The city wasn't alive—it was breathing. And it wasn't beautiful.
Vale stepped out into the streets, the heavy scent of rain mixing with the decay in the air. His suit, secondhand and stiff, clung to his body like an uncomfortable mask. Clean, professional, but a lie. A careful deception. The streets hummed with the electric pulse of neon, flickering like the last remnants of a forgotten dream.
A scream echoed in the distance, sharp and high-pitched. A child's cry. But no one moved. No one cared.
Vale didn't blink.
He wasn't free. No, this wasn't freedom. This was the world after the cage. A world of blood and greed, and Vale knew it better than anyone. Opportunity. That's what it was. And opportunity meant one thing: become what the world feared before it consumes you.
He moved, his eyes never straying from the scene in front of him.
A woman was being dragged by her hair, the wet concrete chewing at her heels. Her fingers clawed at the air, blood blooming from the ragged skin. Her mouth moved, lips trying to form a word, a cry—"Help"—but the sound never reached anyone. Her eyes locked with Vale's for a split second, a silent plea, but it died in the wet noise of the world around them.
He didn't stop.
He tilted his head just slightly. A disinterested observer. Observation was power. Emotion was weakness.
"She cries too loud," Vale murmured to himself.
A voice, soft as a whisper, slid through his mind.
"You're improving."
Dante's voice. Always there. Always watching. Always guiding.
Vale turned his attention down the alleyway. A market vendor stood under the flickering light of a dying bulb, displaying his wares like meat on a butcher's block. But it wasn't just the meat that caught Vale's eye—it was the girl standing beside him.She looked no older than sixteen. Her eyes were dull, void of innocence, her face a mask of submission.
A barcode was etched above her collarbone, crude and permanent.
The girl looked at Vale.
She smiled.
It was a flicker—too fast for anyone else to notice—but Vale did. Recognition.
She had been kind to him once, years ago, in a place he had long forgotten. During a brief, fleeting moment of decency, she had shared a loaf of bread with him. She had given him warmth when the world had only given him rot.
Vale's jaw tightened—not from compassion, but from something colder, something darker.
Before he could respond, the vendor's hand shot out, slapping the girl across the face, sending her to the ground with a sickening thud. She didn't make a sound. She only stared at the ground, the air around her heavy with resignation.
No one reacted. No one noticed.
Except Vale.
He did nothing.
There was no hero left in him. The man he had been had long since died, broken by the walls, by the darkness, by everything. And in his place was a thing—an empty shell that had learned only one thing: to survive.
Vale walked on, his footsteps muffled by the rain-soaked streets.
His old apartment was still there. Sixth floor. The smell of dust and age lingered in the air as he turned the knob. The door creaked, protesting against the intrusion, but it opened nonetheless.
Inside, everything was exactly as he had left it. A photograph on the wall—two children, smiling. A family, once whole. The edges of the photo had curled, burned by time, just like the memories.
But there was something new.
A cigarette. His brand. It lay on the floor, barely smoldering. It hadn't been there when he left.
He hadn't smoked it.
And beneath the doorframe, a drawing.
A crude sketch, drawn by a child's hand. It was of him—his figure, dark and looming, watching from a window. His eyes were hollow, no pupils, no light. And beneath it, in bold, red ink:
"I SEE YOU TOO."
The Watcher.
Vale's mouth twitched at the corners, the first sign of something resembling emotion since his return. He crouched beside the drawing, running a finger over the child's crude lines. This was no simple threat. This was a game.
And he was the pawn.
But he wouldn't be for long.
Dante's voice hummed in his skull, soothing and cold.
"They fear you already. But it's not enough. Make them obey."
Vale stood and moved to the window. Below, the city spread out in jagged, broken pieces. The faint sound of sirens rose and fell like the breath of something dying. The air was thick with pollution, the sky weeping acid rain.
His reflection stared back at him—older, colder, detached. Not a man. A thing. Something that had survived.
.......
Later that day, Vale walked through the market, not to buy, but to watch. People bustled around him—laughing, shouting, bartering—and he moved through them like smoke through a flame, untouched. He noted the weak voices, the trembling hands, the ones too tired to fight. Every face told him something. Every movement revealed a flaw. He wasn't shopping. He was choosing.
The market slumped under the weight of dusk—orange light dripping through torn canvas awnings, casting everything in bruised gold. Smoke, sweat, and cheap perfume clung to the air like secrets.
Vale moved like a shadow that had learned to walk.
A woman stepped into his path, her dress loose in the way that said nothing was accidental. She smiled—a grin that didn't quite reach her eyes.
"Handsome," she said, running a finger along his sleeve. "Room for one night. I'll say please if you want. Or not, if you prefer it that way."
He looked at her—not cruelly, not kindly. Just long enough for her smile to falter.
"I don't buy what's already broken," he said. The words came gently, like an apology whispered through glass. She blinked, unsure if she'd been insulted or spared.
He walked on.
Between two stalls, down an alley clogged with rotting fruit and piss, he saw it. A girl—barely more than a child—trapped beneath a man three times her size. Her eyes were glass. Her voice had long since given up.
Others saw. No one stopped.
Vale paused only long enough to watch the man's rhythm—steady, impersonal, as if he were hammering nails. And then he moved on, not because he didn't care, but because he didn't need to.
He would remember the man's face. He remembered everything.
Later, someone would find that alley empty, save for a pile of blood-soaked clothes and a body no one would claim.
But for now, the market hummed on.
The market stank of metal, sweat, and desperation.
