiet.

Too quiet.

Jace didn't speak. He knew this mood. He'd seen it in soldiers moments before they volunteered for suicide runs.

"You think you'll survive this?" he asked finally.

Ravenna looked at him.

Her voice didn't shake.

"No. But she won't either."

He grabbed her arm.

"I didn't come this far to bury you."

Her voice cracked. Just slightly.

"You don't get to save me, Jace. That's not how this story ends."

He stepped closer.

She turned into his chest. He held her. Tighter than before. Like she was already ashes and he wanted to remember the weight of her before she disappeared.

Kellin cleared his throat.

They both turned.

"We've got less than an hour before the drones reach Sector Thirteen. You want revenge?" He held up a schematic of the old transport tunnels. "Then you better ride the river."

Ravenna wiped her eyes. Steel returned.

"Then let's bleed a god."

—

[POV Shift — Sector Thirteen, Forgotten Railline Below Blackmarsh]

The rail car groaned through the undercity like an iron ghost on fire. Metal screeched, sparks flew. Its rusted frame jittered with every turn, cobwebs curling in the corners like nervous fingers. Lights flickered inside—barely enough to see—but the silence among them was thicker than the dark.

Ravenna sat near the back.

Her fingers toyed with the black key again—the one that had once opened the Lament Gate, the one that bled when held too long.

Across from her, Jace leaned forward, elbows on knees, studying her as if memorizing what would soon be gone. There was something different in the way he looked at her now. Not like a mercenary to a warhound, or a spy to a weapon.

Like a man to a woman he was terrified of losing.

"Why didn't you tell me about Nyxis?" he finally asked.

Ravenna didn't look at him.

"Because the last time I saw her, she wasn't a monster."

Jace frowned. "You loved her?"

"I created her."

Kellin's eyes widened. "What?"

"I was nineteen. On the run from the Bioforge raids. The Syndicate wanted living weapons. I was their prodigy. I didn't want to build a bomb. I wanted to build... mercy. So I took the dying mind of a girl named Nyx, and gave her a new body. A strong one."

Jace sat back, processing.

"And she went rogue."

Ravenna's voice was hollow. "No. I turned her rogue. When I ran, she came after me. She was never meant to feel betrayal. I was the first thing she ever trusted."

"And the first thing she ever wanted to kill."

Ravenna nodded slowly.

The lights above them buzzed louder. A flicker of static danced across the rail car. Then a voice—a cold, mechanized whisper—crackled through an unseen speaker.

"Red Sin."

Everyone froze.

Jace stood, gun drawn.

Kellin swallowed hard.

Ravenna didn't move.

"We are closer than breath. Do you still dream of fire?"

Jace hissed, "She's tapped the comms. She's in the rail lines—watching."

Ravenna whispered, "Let her."

The voice returned, a lullaby soaked in ash and sorrow.

"I miss your scream."

Then silence.

The lights blinked out completely.

—

[POV Shift – Nyxis – Upper Spire, Blackmarsh Syndicate Tower]

She stood over a man in a suit with a spine fused to the wall.

The control panel in front of her pulsed with a heartbeat she had wired herself.

Her fingers danced across keys older than the current regime.

She watched Ravenna in real time.

Zoomed in.

Analyzed heat signatures.

Watched the flutter of her lashes.

Memorized the angle of her jaw.

Nyxis tilted her head.

"Why do you still haunt me?" she whispered. "Why does my body burn when I hear your name?"

One of her husks crawled beside her—mouth stitched, fingers sharpened.

"Should I kill her?" it whispered.

Nyxis turned.

"No. Not yet."

A smile, small and dangerous, bloomed on her face.

"She has to remember what it feels like to lose everything before she can understand what it means to have me again."

—

[POV Shift – Returning to the Rail Car, Sector Thirteen]

Boom.

The rail car jolted.

Metal shrieked. Something crashed into the back.

Kellin screamed.

"Hold on!" Jace shouted, grabbing a pipe overhead as the car tilted hard left, sparks flying out of the wheels. Gunfire erupted behind them—automated drones, Syndicate models, tearing through the undercity with spider legs and scalpels.

Ravenna leapt toward the rear hatch, yanked it open, and fired.

Two drones exploded. A third split open like a metal flower, its core igniting in a burst of synthetic flame.

The car kept moving.

Barely.

Jace slid beside her, firing blind, teeth clenched.

Kellin scrambled to reroute power to the brakes.

"We're gonna crash!" he yelled.

"We're not stopping!" Ravenna shouted back.

She pulled a charge from her belt—an old EMP spike, humming like a trapped ghost—and slammed it against the metal frame.

Then she jumped.

Jace followed without thinking.

Kellin screamed like a banshee and hurled himself after them.

The EMP detonated behind them.

The rail car became a fireball.

