Ashfall never really sleeps — it just flickers like a dying streetlamp, humming low while monsters catch their breath.
---
Detective Iris Calder stands under the cold hum of the Ashfall City Morgue's entrance sign. Her breath ghosts the glass door as she pushes inside, badge cold against her palm. She hasn't slept — the black feather sits in an evidence bag in her coat pocket, a rumor pressed into plastic.
Inside, the place smells like antiseptic, cheap coffee, and old ghosts. Dr. Edwin Rourke is yelling at someone over the phone when she steps in — his voice leaks under the cracked glass of his office window.
Iris crosses to the steel double doors that guard the bodies. They hiss open on rusted hinges.
And there's Selene Kain, all pale wrists and quiet eyes, hair tied back, gloves on, leaning over a cold tray. Iris always forgets how young Selene looks in here — until she remembers the girl never says more than she has to. The morgue's perfect ghost.
"Morning, Kain," Iris says, her voice cracking a little. The slap of last night's alley still clings to her tongue.
Selene doesn't flinch, doesn't even look up at first. She finishes sliding the tray into place, clicks the lock shut. When she does lift her head, her eyes find Iris's badge first — always the badge, then the eyes.
"Detective Calder." Her voice is soft, formal. It might as well be mist on cold metal.
Iris gestures at the gurney she's rolling in — a bagged shape, zippered tight, faint spots of dried blood at the edges.
"Three from Dockside. Same alley. You'll want to check the neck wounds — clean cuts. Too clean. And…"
She hesitates, pulls the evidence bag from her pocket — the feather glistens dark inside.
Selene's eyes flick to it. For a heartbeat — maybe — there's something colder behind her stare. But it vanishes so fast Iris thinks she imagined it.
"You see this before?" Iris asks.
Selene shrugs, gentle and polite. "Birds molt. Maybe a prank."
Rourke bursts in then — half a cigar crushed in his teeth, shirt sleeves rolled up to old man elbows. "Kain! Calder! Quit gossiping and tag these bastards properly — city hall's already whining about 'public panic.' God forbid we do our jobs and admit there's a butcher out there with a crow fetish."
Iris smirks. "Raven. Not crow."
Rourke squints. "What?"
She holds up the feather. "Kid said it was a raven. Black wings. Knives."
Rourke barks a laugh — it echoes in the cold room, bounces off tile and steel. "Hell's full of birds, Calder. Let's hope they're eating each other for once. Kain — clean cuts, fresh autopsies. No screw-ups."
Selene nods, already pushing the gurney to the slab. Iris watches her go — watches how Selene's gloved fingers brush the feather evidence bag for just a second as she turns. Then it's gone. Like it never happened.
---
Three blocks away, Micah Torres sits cross-legged in the neon gloom of a one-room crypt that calls itself an apartment. The only light comes from half-dead monitors humming with static and code. Half-eaten takeout noodles crust the rim of a cracked bowl on the floor.
He's tracing the digital veins that feed The Flock — money trails bleeding from Umbra's shell companies, laundromats, "charities." His screens blink with thousands of names — all fake. But fake money still buys real bullets.
A flicker of movement on an old traffic cam — he rewinds, pauses. There she is — Selene, a black blur dropping off a rooftop hours ago. His grin is tired, crooked. "Still sloppy, Featherhead."
He flicks a switch. A line of green code pings across an encrypted line — a soft pulse meant only for her phone. Not words, not yet. Just a heartbeat in the dark. Proof he's watching. Proof he's covering her tracks even before she thinks to sweep them.
---
At her apartment, Selene scrubs at dried blood in the kitchen sink — the sink that leaks when the faucet squeaks too hard. Her one-bedroom is all cracked wallpaper, secondhand furniture, and locked metal drawers hidden under a squeaky floorboard. The weapons inside are cleaned more carefully than her dishes.
She stares at herself in the bathroom mirror — studies a small cut across her jaw. She turns her head, testing the bruise on her ribs. She lets the mask settle back over her bones.
Her phone buzzes — a flicker of static on the cracked screen. She smiles, barely, for no one to see. Wraith. Her ghost in the wire.
---
Across the city, Detective Iris Calder clicks through crime scene photos at her tiny kitchen table, surrounded by cereal bowls her kids forgot to rinse. Maya's pink backpack lies half-open on the floor. Liam's soccer cleats stink up the hall. Nathan leans in the doorway, tie loose, eyes on the photos.
"Your bird woman again?" he asks.
Iris sighs. "Not mine. Not yet. But she's real. Or he. Or they. Whatever the hell this is — three bodies last night, no trace but that feather."
Nathan rubs the stubble on his jaw. "Want me to poke it through the fed files? See if we've got any shadows like that in federal chatter?"
She shakes her head. "Not yet. Umbra's already sniffing our cases. I don't want your bosses telling me how to catch ghosts."
He shrugs — steps behind her, kisses the top of her head. For a second it almost feels normal: wife, husband, kids in the other room. Not a city waiting to eat them alive.
But the photos stay on the table. The feather stays in the bag. And somewhere in the city's dark veins, the rumor of a black bird with knives for hands spreads like sickness.
---
At The Molted Wing, Reggie Slate wipes down the sticky bar top. He hums to the jukebox's off-key blues while watching the door — always half-expecting Selene to slip through, drop her hood, take her silent whiskey. She doesn't come tonight. Maybe tomorrow.
Near the door, a drunk mutters to a friend: "Swear to God, my cousin saw her. Black cloak, talons — tore three Flock boys apart. Said she left a feather in the kid's hand like some grim bedtime story."
Reggie says nothing. He polishes the bar. He knows a bedtime story when he hears one — and he knows who tells it.
---
Somewhere high above the city's rancid steam, King Crow watches through a bulletproof window in an abandoned hotel turned nest. He sees the burning rumor on the streets — the whispers — the fear. His masked lieutenants gather at his back, Moloch Horn cracking his knuckles like boulders rolling down a hill.
"Let the bird come," King Crow murmurs, voice like velvet wrapped around broken glass. "Let her fly. We'll pluck her wings in time."
Below them, Ashfall flickers on — alive, rotting, ready for blood.
---
And somewhere in that stink and hum, Selene Kain kneels alone in the dark of her hidden Nest — knives laid out like ritual bones, drones blinking tiny lights like eyes in the dark.
She breathes. She listens to the city's heartbeat.
And when she rises, the morgue ghost is gone — all that's left is the predator in black feathers, slipping through Ashfall's veins, hunting the monsters that dare think they're kings.
---
END OF CHAPTER TWO