Before the wings

Ashfall was always choking on something.

The city lived in a haze—of smoke, of smog, of lies. By day, the towers rose like spires of glass and steel ambition. By night, their reflections rippled through rain-slicked alleys where rats, needles, and forgotten names drowned in silence. Somewhere between those two worlds was Selene Kain—underpaid, unnoticed, overworked.

The lights inside the Ashfall City Morgue buzzed with a nauseating flicker, bleeding sterile white into the cracked tiles. Selene stood alone, gloved fingers stained faintly with the memory of embalming fluids and something darker. Her raven-black hair was tied back, face hidden behind a surgical mask, though no one else was around to need the precaution. She preferred it that way.

"Victim number six this week," she muttered, voice muffled under the mask as she reached for the recorder. "Male. Mid-forties. Stab wound to the sternum. Possible gang-related. Found in Dockside District." The corpse didn't look like a gangbanger—no ink, clean nails, good shoes. Selene paused, eyes narrowing. Something was wrong with the wound pattern. "Not a robbery. Precision cut. Surgical."

She recorded everything. She always did.

But the real reason Selene took this job—why she'd spent the last three years beneath the fluorescence and formaldehyde—had little to do with forensics. It was the faces. The stories. The trail of dead that pointed to something festering beneath the city's facade. She saw the connections no one else cared to look for.

No one cared.

She pressed a bloodied thumbprint against a sealed file marked with a raven insignia, tucking it into a false drawer beneath her workstation. Another unsolved. Another thread in a web no one else seemed to see. Her eyes flicked toward the small television hanging above the desk, catching the tail end of a news broadcast.

"...ongoing investigations continue into the alleged cartel violence along Harbor Way. Sources from inside the Mayor's office say gang tensions are rising, but Captain Voss of the Ashfall Police Department has assured residents that law enforcement has the situation under control…"

Lies. All of it.

Selene ripped the gloves off and dumped them in the bin, fingers shaking. Not from fear. From frustration. No one was doing a damn thing. Not Iris Calder—not anymore. Not Marcus Vey. Not Captain Voss, who was always polishing his public image. Not Nathan Calder, whose federal badge got him into rooms Selene would never enter.

They all let the rot spread.

Her phone buzzed against the metal tray.

Damian Holt. Co-worker. Friend. Almost more.

"Got that coffee, morbid girl."

She smiled, the first time all night. Damian knew how to make her laugh, and how to shut up when she didn't want to. He was kind, patient—and utterly unaware of the war burning under her skin. She texted back: Leave it on the bench. Still swimming in guts. He'd bring it anyway.

The rain started again. Ashfall's constant lullaby.

Selene cleaned up, changed out of her scrubs, and stepped into the dark. Her breath fogged in the air, eyes scanning the horizon from the top of a low rise above the medical district. Far off, in the shadow of Crownspire—the city's tallest building—the red glow of the Rusted Halo sign flickered like a tired devil's grin. A dive bar where middle-lifers and low-lifers drank together in cheap shadows and broken dreams.

She knew the bartender, Alaric Venn. He kept his ears open and his mouth shut, which made him invaluable.

She didn't head there tonight, though. Not yet. She needed silence.

Her apartment above the trainyard was quiet except for the soft hum of her encryption rig—cobbled together by a former hacker turned off-grid friend. He called himself Blackwire. Real name: Ezra Navarro. She called him when she had leads no one else could trace. He called her when he was lonely or high, which was often.

On the wall above her desk, dozens of photographs and case files were stitched together with red string and scrawled notes. One photo—taped in the corner—never moved. A man in uniform, smiling.

Her father. Killed when she was fourteen.

Official cause: "random mugging gone wrong."

Bullshit.

She remembered that night like it was tattooed on her bones. The masked men. The symbol carved into her father's chest like a signature. A black crow.

The Flock.

No one believed her. The police filed it away. Said it was her grief talking. But Selene never forgot. She learned to fight. To track. To hide in the shadows. There were people—dark, quiet people—who trained her. A retired Blackguard named Victor Serrano taught her how to use a blade without remorse. A thief named Mira, who later vanished in Bangkok, showed her how to disappear in plain sight.

Selene Kain was built in blood and betrayal.

But tonight… tonight she was still the quiet forensic tech. Still invisible.

That changed when she stepped out of her apartment at 3:27 a.m. and heard the scream.

It came from the alley between the trainyard and the bakery. A man's voice—cut off sharply. Selene moved without thinking, instincts she buried clawing their way up. She ducked low behind the dumpsters, eyes adjusting quickly.

Two men. One holding a knife. The other—a young courier by the look of his bag—bleeding from the mouth. He was begging. The mugger wasn't listening.

Selene reached down, felt the weight of the collapsible baton she'd stopped carrying three years ago. She had stashed it under the mailbox. Just in case.

Just in case.

The first strike hit the man's wrist. Bone cracked. The knife clattered. She moved like a ghost—elbow to temple, knee to gut, baton across the jaw. The man dropped.

The courier gasped, stumbling back. "Wh-who are you?"

Selene stared at the attacker, bleeding out against the wall. Her heart was calm. Steady.

"I'm nobody," she said, then melted into the dark.

The next morning, the city buzzed with a rumor. A woman in black. Quick as smoke. Brutal. Precise. The man she beat? Known Flock enforcer. There was even a blurry security cam still from a meatpacking camera nearby: a cloaked figure in mid-strike, face hidden, silhouette like a raven's wings.

The news called it vigilante violence.

Some whispered a name: The Raven.

Selene didn't deny it.

That night, she stood on the rooftop of a tenement in Quarryside, black cloak brushing the wind, mask fitted tight. She felt it for the first time—what she was meant for. The pain, the loss, the rage—it wasn't just hers anymore. It belonged to Ashfall. To every kid who lost a parent, every girl trafficked through the old shipping lanes, every innocent man who bled in the gutters while the rich shook hands in Crownspire.

They would learn to fear the night again.

They would learn that something hunted them back.

She wasn't ready for war. Not yet.

But she had begun it.

---

[End of chapter one]