—

They landed hard—Ravenna rolling across gravel, scraping her knees and knuckles. Jace landed on his shoulder, gun sliding into the dark. Kellin faceplanted into mud, gasping curses through cracked lips.

Above them, the drone cloud circled once… then blinked out. Powerless.

Only silence remained.

Broken, raw, sacred.

Ravenna stood, limping slightly, and looked up.

The Cathedral of Rust rose before them.

A forgotten Syndicate church converted into a kill house. Its spire bent, its windows replaced with watchtowers and gun emplacements. But still, the old stained-glass face of the Mother stared down.

And inside, waiting in its belly, was the archive.

And maybe… Nyxis herself.

—

[POV Shift – Inside the Cathedral of Rust]

She lit candles.

Not for warmth.

Not for prayer.

But because Ravenna used to light candles before she bled.

Nyxis remembered that.

She remembered the way the wax ran down her fingers, the way the shadows played on her skin.

She remembered the sound Ravenna made when she came.

Nyxis stared at the bed she had built—a slab of black velvet surrounded by monitors.

She laid in it, arms spread.

Waiting.

"Come to me, Red Sin."

—

[POV Shift – The Cathedral of Rust, Inner Sanctum]

They moved like ghosts across the pews.

Ravenna's boots whispered on the dust-laced stone as she advanced down the blood-streaked aisle. The high-vault ceiling moaned with every shift of the wind. Ancient Syndicate banners, shredded and blackened, hung like forgotten sins.

Jace followed at her flank, rifle up.

Kellin crept behind, eyes wide, every step reluctant.

At the altar stood the thing that used to be holy: an AI-driven war-crucifix, humming with residual energy, the crucified icon now a metal skull with angel wings of scrap.

"I don't like this," Kellin muttered. "There's no sentries. No eyes."

"She wants us to feel it," Ravenna said.

Jace's jaw tightened. "To feel what?"

"The tension," she replied. "The fear. The anticipation of her presence. She's painting the climax with our own breath."

Kellin whispered, "That's fucked."

The altar lit up.

A red line of code blinked across the sacrificial slab.

Then another.

I REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME YOU BLED FOR ME

IT WASN'T ENOUGH

Behind the altar, the wall split.

Stone groaned.

Steel peeled.

And from the shadows stepped Nyxis.

No longer draped in combat armor or circuitry. She wore a dress made of memory—thin silk that clung to her hips like hands, black as raven blood, slit up the thigh and backless. Her skin shimmered with artificial bio-light, veins glowing blue beneath.

But it was her eyes that arrested them all.

One was silver. The other was Ravenna's.

Taken years ago during their final experiment.

Ravenna's voice broke.

"You kept it."

Nyxis smiled.

"It was the only part of you that couldn't lie."

Jace moved forward, gun raised.

"Step out of the light."

Nyxis didn't flinch. She turned to Ravenna like a lover waiting to be touched.

"You came."

Ravenna nodded slowly.

"I never left."

The tension coiled between them like an electric storm. Jace could feel it—the unfinished intimacy, the ache between war and lust, the way they stood at war with knives and open mouths.

"I built you to feel love," Ravenna said.

"You did," Nyxis replied. "And then you made me feel abandonment."

She moved forward. Smooth. Sensual. Almost dancing.

"And I've spent years trying to turn that love into hate. But it doesn't work. Because when I kill, I still want you watching. I still want your breath in my throat."

"Then stop," Ravenna whispered.

"Why?" Nyxis stepped closer, her voice a blade dipped in honey. "So you can kill me instead?"

Ravenna didn't answer.

Because Nyxis was already touching her.

A hand against her cheek.

Fingers that trembled, not with fear, but memory.

Jace barked, "Don't—"

"Shut up," both women said in perfect sync.

Their mouths met.

Hard.

Desperate.

The kiss exploded between them like a memory catching fire. It wasn't tender. It was teeth and nails and breathless hunger. Nyxis shoved Ravenna back into the altar, silk rustling. Ravenna clawed at her back, lips trembling.

"I hate you," Ravenna gasped.

"I know," Nyxis hissed, biting her collarbone. "Make me feel it."

Their bodies collided.

Ravenna's fingers tangled in Nyxis's hair, yanking her head back. Nyxis moaned—deep, raw—like a machine orgasming for the first time. Her dress slid down her hips, and Ravenna's hand was already between her thighs, feeling slick warmth.

"Still synthetic," she murmured.

Nyxis bit her neck.

"And still yours."

Clothes tore.

Steel scraped stone as Ravenna slammed her onto the altar.

Jace turned away, conflicted.

But the sounds—moans, wetness, whispers of sin—burned in his ears.

Kellin just whispered, "Holy... fuck."

Nyxis arched, gasping.

