Night fell like a judgment.

The wind off the sea was sharp and cold, and even the dunes seemed to shiver beneath it. The basin lay silent under a veil of salt haze and fractured moonlight. From a distance, the Graven Syndicate camp appeared still. But the fires burned hot, their flames clawing against the bite of winter. Shadows flickered across rusted freight containers and the remnants of a shattered seawall.

Uxx of the Tallow Breed leaned against the back of a cargo truck, his exposed limbs bleached pale by wind and salt. He never bothered to sit. At his ridiculous height, there was no position in which his body fit the world comfortably. As a guard, he was mostly useless. He dozed more often than not, though you could never tell. His eyes were lidless hollows, staring into nothing.

Nearby, Phessra Vein sprawled across a stack of dented ration drums, exhaling smoke into the night air in lazy spirals. She smoked when she was cold, an effort to ignite warmth from the inside out. Goosebumps stippled her pale skin, but she didn’t seem to mind. If anything, she looked like she welcomed the discomfort.

Next to her, Bale hunched on a crate, elbows on his knees, stuffing something dark and sinewed into his mouth. Could have been meat. Could have been something worse. No one asked.

“Too much noise out here,” Uxx grumbled, mostly to himself.

Kivven stepped out of a tent and shot him a glance as she passed. “What the hell is Skull-head rambling about now?”

Phessra blew smoke through her teeth. “He doesn’t like the sound of the waves.”

“The waves?” Kivven laughed. “I swear, I’m surrounded by morons.”

Bale slurped grease off his fingers. “Water don’t sleep. Same as us.”

Phessra flicked ash at her boot, watching the ember drift.

Meera muttered from the shadows, “Sleep is for people who aren’t being hunted.”

“Hunted?” Bale hiccuped, blinking.

“You think Kessler is the only one coming for that girl?” Meera scoffed, too casually.

Uxx squinted toward the sea. “That noise has to stop.”

Phessra leaned back, eyes finding his upside-down. “If it stops, we’re already dead.”

A sound broke the air. A child’s cough. Ragged and hoarse.

Kivven turned, irritation flaring across her features. She spun on her heel and stalked across the camp, boots trudging through the sand. The wind yanked at the crude tarp above the cage, causing it to flap lazily.

Inside, the green-eyed girl sat cross-legged, back against the bars, facing the sea.

She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t speaking. She was just there, still as glass, watching the water with a quiet, eerie focus. Like she was listening to melodies no one else could hear.

Kivven stopped at the edge of the cage and stared in.

“What’s the matter, princess? You cold?” she asked flatly.

The girl didn’t look at her. She didn’t even move.

“Frog-eyed little freak. They should have drowned you at birth.”

As much as Kivven wanted her to be afraid, she wasn’t. Not even a little.

“Well unless you’re dying back here, shut your mouth.”

Kivven lingered a moment longer, then spat on the girl. Turning to walk away, she muttered to herself. “And if you are dying… still shut your mouth.”

“She’s broken,” Bale observed.

“No,” whispered Phessra, from the dark. “She’s waiting.”

That’s when the first one died.

One of Kessler’s crew, a nameless, expendable guard posted near the coastal edge. Barefoot, bored, chewing root bark. Watching the tide glimmer under a fractured moon.

He didn’t have time to scream. The blade was already at his throat, cold and precise. When it moved, it pulled cleanly beneath his jaw. His hands reached for nothing. His mouth parted, his knees buckled, and he hit the ground. But not before Talon Veyr had already moved on to the next.

He had entered with the dark, moving with merciless precision. His cloak rippled without sound, wings folded tight against his back. Every breath was measured. Every step, rehearsed a hundred times in his mind before his boots touched dirt.

The second kill barely made a sound. Talon’s fingers clamped over the man’s mouth as the blade slid between his ribs, angled for the heart.

He moved like vengeance made flesh, drifting between tents, past crates marked with slave codes and body counts. The stench was thick with unwashed skin, grease, and blood.

The third slaver slouched near a small fire, swigging rootwine and muttering to himself about how he missed the old boss already. His teeth were rotted, chipped from some brawl he obviously lost. His nose crooked, likely broken in the same fight.

He never heard the winged shadow drop from above.

