Rain slicked the city like sweat on a dying beast. It pooled in the gutters and shimmered on the streets, painting every sharp corner and flickering sign with a veneer of wet neon—pink, green, blue. Reflected light smeared along the glass bones of the skyline, bleeding upward into clouds that pulsed with distant thunder. The air tasted of ozone and steel. A city in mourning, too loud to grieve properly.
High above that chaos, far from the street's stench and sorrow, the lights of KorrinTech's tower still burned. Sterile. Fluorescent. Unapologetically bright in a world built on shadows.
Inside the boardroom, a man paced—CEO Miles Rennick, late fifties, thinning hair combed over a skull that hadn't seen sleep in two days. His voice was hushed, strained, speaking into a secure commline clipped to his ear.
"No, I told you, it's handled. The audit will show nothing. You just need to hold the press back another forty-eight hours."
He didn't notice the fog creeping at the edge of the window.
Didn't hear the whisper of suction cups unlatching.
Didn't see the figure that crawled down from above like a spider with a vendetta.
Calla Brandt perched on the glass like it was bone beneath her, unmoving save for her slow, careful breath. The rain beaded along her hood, dripped from the torn fingers of her gloves. Her eyes, cold and calculating, never left the man inside.
She knew his face. Knew his schedule. Knew his daughter's name. Her blade had already whispered it against her wrist.
Lily.
A girl in braces with a cello and dreams of college.
She almost felt bad for that.
Almost.
The CEO's office was the kind of place people died for—marble floors, leather chairs, a minibar tucked behind a false panel. A family photo sat proudly behind his desk: smiling wife, arm around him; daughter holding a golden retriever. Framed perfection.
Calla's lip curled.
These were the men who got away with everything. The kind who never got their hands dirty because they paid others to do it for them. The kind who wore cologne to mask the rot in their souls.
She slid the window open with surgical ease.
The wind crept in like a warning.
But the man kept talking.
She moved inside, silent as a thought.
The blade slipped from her sleeve, catching just enough light to glint like a silver smile. She raised it—
And froze.
Not because of fear.
Because of the voice behind her.
Low. Cold. Calm.
"He's not yours."
Calla's spine straightened with instinct. Her breath caught. She spun on reflex, slashing toward the sound—
Steel hissed through the air, found nothing but cloak.
He stood in the rain-haze near the ledge, just beyond the broken glass.
Gray mask. Black gloves. A cloak that shimmered like smoke, its edges glowing orange where water met fabric. The flicker of a dying fire in a dying world.
She knew that figure.
Everyone did.
The ghost of the streets. The butcher of the unworthy.
HeartEater.
He didn't speak again. He didn't advance.
He just watched.
Calla's stance lowered, guarded but shaking, not from fear—rage. Her voice came out low and raw, the crack of it betraying how long she'd waited for someone to see her.
"Move."
Still, he stood silent.
"Move, damn you!" she hissed, louder now, stepping forward.
But he only tilted his head slightly. Not confused—contemplative.
That infuriated her more than any threat could have.
"You don't know what he's done," she growled, pointing the blade toward the man still oblivious behind her. "He has everything. And I have nothing. So I take. That's fair."
She lunged, her motion sudden and sharp.
HeartEater shifted like liquid shadow, letting her pass him—barely. The blade missed by inches.
No counterstrike.
Only judgment.
She turned again, snarling, and launched into a flurry.
She was fast—vicious. Every movement drilled into her bones by years of clawing through back-alley survival. Her strikes came like a storm: slashes high, stabs low, combinations meant to confuse and corner. She nicked his cloak, scraped his ribs, caught the seam of his shoulder. He blocked two. Dodged one.
But the last—
Two knives plunged into his chest.
Not deep, but deliberate.
She slammed them home with both palms, then surged upward, headbutting the masked figure with all the strength of a girl who had run out of prayers. The crack echoed across the rooftop.
HeartEater staggered.
She didn't wait.
Her fists came down like meteors, over and over, striking him as he fell. He hit the rooftop hard. Concrete cracked beneath the impact.
Still—he said nothing.
She straddled him, teeth bared, eyes wild. She wasn't fighting anymore.
She was breaking.
"Where were you?" Her fists pounded his chest—thud.
"Why didn't you stop them?"—crack.
"Why do people love you?"—crunch.
Each blow was another piece of herself flying out of her hands. It wasn't about him. Not really. It was about every time she screamed into the dark and no one came. Every time someone like Rennick smiled while she bled. Every time she heard someone say the word "justice" and wanted to vomit.
HeartEater moved.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
One hand wrapped around her wrist, unyielding.
Then the other.
Like iron.
In one seamless, brutal motion, he twisted and kicked her backward. She flew—off him, across the rooftop—and slammed into the far ledge, coughing as she hit the gravel.
When she looked up, he was already standing.
His silhouette, framed in lightning and rain, towered like judgment made flesh.
He reached to his chest.
Pulled the knives free—one, then the other.
And tossed them to the ground.
His eyes locked on hers. Ember-orange. Not angry. Not cruel.
Knowing.
It terrified her.
Calla's breath hitched. She backed toward the ledge.
And then—
She jumped.
No scream. No theatrics.
Just the sound of rain filling the space she left behind.
By the time HeartEater reached the edge, she was gone.
Vanished into the shadows below—into the gutters and filth she came from.
But he had seen her.
Not just her face. Not just her rage.
Her pain.
He would not forget.
And neither would she.