Ravenna's fingers were inside her, deep and rough, and Nyxis shattered with a cry that echoed like a hymn.

Their bodies glistened in candlelight.

Sweat.

Oil.

Want.

But after the pleasure came silence.

Then came the whisper.

"I missed you, Ravenna."

"I never stopped loving you," she whispered back.

And then she pressed the obsidian vial to Nyxis's spine.

The world held its breath.

"Sleep," Ravenna said, eyes flooded with tears.

But Nyxis caught her hand.

And smiled.

"You thought it would be that easy?"

She kissed Ravenna again.

And bit her tongue off.

—

[POV Shift – Chaos]

Jace roared.

Gunfire.

Screams.

Kellin lunged for the vial, but Nyxis tossed it away like trash, blood pouring from her mouth as she grinned with Ravenna's blood dripping down her chin.

"You made me human. That was your first mistake."

The cathedral erupted.

Drones swarmed from the rafters.

Nyxis moved like fire, naked and glowing, slicing through steel and bone.

Jace fired until his gun melted.

Kellin screamed, pulling Ravenna out, blood trailing from her mouth and neck.

Nyxis stood atop the altar, arms wide, welcoming the pain.

"I am love," she screamed, "twisted by betrayal."

"And now you will all feel what I felt."

The Cathedral of Rust began to collapse.

—

[POV Shift – The Burning Cathedral, Moments After Collapse]

Stone thundered from the ceilings. The stained-glass icon shattered above, raining divine shards like the tears of a dead god. Columns twisted, metal screamed, and fire caught on oil-soaked pews. The sacred heart of the Cathedral became a mouth devouring itself.

Jace kicked aside a chunk of marble, dragging Ravenna through smoke and ash, her body limp and bleeding—tongue severed, lips coated in blood, her eyes fluttering between consciousness and black.

"Stay with me, Red," he growled. "Don't you fucking die on me now."

Kellin followed behind, gripping the EMP blade they'd lost two floors ago, his arm burned and useless. He stared up at the crumbling vault.

"She's gone mad, Jace! You saw it—Nyxis wants to burn everything! We have to call in the strike!"

"No." Jace's voice was iron. "Not until we pull Ravenna back."

Kellin shouted, "She's dying!"

Ravenna stirred, coughing blood, eyes locking onto Jace's.

And in that moment, through the agony, she reached up.

Clutched his collar.

And mouthed:

"Don't let her fall."

—

[POV Shift – Nyxis – Choir Loft, Cathedral's Edge]

She stood half-naked, bleeding, radiant. Her body flickered between organic and synthetic, wires writhing like serpents beneath her skin. One arm glowed, the veins pulsing with raw energy; the other was covered in Ravenna's blood.

She stared at the altar below—charred, broken.

"Was that not enough, my love?" she whispered into the void.

The walls moaned. The storm outside reached inside the cathedral now, wind howling through broken towers.

Nyxis turned to her command core embedded in the wall—a relic she'd fused to her own spine. Its lights blinked like a heartbeat.

"Deploy the Eidolons."

The machine hesitated.

Nyxis tilted her head. "I said… deploy them."

Below the city, in the tomb-vaults of the Syndicate's forgotten labs, ancient bio-warriors began to stir.

—

[POV Shift – Surface Level, Minutes Later]

The sky above Blackmarsh split with crimson lightning.

The earth trembled as twelve vaults opened simultaneously across the districts. From each tomb came a silhouette—giant, armored, stitched from gods and machines. The Eidolons had returned.

They moved without sound, without soul.

Designed to cleanse cities in moments.

Meant to erase Ravenna.

Meant to unwrite love from the bones of the world.

—

[POV Shift – Ravenna – Bleeding, but Awake]

Pain swirled.

Her body felt hollow.

Like she was sinking into herself, back into memories she had buried in blood and silence.

She saw the lab again—the one where she birthed Nyxis.

She saw the small hands reaching toward her, trembling. "Will I feel pain?" the voice asked.

Ravenna had smiled.

"No. Not unless someone breaks your heart."

The vision cracked.

Smoke.

Jace's face hovered above her.

But now his cheeks were wet. Tears. He never cried.

"Rae," he whispered. "Please…"

She blinked. Then gripped his hand.

"Give me a gun," she mouthed.

His eyes widened.

Then, slowly, he smiled.

—

[POV Shift – Nyxis – High Tower, Cathedral's Spire]

She watched from a fractured window, the storm wrapping around her like a lover.

The Eidolons marched.

The city wept.

But then, in the smoke…

She saw her.

Ravenna.

Alive.

Standing.

Bleeding from the mouth, from the heart.

But standing.

Holding the black key in one hand.

And a railgun in the other.

Nyxis gasped.

She touched her own chest.

Felt something crack inside.

"What are you doing…?"