There was no warning, just a flicker of motion behind the flames. No sound, until the crack of spinal cord.

The fourth never even stood a chance. He was pacing the eastern edge of the camp, blade in hand, tapping it idly against the hood of a cargo truck. A breeze stirred behind him, barely more than a breath. He turned to check it out, but he was a second too slow.

One flap. A blur of wings.

Steel flashed, and his head tumbled clean from his shoulders, hitting the dirt with a dull, final thud. Momentum carried it forward until it rolled into the fire. The flames hissed as blood met ember.

Across the camp, no one had noticed. Not yet.

Kivven dropped her weight onto a folding chair, cracking her knuckles like it had been hard work. “Little shits are softer every season. Velari cubs used to bite.”

“Still do,” Bale grunted. “Last batch, one of them tried to take off my thumb.”

“Good thing she didn’t,” Phessra quipped with a sly grin. “What would you do if you couldn’t grip your… sword?”

Meera let out a rare laugh.

Kivven, who usually enjoyed watching Bale take a hit, snapped a sharp, vicious glare at Phessra. No one really knew why she hated her so much. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t mutual. Phessra looked like she had already forgotten the moment. Or maybe she had never cared at all.

Suddenly, Uxx straightened. “Did you hear that?”

“Good god!” Kivven groaned, pressing her palms to her face. “This fucker and his noises!”

“I heard something, too,” Bale growled, sitting up straight. “Sounded like… bone breaking.”

“You’re just hungry,” Kivven muttered.

The fire popped.

Phessra tilted her head slightly, smoke trailing from her lips. “Twelve’s a bad—”

“If you fucking say it again,” Kivven interrupted, her voice ready to boil over.

Uxx was already moving, one foot planted, hand drifting toward the long shaft of his scythe.

“I’m telling you,” Bale insisted, shifting in his seat. “It was close. I heard it.”

Meera reached down and grabbed the long blade beside her, its edge catching the firelight.

“Picked up twenty new men and every one as useless as the one Rulv gutted,” she muttered, rising to her feet. “I’ll check it out.”

Phessra nodded toward the blade with a crooked smile. “Better take two.”

Beyond the shadows, Talon moved like a jungle cat on the hunt. The outer perimeter wasn’t built for real defense, just scrap fencing and broken trucks arranged as half-hearted barriers. The guards patrolling it were unmotivated, half-drunk, and spread too thin. He spotted three clustered near a gutted radio mast, passing a bottle and laughing at something that wasn’t funny.

It was their last laugh, as it turned out.

Talon dropped from above, wings a blur of velocity. The first went down with a blade through the collarbone, straight into the lung. The second turned just in time to catch an elbow across the temple, crumpling into the dirt before he could cry out. The third reached for his sidearm, but Talon’s boot crushed his throat before it cleared the holster.

Three dead in under four seconds.

But then others heard. Two men rushed him from behind. One seized his arms, yanking him backward, while the other grabbed his breastplate, dragging him off balance.

Talon gritted his teeth, braced his stance, and shifted hard to the right. His wing snapped out, feather and bone colliding with brutal force. He slammed the first attacker into a heap of rusted piping. One of those pipes pierced him through the gut.

The second held on, grip tightening, knife raised to strike. Talon reversed the hold and drove his heel into the man’s knee. A sickening crack split the air, followed by a raw, animal scream. The grip faltered.

Talon twisted free, and in a single motion, spun and drove the attacker’s own blade up through his chin. The man staggered, eyes wide, as Talon ripped the blade downward, filleting his neck wide open. He collapsed like a felled tree, split clean down the middle.

He turned, wings flaring, ready to launch into the sky.

But then, Meera took him by surprise, leaping from behind two rusted storage drums. Her long dark hair and sharp features gave him half a heartbeat of pause.

Then steel flashed.

She swung at him, fast and horizontal, aiming for the throat. He ducked, and her blade sliced the air above his head. Before she could recover, he was inside her reach. His blade swept across her thigh, clean and deep.

She hissed, pivoted, and brought her weapon down in a brutal two-handed arc. He caught her wrist mid-swing and twisted. The bones in her wrist snapped with a sharp, wet crack.

She screamed, but he didn’t stop. He drove his shoulder into her chest, slamming her backward into the metal drums. They shifted under the force and she hit the ground hard.

