The wound on Elara's shoulder throbbed like a second heartbeat, a constant reminder of last night's near-failure at Warehouse 17. She sat shirtless in The Nest's makeshift med bay—an alcove lined with steel cabinets and flickering fluorescent tubes—while Alex cleaned the graze with antiseptic that burned cold. The bullet had torn a shallow furrow through muscle, nothing life-threatening, but enough to slow her for days. Failure tasted metallic on her tongue, worse than blood.
"You should have let me come," Alex said, voice tight with worry. They were twenty-one, slight of build, with short-cropped dark hair and eyes that still held too much light for this city. "I could have jammed their comms sooner. That alarm—"
"Would have gone off anyway," Elara cut in, her tone flat and unforgiving. "Sensors I missed. My fault. Not yours." She didn't look at them. Couldn't. Alex was the closest thing she had to family, and family was a liability she couldn't afford.
Alex taped fresh gauze over the wound. "You're not invincible, Elara. One day you'll hesitate, or bleed too much, or—"
"I won't." She stood, pulling on a black compression shirt that hid the bandage. "Hesitation is death. Mercy is death. You know the rules."
Alex's jaw tightened. "Rules you made. Rules that are turning you into something colder than the corpses you prepare."
Elara turned then, stormy gray eyes locking onto theirs. For a moment, the gothic horror of the underground lair seemed to close in—the stone walls dripping with condensation, the distant echo of water in pipes like weeping. "Better cold than dead," she said quietly. "Better cold than the girl who watched her father die because she was too weak to stop it."
Silence stretched between them, heavy as chains.
Finally, Alex looked away. "The vial you brought back—I analyzed it. Eclipse's signature all over the chemical markers. Strength enhancers, aggression triggers, obedience compounds. King Crow's building an army of monsters."
Elara nodded. She had known it in her bones. Victor Kane never moved without layers of contingency. The serum was only the beginning.
Her burner phone buzzed. A text from Mira:
Need to see you. Now. Crooked Beak bar. Come alone.
The Crooked Beak was neutral ground—an old dockside tavern where cops, criminals, and journalists drank without drawing blades. Elara arrived just after noon, rain hammering the tin roof like gunfire. The interior was all dark wood and flickering gas lamps, the air thick with pipe smoke and the sour tang of spilled whiskey.
Mira sat in a shadowed corner booth, nursing a glass of red wine. She looked exhausted—dark circles under her eyes, hair pulled back severely. When Elara slid in opposite her, Mira reached across the table and gripped her hand hard.
"You're hurt," Mira said immediately, noticing the careful way Elara moved her shoulder.
"Scratch."
"Don't lie to me." Mira's voice cracked. "Elena Vance is running a special tonight. She's got footage—grainy security cam from the warehouse district. Bodies. Feathers. Blood everywhere. They're calling you a butcher, Elara."
Elara's expression didn't change. "They're not wrong."
Mira leaned forward, lowering her voice. "Detective Reed was on the panel again this morning. He defended you—said the dead were confirmed Flock, that the shipment was illegal bioweapons. But the brass is pressuring him. And Vance… she's digging. She's offering a reward for any information leading to the Raven's identity."
Around them, conversations hummed. At the bar, two off-duty cops argued loudly.
"Reed's too soft," one sneered. "If the Raven showed up in my district, I'd put her down myself."
His partner laughed. "You'd piss yourself first. Saw the bodies from Warehouse 17. Throats opened like smiles. Eyes carved out. That's not human."
Elara's fingers tightened around Mira's. She welcomed the fear in their voices. Fear kept the guilty looking over their shoulders.
Mira pulled a flash drive from her pocket and slid it across the table. "Evidence I pulled from a sealed case. Judge Elias Crowe—King Crow's cousin—dismissed charges against three Flock lieutenants last month. Bribes traced to offshore accounts. If this leaks…"
"It won't come from you," Elara said firmly. "Too dangerous."
"I'm already in danger just by loving you." Mira's eyes glistened. "We need allies, Elara. Reed might be one. There's someone else—Lena Ruiz. Ex-cop. Fired two years ago for refusing to bury a Flock murder. She's been operating in the shadows. Calls herself Shadowfox."