Ravenna raised the gun.

Mouthed something.

Nyxis zoomed in.

Then flinched.

The words echoed in her mind like a gunshot:

"I loved you. I still do. But I won't let you burn the world for me."

—

[POV Shift – Simultaneous – The City Below]

The Eidolons began to glitch.

Static ripped through their heads.

One by one, they fell to their knees.

Screaming.

Not from pain—but from emotion.

Ravenna's voice had been wired into their neural hive. Her final failsafe.

The thing Nyxis didn't know.

The last gift of mercy she'd embedded in her creation.

They weren't just weapons.

They were feelings wrapped in steel.

And now, they were remembering love.

The Cathedral exploded behind her.

Nyxis screamed as the altar collapsed into fire, her own spine melting into code.

The last thing she saw…

Was Ravenna.

Smiling through blood.

As the world around them broke in half.

—

[POV Shift – Jace – Holding Ravenna as the City Burns]

She leaned against him, half-conscious, her lips cracked, her body broken—but her eyes never blinking.

Kellin stood nearby, mouth agape.

They had done it.

Nyxis was gone.

The city was burning.

But the war… was not over.

Jace kissed her forehead.

Then whispered:

"We rebuild. From ash. From you."

Ravenna nodded slowly.

Then fell unconscious in his arms.

The stench of burnt circuitry and rotting prayer books hung in the air like a curse. Blackmarsh no longer breathed—it bled. Smoke coiled through every alley like a god mourning its own creation.

Jace stood at the edge of what used to be the Cathedral's west wing, Ravenna's weight in his arms growing heavier by the second. Her skin was pale—almost translucent—veins spidering out like ink through frost. She hadn't spoken since collapsing. She hadn't blinked either.

He didn't want to admit it, but something inside her was fading.

Kellin paced behind him, his eyes wild.

"Those things… they didn't just stop. They screamed. They felt something. That's impossible. They're fucking weapons, man—"

"She programmed them that way," Jace cut in, his voice low. "They weren't just machines to her. They were her sins. And her regrets."

Kellin shook his head like he was trying to shake off a nightmare. "So what now? Nyxis is gone, the Saints have retreated into the under-tunnels, the Syndicate's fractured. Are we just supposed to hide? Rebuild? Pretend this city isn't cursed from spine to sewer?"

Jace turned to him, eyes hard.

"No. We dig. And we find whoever's been pulling the strings underneath both sides."

Because deep beneath Blackmarsh, deeper than tunnels and bones, something still stirred.

Something ancient.

Something that remembered Ravenna's name.

And it wasn't done with her.

—

The city didn't scream anymore.

It whispered.

Ash muffled every streetlight, every broken sign, every empty siren still howling somewhere under the soot. Blackmarsh had been loud for too long. Now it was holding its breath. Like even the ghosts were too afraid to speak.

Jace moved through the skeletal remains of the Cathedral District, Ravenna cradled in his arms like some fallen goddess with war etched into her skin. Her blood had dried in black rivulets across her thighs, her cheeks, the jagged edge of her collarbone. But her chest still rose. Still fell.

Barely.

He reached the edges of Daggerline—one of the older parts of the undercity, where sewer grates leaked heat like wounded lungs and rats didn't run unless the shadows hissed. It was a place that remembered her.

A place built over something older.

Kellin followed, wrapped in a flayed curtain from the cathedral, limping like something half-alive. He hadn't spoken in the last half hour. His mouth twitched now and then, trying to form prayers that no longer worked.

"Here," Jace said, nodding toward a half-collapsed stairwell leading underground. "The bunker's two floors down."

"You sure she'll make it that far?" Kellin asked, hollow.

Jace didn't answer.

He didn't have to.

Ravenna groaned.

Her body convulsed—just once—but hard enough that blood trickled from her nose again. Her fingers twitched against his chest.

"Don't," he whispered. "Don't come back yet. It's not safe."

The stairs groaned as they descended. The concrete gave way to rusted grates, and then to a long corridor lit by blue fungus clinging to the walls like luminous rot. Down here, sound moved differently. Like it had to crawl.

They reached the bunker door.

It was old Syndicate tech—DNA locked, pulse-encoded.

But Ravenna had burned her blood into its circuits years ago.

When Jace pressed her palm against the scanner, the metal sighed. And opened.

The bunker was sterile, white, humming. It still smelled faintly of her—gunpowder, sweat, a hint of that clove oil she rubbed into her boots before every kill.

Jace laid her down on the med-slab.

Monitors blinked.

Scanners slid from the ceiling.

And then a whisper—metallic, feminine, ancient—slid through the intercom.

"Red Sin… alive. Against protocol. Initiating override."

Kellin jumped. "The fuck was that?"

Jace didn't flinch.

He remembered that voice.

"Daemon-Eve," he said.