Despite the throbbing in her ruined wrist, she grunted and rolled to her side, eyes scanning for her weapon. Her weaker hand found the hilt. She curled her fingers around it, grit her teeth, and pushed herself back to her feet.

She swung the sword awkwardly, and he blocked it clean. He stepped inside her guard, and struck once. A solid fist across the temple that sent her body flailing back to the ground.

Spitting blood, she pushed up to her hands and knees. Before she could rise, his foot snapped upward in a blinding arc. It caught her clean under the chin, lifted her off the ground, and launched her into the dark.

Her body, flung through the shadows, slammed into the dirt and skidded across the sand. She stopped just short of the fire.

For a moment, no one moved.

Kivven tensed, unsheathing a dagger in each hand.

Bale stood with a grunt, eyes wide, knuckles white around his blade.

Phessra exhaled a slow ring of smoke and in a sing-song voice: “He’s here.”

The air inside the tent was thick with humidity and the cloying smell of sweat.

Rulv Dask stood over a battered metal table, fingers pressed to its surface, head bowed slightly in deep thought. A lantern hissed in the corner, casting uneven light across the canvas walls. The flap rustled faintly behind him as the wind clawed at the coast.

Across from him stood Captain Runn, Kessler’s second-in-command. Tall. Lean. Still wearing the insignia of her former unit, though it was considerably darker red than before. Her lip was split. One eye already swelling from the last hit. But she held her ground.

“You don’t just inherit a crew because you kill its leader,” she spat. “This isn’t the old Syndicate. We have chains of command now.”

Rulv didn’t look up.

“You want the seat,” she hissed. “You fight for it. Or you earn it.”

Rulv cleared his throat. His hands left the table, as he straightened to his full height. With the terrifying slowness of a predator studying its next meal, he circled the table towards her. His eyes dragged over her from head to toe, half measuring, half appraising.

“You watched me fight for it…”

She reached for her blade. She was fast.

But he was faster.

Rulv’s fist connected with her ribs, sharp and close. The air left her lungs in a guttural gasp. Then came the second strike. Upward, open handed, slapping her across the cheek. She hit the ground, her head snapping against the metal frame of a cot.

Blood began to pool. One leg twitched. Her vision blurred.

And when it cleared, he was already kneeling beside her. He took her chin between his finger and thumb, and lifted her head until their eyes met.

After a long, menacing pause, he smiled.

“Now, you’re going to feel me earn it.”

With that, he grabbed the collar of her uniform, and yanked. The buttons snapped and the fabric tore, revealing her breasts underneath. What followed wasn’t a fight. It was domination, delivered without mercy.

And that’s why Rulv Dask didn’t hear the commotion outside his tent.

The night had become chaos.

Like a missile falling from the sky, Talon swooped in, wings snapping open at the last second to redirect his descent. He landed hard, kicking up a storm of sand and ash, blade already in hand.

The first man never even turned. Talon cut through his spine with a downward slash that ended mid-scream.

Then they were on him. Maybe a dozen of Kessler’s old crew surged forward, steel and boots and bullets. Some carried knives, others jagged clubs, a few with rusted rifles pulled from old Dominion wreckage.

Talon moved like he had rehearsed this exact death dance in his mind a thousand times.

He spun. Deflected. Struck.

A blade opened a throat. A knee shattered a jaw. One man screamed as Talon buried a dagger into his chest and ripped it free in a spray of arterial red.

Bale charged, roaring, his oversized machete carving wide, wild arcs through the air.

Talon ducked the first, caught the second with his wing, and snapped his forearm upward. The blow lifted the brute off balance, sending him staggering back. Dazed, but still upright.

Kivven came next, both daggers flashing. She was fast, ducking low and slashing high. One blade grazed Talon’s side. He blocked the second with the flat of his blade.

He answered with a headbutt. She reeled back, blood pouring from her nose, eyes wild.

Then Uxx stepped forward, dragging the long haft of his curved blade across the sand. Talon had to look up to see his face.

Four of Kessler’s men rushed from behind, two more flanking from either side. Talon started to spin, but Uxx was there, moving with startling agility. His war hook arced upward, catching Talon across the chest. It opened a gash in his breastplate, the edge just missing his flesh. He staggered from the force, and then the swarm descended.