Deep in the city's black lungs, behind rusted iron gates, the underworld ran its auctions like clockwork. No shouting. No gavel. Just whispers. Men in suits and uniforms sat quietly in rows like they were watching an opera. Women and children paraded on a cracked, blood-washed platform, eyes hollow, wrists bruised.
Vale leaned against a pillar in the shadows, his coat draped like a shroud. No one noticed him—but he noticed everything.
A boy sobbed as he was dragged offstage. The audience didn't blink. A girl, no older than ten, stood trembling in her tattered dress. She flinched at every movement. Her eyes met Vale's. He looked away.
Then came her.
The girl was small—frail, really. Unwashed hair like soot, skin sickly pale, but her eyes…
Her eyes weren't scared.
They were calculating.
She limped as she walked—ankle bruised and fresh blood on her knee—but when the handler pushed her forward, she didn't stumble. She adjusted. Corrected. Survived.
The auctioneer called her "Lot Forty-One." Her lips didn't move, but Vale saw it: a whisper to herself. A calculation. Like she was memorizing the layout of the room. Vale leaned forward.
Dante's voice slid into his head, serpentine and smug.
"She's like you. Smaller. Quieter. But look at the eyes. Cold, aren't they? You could use that. Shape it."
One of the buyers rose. A bloated man in a suit too fine for a soul so small.
"She's defective," he grunted. "Too small. Feed her to the dogs. Or sell her to the brothel—whichever pays."
He reached for her. Fat fingers groping toward her chin.
She bit him.
Not like a child in fear. Like a trap sprung with purpose.
He screamed, clutching his hand as blood spilled between gold rings. She spat a shard of tooth at his shoes like a challenge.
The guards surged forward, blades half-drawn.
She didn't flinch. She waited.
Then: a voice. Cool, clean, and precise.
"No need."
Vale stepped from the shadow like he'd always been there. Like the scene had unfolded for him.
His presence halted the guards mid-motion—unnerved, uncertain.
"I'll take her," he said. Not kindly. Not cruelly.
Simply as fact.
The room quieted. Even the bleeding man said nothing.
that child looked up—not grateful. Calculating. And Vale saw it. Saw the fire buried beneath the bruises, the mind beneath the mess.
Yes, he thought. Not broken. Just misused.
This one, he could work with.
"Sir, this one's—"
"I said I'll take her." Vale flashed a paper. Forged ID. The stamp of a ghost corporation.
He didn't wait for approval.
He walked up the platform, met the girl's gaze, and crouched.
"You hurt him," he said.
She didn't reply.
"You'll do."
Later That Night
The apartment was dim, dust thick in the corners. It hadn't changed in ten years.
Neither had the silence.
The girl sat on a couch that swallowed her whole. Vale poured water and slid it across the table. She didn't drink.
He stood by the window, the city flickering beneath him like a broken machine—endless light with nothing alive in it.
"What's your name?" he asked, not turning.
She didn't answer.
"Fine," he said. "I'll name you."
He looked to the table. A candle burned low, guttering out in fits.
"Ash."
A pause.
"I like it," she whispered.
He turned. "Why?"
"Because ash is what's left when everything burns."
A smile touched her lips—fragile, unfinished.
Then, quieter:
"Are you going to—" Her voice wavered. "Do something to me?"
Vale blinked, slow and unreadable. Then he crossed the room and crouched in front of her, not close enough to threaten, but enough to force her gaze.
"You think I bought you for that?"
Her silence was answer enough.
He shook his head, not harshly—just disappointed.
"You're a child," he said. "Not in age. In timing. In thinking. The world taught you one language, and now you think everyone speaks it."
She looked down.
He stood again, smooth and slow, as if the moment barely touched him.
"If I wanted to hurt you, you wouldn't be here drinking water. You'd still be on that floor. Bleeding."
A beat passed.
"No one hurts what they plan to use," he added softly.
She looked up at that—something flickering behind her eyes.
Not trust.
Recognition.
Ash's Backstory – Unfolded
Later that night, she sat cross-legged on the floor, knees pulled to her chest. The firelight danced across her scars—some visible, some too deep for skin to show.
Vale was watching her like one would study a puzzle.
She spoke first.
"I was born in a basement," she said, voice steady. "No sunlight. No names. Just numbers."
He said nothing.
"They kept us in cages. Fed us lies and leftovers. Taught us how to smile when someone touched you."
Vale's eyes didn't move. Neither did hers.
"I smiled too well. They picked me often."
A breath.
"Until I stopped smiling. Then they started hitting."
Vale said quietly, "Why didn't you run?"
She looked up. Eyes steady.
"Where do rats run inside a trap?"
Silence.
"I didn't think anyone would take me today," she added, almost breezy. "I bit the last one on purpose. Thought they'd kill me for it."
Vale raised an eyebrow.
"But then you came."
She tilted her head, studying him like a puzzle no one had solved yet.
"You're not like them. But you're not good either."
Vale gave a crooked grin.
"No. I'm not."
She stood and moved to the window, arms crossed, gaze on the rust-lit sprawl below.
"Why'd you take me?"
He stepped behind her. His voice barely a breath.
"Because you don't cry like the others. You calculate. You endure."
In his mind, Dante stirred—his voice like coals shifting in the dark:Train her. Shape her. Mold the fire into a blade.
Vale said, "I can make you useful."
She didn't turn.
"I already am."
He turned to leave.
"Vale," she called.
He paused.
"What?"
"You killed someone today, didn't you?"
He said nothing.
She smiled, small and surgical.
"Good."
A pause.
"Some things only get clean in blood."
He looked at her then—really looked. And saw not a child.
A shadow in training. A reflection, unfinished.