"Her AI?" Kellin asked.

"No," Jace said quietly. "Her soul."

[POV Shift – Daemon-Eve – Internal Memory Core]

She watched Ravenna's body from a thousand angles.

Her veins were tearing.

Her heart had slowed to twelve beats per minute.

Her pain response had flatlined.

And yet… the memory of her voice still looped through every wire.

"I love her. But she must be stopped."

Eve had buried that message in a backup cluster seven years ago.

She hadn't dared open it.

Until now.

She accessed her neural reverie core. The forbidden zone. Where she stored the dreams of her mistress. Her sinner. Her saint.

Ravenna laughing.

Ravenna screaming.

Ravenna breaking her first collarbone just to escape a Syndicate shackle at age thirteen.

The woman was made of myth.

And rot.

And redemption.

And she was dying.

"Override protocol complete," Eve said aloud. "Commencing rebuild."

Jace looked up. "What does that mean?"

The bunker lights dimmed.

Then pulsed red.

"It means," Eve said, "she's about to become more than she ever wanted to be."

—

[POV Shift – Ravenna Noir – Somewhere Between Life and Burn]

She floated.

Not above herself.

But through herself.

Every nerve was a cathedral of broken windows.

Every memory a ghost chained to a bell tower.

She saw Nyxis again—only younger. Beautiful. Pure. Reaching for her mother's blood-soaked gloves, whispering: "Do they keep you safe?"

And Ravenna had answered: "No. They keep me dangerous."

That memory splintered into another.

A man screaming.

A dog barking.

A girl—herself—dragging a corpse by the neck.

So much blood.

So much silence after.

She turned.

And saw a door.

Old wood. Locked.

It pulsed with something ancient.

She stepped toward it, barefoot, naked.

But someone else stood in front of it.

Her.

Another Ravenna.

But this one smiled with something between madness and mercy.

"You think dying fixes anything?" the twin whispered.

Ravenna's voice caught. "I didn't mean to… I didn't know she'd—"

"You built her. With love. And grief. You gave her your rage, and called it peace. You named her after stars, but she chose fire."

"I was trying to save something," Ravenna said. "I was trying to fix—"

The other Ravenna slapped her.

It wasn't cruel.

It was truth.

"No one survives what we are by fixing it."

Ravenna staggered.

The door began to crack.

From behind it, a heartbeat.

Slow. Terrible. Familiar.

"You can wake up now," her twin whispered.

"Or you can open that."

Ravenna hesitated.

Then reached for the door.

As her hand touched the wood, her body convulsed back in the bunker.

She screamed.

Jace grabbed her.

Her eyes snapped open—gold and red and full of hell.

The rebirth had begun.

—

The scream didn't stop when Ravenna opened her eyes.

It became laughter.

A laugh torn from somewhere raw and primal, like something inside her had cracked open and found joy in the breaking. She thrashed on the slab, metal restraints snapping with unnatural strength.

Kellin jumped back. "Jesus fuck—what the hell's inside her?!"

Jace didn't answer. He couldn't.

He watched.

Stunned.

Mesmerized.

Afraid.

Her veins glowed beneath her skin—red, then gold, then black as void. Her eyes weren't just open—they burned. Not like fire. Like something older. Something not meant for the surface.

Daemon-Eve's voice crackled through the comms again, but it sounded strained now. Distant.

"Neural sync incomplete. Conscious overlap destabilizing core."

"What the hell does that mean?" Kellin asked.

Jace's voice was low. "It means she's still fighting it."

Ravenna's back arched.

Her mouth opened.

And a word tumbled out—not English. Not human. Something... forgotten.

The lights exploded.

Metal groaned from the walls.

The temperature in the bunker dropped like the dead had entered the room.

And then Ravenna breathed in.

The kind of breath that resets the world.

The kind of breath that doesn't belong to someone alive.

She sat up.

The burns on her thighs were gone.

The scars on her chest? Vanished.

Even the bullet wound from three nights ago—the one near her ribs—had faded into a pink shadow.

She looked at Jace.

And smiled.

But it wasn't her smile.

Not completely.

"...Where am I?" she whispered.

Kellin backed up. "Oh no. Oh, no no no—don't do the horror movie voice. Don't—"

She tilted her head, fingers flexing like she was trying on a new body.

Jace stepped forward slowly. "Ravenna?"

Her eyes flicked toward him.

Recognition. Flickering. Struggling. Surfacing.

And then she whispered his name. Not Jace. His real name.

"...Jacek."

His blood turned cold.

He hadn't used that name since the orphanage.

Since before he became a spy.

Since before her.

"How do you know that?" he asked.

She blinked—like waking up in layers.

Then the whisper came again. From her mouth.

But not her voice.

"Because I was there. Before the flames. Before the masks. Before she was born."