Six men piled onto him at once, grabbing his arms, his wings, his legs. One drove a knee into his side where Kivven had drawn blood. Another slammed the butt of a rifle into the back of his head.

Talon thrashed, twisting hard. But they held.

Bale stepped in and swung a meaty fist, slamming it into Talon’s jaw and snapping his head sideways in a spray of blood. Another hard blow followed from the left, crashing into his temple and leaving his vision spinning.

Then a boot struck from behind, hard and low, dropping him to his knees.

The Syndicate thugs closed in, forming a tight ring around him. Weapons drawn, eyes hungry. One by one, they took their turn.

Talon absorbed the punishment from all sides. Fists, boots, blunt steel. Each blow landed heavy, meant to break. But still, he stayed upright. Knees buried in sand. Blood trailing from his mouth. Shoulders rising and falling with every breath. He was a beast refusing to fall.

As Kessler’s men took their pound of flesh, Kivven paced just behind them, wiping blood from her nose with the back of her hand. Bale lingered at the edge, flexing his fingers around the hilt of his machete. Uxx stood unmoving, his curved hook planted in the sand like a flag.

Talon’s wings hung battered and low. Blood dripped from his lips, thick and metallic, mixing with the grit in his mouth. One eye was nearly swollen shut. The other blurred, unfocused, tracking motion in smears of light and shadow.

Every breath was a labor. He could feel his ribs shifting wrong. His insides were broken. His knees buckled every time he tried to rise. The boots kept coming. The fists. The laughter. A symphony of noise and pain.

Focus was slipping. Everything was slowing.

He could feel the warmth of his own blood dripping from his face. The throb behind his eye. Searing pain in his jaw. The way his shoulder popped every time someone yanked him back into place for the next blow.

Then a voice, low and monotone, cut through the violence.

“Hold him still.”

It was the tall one who spoke, and his order was followed. The blows ceased, and Talon felt his arms being pulled from either direction. He was weak from the brutalization, and could do little more than hang limply. His weight pressed his knees into the sand. His head drooped, blood dripping in thick clumps from his wounds.

Uxx stepped towards him, slowly, as the circle of Syndicate thugs parted in the middle. He dragged the long staff behind him, one end carving a deep gouge in the sand. At the other end was the curved scythe, its serrated blade crusted with dried flesh.

He stared down at the weak, pathetic creature before him.

“Look at me,” he demanded.

Talon used the last of his strength to raise his head. He saw the blade, hovering high above him. Then he watched it come slicing through the air towards him.

Not towards his neck, as he expected. That would have been a merciful blow. And Uxx was not a merciful man.

The war hook slammed into the base of Talon’s right wing with a wet, sickening crunch. Bone snapped. Sinew tore. The blade continued its arc, sheering through muscle and joint until the wing separated completely from his body.

Talon’s scream tore across the night sky, raw and primal. Pain unlike anything he had ever known exploded through his nervous system. His remaining wing flapped uselessly as the world tilted sideways.

Blood gushed from the wound in thick, pulsing streams. The severed wing lay beside him, jerking and twitching as the life evaporated.

But Uxx wasn’t finished.

He adjusted his grip, and raised the weapon high above his head once again.

The Gravemaker swept down in a vicious arc towards Talon’s left wing. Another crunch of bone. Another spray of blood. The hook snagged half-way through the severed muscle and tendon, caught on Talon’s shoulder blade. Uxx gripped the haft with both hands and gave one final, brutal twist. The war-hook tore free, ripping through flesh and bone like wet canvas.

The left wing cleaved from his shoulder, falling to the sand beside its twin. Talon collapsed, face first into the sand, nerve endings searing with unbearable, electric pain. Blood erupted from his shoulders, where two jagged stubs remained the only proof that he had once been a majestic, winged creature.

The Skyguard captain was reduced to a broken, bleeding man writhing in agony.

Uxx stepped back, his hollow eyes showing no emotion. No satisfaction. No regret. Just the empty stare of a weapon that had completed its task.

“No more flying,” he said simply.

Talon lay in the sand, his life pumping out through the wounds where his wings had been.

He felt the darkness closing in.

And across the camp, hidden away in her cage, a girl with emerald eyes pressed her face against the bars, and wept.