Elara filed the name away. Potential ally. Or threat.
They parted with a brief, desperate kiss in the alley behind the bar—rain soaking them both, Mira's hands framing Elara's scarred face. "Come back to me," Mira whispered.
"I always do," Elara lied again.
That night, the city's rot drew her to the rooftops above the financial district. Intelligence from Alex placed Razorbeak—Jax Harrow, King Crow's favored assassin—in a high-rise penthouse, meeting with Dr. Eclipse. Jax was a monster in human skin: twenty-eight, built like a fighter, face crisscrossed with scars, tattoos of jagged crow beaks covering his arms. He was King Crow's blade, sent to carve messages into anyone who defied the syndicate.
Elara watched through binoculars as Jax stepped onto the balcony, lighting a cigarette. Eclipse—a gaunt woman in her fifties with wild white hair and cybernetic eyes—joined him, handing over a metal case. Serums, no doubt.
Time to cut the blade.
She glided from the adjacent building, cape spreading like raven wings, landing silently on the balcony railing. Jax sensed her a fraction too late. He spun, beak-bladed daggers flashing from his sleeves.
"Well, well," he snarled, voice gravel and venom. "The famous Black Raven. King Crow's been waiting."
They clashed without preamble.
Jax was fast—faster than most. His daggers whistled through the air, curved like crow beaks for ripping. Elara parried with forearm bracers, sparks flying, then countered with a feather blade thrown low. It sliced his thigh, drawing first blood. He roared and lunged.
The fight spilled into the penthouse—glass shattering, furniture splintering. Eclipse fled to a hidden elevator, case in hand. Failure burned in Elara's chest: the doctor escaped.
But Jax was here.
He tackled her through a coffee table, wood exploding. His blade grazed her ribs—another wound, shallow but stinging. She tasted copper. They rolled, trading blows. Jax's style was brutal street fighting mixed with Flock training—dirty, vicious. He headbutted her cowl, splitting her lip inside the mask.
"You killed my partner last year," he spat, pinning her arm. "Left a feather in his heart. I'm gonna do worse to you."
Elara twisted, using Jiu-Jitsu leverage to flip him over her shoulder. He crashed into a bar cart, bottles shattering. She was on him in an instant—knee to chest, feather blade at his throat.
"Your partner raped informants for information," she said coldly. "He begged when I found him. Begged like a child."
Jax's eyes widened in horror and rage. "Liar—"
She drove the blade down. Not into his throat—into his right hand, pinning it to the marble floor. He screamed, a raw, animal sound that echoed through the penthouse. Blood pooled, thick and dark.
"Tell King Crow," she whispered, leaning close, "the Raven is coming. One beak at a time."
She carved a shallow raven symbol into his cheek—slow, deliberate, the blade scraping bone. His screams turned to sobs. Then she stood, wiped her blade on his shirt, and pinned a black feather to his chest with a second dagger.
He would live. Barely. A message.
As she glided from the balcony into the storm, sirens already rising below, her comm crackled—Alex's voice, panicked.
"Elara! Reed just called the burner. He's at the precinct—says it's urgent. Something about Vance. And… he thinks they're coming for him."
Elara's blood ran colder than the rain.
Detective Reed Harlan—her potential ally, the one clean cop—was marked.
She changed direction mid-glide, cape snapping like a banner of death, heading toward the central precinct. The city lights blurred beneath her, a gothic nightmare of spires and smoke.
Jax's screams still echoed in her ears. She had shown mercy once tonight—letting him live to deliver her message.
She would not make that mistake again.
In a luxurious high-rise across town, Victor Kane—King Crow—watched security footage of the fight on a wall of monitors. His gaunt face was expressionless, silver hair immaculately styled. Beside him stood the Whisperer, Lila Thorne, smiling thinly.
"She's getting closer, Victor."
Kane's fingers drummed on his crow-skull cane. "Then accelerate the timeline. Release the Bison Beast early. And prepare the bombs. Ashfall will burn… and from the ashes, I will rise."
He turned to a bank of screens showing live feeds: hidden cameras in police stations, City Hall, even Elena Vance's news studio.
"Soon," he murmured, "the Raven will have nowhere left to fly."
(End of Chapter 3)