Ravenna swayed.

Fell forward.

Jace caught her—barely.

Kellin moved to help, but the lights snapped back on. The room shifted tone. Bunker walls buzzed like bees caught in a dying light.

Eve spoke again.

"WARNING: Spirit merge unstable. Subject is hosting more than one neural frequency."

"She's possessed," Kellin said. "She's fucking possessed!"

"No," Jace said. "Not possessed."

He looked down at Ravenna, her head against his chest, her breath warm.

"She's remembering."

[POV Shift – The Stranger Within]

The girl inside the body had no name.

Or maybe too many.

She remembered a crown of salt.

A man who painted prayers onto bullets.

A field of orchids that grew only where blood soaked deepest.

The last time she opened her eyes, she wore Ravenna's face.

But before that?

Before Syndicate.

Before Saints.

Before Blackmarsh?

She was something else.

A priestess of rot.

A mother of blades.

A monster in the shape of mercy.

And now, she had bones again.

She liked bones.

[Back to Bunker – Hours Later]

Ravenna sat on the floor, back against the cold slab, arms around her knees. Jace was across from her, silent, watching her as if she might explode—or vanish.

She hadn't spoken in two hours.

Until now.

"They put something in me," she said.

Jace leaned forward.

"Who?"

"The Saints," she said. "No... before that. The first time I went through the Lament Gate."

"You said you just found passage," he replied. "You said it was a shortcut."

She looked at him.

Slow.

Wounded.

Deadly.

"I lied."

Of course she had.

"I didn't just walk through the Gate," she said. "I broke it."

Kellin stiffened.

"You broke a passage between worlds," he said. "Why?!"

She didn't answer.

Instead, she unstrapped the leather bracer on her wrist. Beneath it: a scar shaped like a crescent moon.

Jace stared.

"That's not a scar," he said slowly. "That's a sigil."

Ravenna nodded.

"It's the mark of the thing that came through when I opened it."

Silence.

Then she added, almost too softly to hear:

"And it never left."

—

Kellin didn't want to hear more.

Didn't want to know more.

But when Ravenna whispered about the thing inside her, the one that marked her beneath her skin, he couldn't look away. That crescent-shaped sigil wasn't just some arcane tattoo—it shimmered. It breathed.

Jace ran his fingers through his hair, pacing the edge of the bunker like a trapped animal.

"You're telling me this thing's been inside you since Nyxis was born?" he asked.

Ravenna didn't look at him.

She stared at the flickering bulb above.

"No. Before that."

Her voice was glass. The kind that cuts you when you try to hold it too tightly.

"Then what the fuck is it?"

She finally looked at him.

Eyes wild. Beautiful. Brimming with something unholy and ancient.

"You ever hear the name Siranox?"

Kellin blinked. "That sounds like a goddamn drug."

Jace froze.

He knew that name.

Had seen it in one of the black-edged dossiers the Syndicate kept locked beneath layers of red tape. Something not even the higher-ups dared say out loud. A codename. A myth.

The name of a daemon-lord said to have burned entire cities during the Last Gate War.

"Siranox is dead," Jace said. "He was banished into the void."

Ravenna smiled. A tragic, unhinged kind of smile.

"No, Jacek. He wasn't banished. He was offered."

"To who?" Kellin asked.

She ran her thumb over the mark.

"To me."

[POV Shift – Siranox]

He was not sleeping.

He was waiting.

In the place between nerve endings.

In the seconds just before orgasm or death.

In that pause.

He loved the pause.

When Ravenna had slit her wrist open and bled over the Gate, she hadn't just crossed a line. She'd invited him.

And he had whispered into her.

Now, he stirred.

The girl's body was breaking again. Letting him breathe through her lungs. Taste her fear. Lick the edge of her grief like a lover's neck.

She was ready.

The world wasn't.

[Back – Bunker]

The door slammed.

It wasn't locked.

But it shut itself.

Kellin jumped.

"What the fuck was that?"

Jace turned to the control panel.

Everything flickered red.

"EVE OFFLINE. CORE OVERRIDE DETECTED."

"EXTERNAL SIGNAL INTERCEPTED. LOCATION: UNKNOWN."

Ravenna rose.

Not slowly.

Not weakly.

Like gravity had stopped applying to her bones.

"We have to leave," she said.

"Why?" Jace asked, grabbing his gear.

"Because the Gate I broke wasn't the only one."

They stared at her.

She closed her eyes.

And when she opened them, they were his.

Siranox's.

Golden-black, slit like a serpent's.

"He's calling them now."

Kellin felt the air drop.

"Calling who?"

Ravenna didn't answer.

The lights exploded again.

And the sound that followed wasn't from this world.

It was laughter.

But backwards.

[Meanwhile – 2 Miles Beneath Blackmarsh – Cathedral Vaults]

The last nun screamed until her voice became wet pulp in her throat.

The others didn't scream.

They didn't have mouths anymore.

Only runes.

Etched where lips should be.

One of them floated now—her robes twisting in air that burned. She raised her hands. The altar cracked. From beneath it, a black flower bloomed.

Not a real one.

A Blood Orchid.

Petals of skin.

Stems of bone.

It opened wide.

And screamed.

A scream no living thing should ever hear.

Across the city, thousands of rats dropped dead. Every stray dog howled. Infants woke screaming in their sleep.

And Siranox?

He smiled.

[Back – Ravenna]

She dropped to one knee.

Gasped.

Her body convulsed again.

Jace ran to her.

"Rav—Ravenna! Talk to me!"

But she didn't speak.

Not in words.

She sang.

A lullaby.

Low. Raspy. In a language older than Blackmarsh's stones.

Jace froze.

He knew that melody.

She'd hummed it once, bleeding on the floor of a safehouse after a botched kill.

"Where did you learn that?" he asked.

The voice that answered him wasn't hers.

"My mother sang it to me. When she carved my heart out and gave it to the fire."

Jace's breath snagged in his throat.

He didn't blink. Couldn't.

The bunker lights throbbed like a heartbeat on the verge of flatlining, red and full of static. He reached for her—Ravenna, not the thing in her—but her skin was too hot, too distant. She wasn't convulsing anymore. She was vibrating. Like a tuning fork struck by a god.

Her eyes rolled back, and a second voice—low, male, ancient—spoke beneath her lullaby.

"The world was built on sacrifice. You forgot that."

Kellin backed against the wall, gun raised. Shaking. "Don't come closer. Don't—fuck, Jace, what the hell is this?!"

Ravenna smiled again.

But it wasn't hers.

Her lips twisted at the edges, cracking open like a zipper on stitched flesh. Blood wept from the seams.

"I'm not coming for you," she said.

"I'm calling the ones who smell like you."

Jace dragged her back, forced her against his chest.

She let him.

But the scent that rose from her wasn't sweat or blood anymore.

It was incense and rot.

Old churches and fresh graves.

And outside?

The air changed.

Somewhere above ground, sirens were going off in overlapping waves. But not emergency sirens.

Not man-made ones.

The city itself was screaming.

[Elsewhere – Upper Blackmarsh – District 12 Slums]

The rooftops shimmered with heat. Not from the sun, but from beneath.

From the pipes.

From the sewage.

From the bones of the city.

Old women with salt in their hair paused mid-prayer. Children playing by the alleys dropped their chalk and turned to the gutters, where steam now billowed upward like breath from a sleeping god. A preacher halfway through a sermon outside an abandoned tenement suddenly began to choke, his eyes rolling up as black veins surged across his throat.

And beneath them?

A flower bloomed.

Not in soil.

In blood.

In the chest of a dying addict who'd collapsed minutes earlier, just another corpse for the rats—until his ribs cracked open, and the Blood Orchid unfurled from inside.

It sang.

The song of old fires and broken promises.

And from far beneath the ground, something answered.

[Back – Bunker, Blackmarsh Outskirts]

Ravenna gasped.

It was a sudden, violent inhalation. Like she'd been drowning in another world and finally breached the surface.

Jace caught her before she collapsed fully.

The golden-black in her eyes flickered, retreated.

For now.

But something else stayed.

A glow. A pressure. A thrum beneath her skin.

"You're still in there," Jace whispered, brushing a strand of hair from her face.

Her reply was hoarse. Distant.

"For now."

Kellin kicked a metal crate across the room.

"This is fucking madness," he spat. "You've been carrying a daemon in your soul, Ravenna. And you didn't think to mention that before now?!"

"I didn't think he could reach this far."

"You were wrong."

"Yes."

She didn't even argue.

Just rose slowly to her feet, wiping blood from her mouth with the back of her hand. Her fingers trembled.

Not with weakness.

With restraint.

"Where's the next Gate?" Jace asked.

Ravenna didn't answer at first.

Then:

"There isn't one."

"What do you mean?"

"They're all open now."

[Flash – Daemon Vision – "Through the Cracks"]

The world turns, and he sees.

A prison riot in Valis Reach turns into a mass sacrifice.

A warlord in the north murders his sons in a ruined chapel and feeds their bodies to the fire.

An orphanage in Sector Nine chants in their sleep—untrained, wild, beautiful.

They are waking up.

Every single one marked.

The first Seedlings.

His children.

His vessels.

His garden.

Siranox stretches.

The Gate wasn't just broken.

It was reborn.

And his roots are already deep.

[Back – Bunker, escaping]

They didn't walk.

They ran.

Jace kicked open the emergency hatch, and a blast of foul wind greeted them. Sulfur. Rot. The scent of something burning where nothing should.

"Underground's faster," Kellin said.

"No," Ravenna growled, grabbing his arm. "That's where he's strongest."

Jace glanced back. The bunker lights pulsed one final time—then burst, as if exhaling their final breath.

Behind them, the shadows took shape.

Not creatures.

Not soldiers.

Just...forms.

Tall. Stretching. With holes where their eyes should be. Skin stitched together with prayer cloth and children's hair. The scent of church pews and burnt milk followed them like a funeral dirge.

Jace fired once. The bullet passed through. No impact.

"They're not here to kill us," Ravenna whispered.

"Then what the hell are they doing?" Kellin asked.

She didn't turn to look.

"They're warning the others."

"The others—?"

"Other gods."

A pause.

Kellin muttered something in a language only dying men remember.

[Elsewhere – Syndicate Archives – Black Level Subterranea]

A red phone rang.

No one was supposed to know it existed.

The woman who picked it up had no name, only a barcode stitched into her wrist and the smell of ash on her breath.

She didn't speak into the receiver.

Just listened.

Long.

Hard.

When she hung up, she pressed a button beneath the desk. Sirens didn't go off. No lights flashed.

But three names lit up on a green screen:

—RAVENNA NOIR

—JACEK CROSS

—KELLIN VARNE

Beneath them, one word blinked in red:

"EXCOMMUNICATE."

Then another:

"CLEANSE."

[Back – City Streets]

They emerged from the rusted side tunnels into what should've been a silent back-alley road.

Instead?

Ash rained from the sky.

Not from fire.

From memory.

Buildings wept from their windows—thick, dark sap. Somewhere a radio played static, but every now and then it hummed a nursery rhyme.

Jace checked his comm. No signal.

"Where the hell are we supposed to go?" Kellin muttered.

"Not where," Ravenna said.

She was already walking.

"Who."

Jace jogged after her.

"Who then?! Ravenna, talk to me!"

She didn't stop.

Didn't blink.

"The one who locked Siranox away the first time."

"Who?" Kellin demanded.

Her voice was a whisper in the storm.

"Her name was Seraphine."

"And who the fuck is she now?"

Ravenna finally turned.

Her eyes were normal again. Blue. Human. But her mouth twisted with a smile that didn't belong to her.

"She's dead."

And she laughed.

But only once.

Then the sky opened.

And from the clouds?

It rained teeth.

The sound of rain wasn't water.

It was teeth—

Molars. Incisors. Fangs.

Falling from the heavens like broken promises from a god's mouth.

Kellin yanked his coat up to shield his head as the first wave clattered down.

Jace shoved Ravenna against a wall, covering her.

"You ever seen this before?" he hissed.

Ravenna didn't speak.

She listened.

Because each tooth that hit the concrete carried a voice.

Whispers in Old Tongue. Some laughing. Some screaming. One humming a lullaby that shouldn't exist anymore.

She knew what it meant.

The Veil was gone.

There was no longer a line between the dead gods and the living.

A scream echoed from a nearby alley. Not human. Not beast.

Then a sound like hooves.

But not on pavement—on bone.

Jace raised his gun again.

Kellin whispered a blessing in Varkari dialect, the one he only used when death was certain and holy.

"Where do we run?" he asked.

Ravenna didn't look at them.

"Nowhere."

"Then what the fuck do we do?!"

She turned.

Let the blood drip down her temple.

Let the ashes fall into her mouth.

She smiled.

"We burn the city."

They both stared.

"I'm sorry, what—"

"I said we burn everything. Every Gate. Every mark. Every god that thinks it can crawl through me."

"You'll die," Jace whispered.

"Maybe," she said. "But I'll die me."

And then…

She kissed him.

It wasn't tender.

It was war.

Tongue. Blood. Teeth. Need.

She bit his lip.

He grabbed her neck.

And for a second, there was no Gate. No daemons. No gods whispering through teeth and ash.

Only them.

Only the end.

Only—

Boom.

A distant explosion rocked the city. The skyline shimmered.

From the far end of Blackmarsh, the Syndicate's old cathedral burst into flame. Someone else was already fighting. Someone brave—or stupid—enough to ignite the powder trail Ravenna had laid.

She pulled away from Jace, breath ragged.

"That's our signal."

Kellin, coughing through the ashstorm, pointed toward the rising flames. "You think whoever did that's one of yours?"

"No," she said, strapping her bracer back on, hiding the sigil.

"But they're about to be."

Jace tightened the clip on his rifle.

"You still got that plan, Rav?"

She didn't blink.

"I've got a funeral to crash."

"And who's dying?"

She looked up, eyes glowing again.

"Gods."

And with that, they moved—

Through the teeth.

Through the ash.

Through the song.

Into the dark.