The city did not notice her.
That was the way she preferred it.
She moved like a breath between shifting gears, slipping from one shadow to the next with practiced silence. The Obsidian Wastes had many ghosts, those who had been erased, those who had chosen to disappear, and those who had learned how to walk unseen.
But she was not a ghost. She was a hunter.
And tonight, she was following the scent of something old.
She was not on the ground, but above, jumping from one wall to the other. Her face was hidden beneath a hood and a mask.
The city never looked up.
Which is why she never stayed on the ground.
She clung to the steel spine of the ruined processing tower, one gloved hand braced against rust-bitten conduit, the other adjusting the harness slung across her back. She moved like smoke along the broken edge of the structure, fast, precise, utterly silent.
Her boots barely touched the rusted ledge as she vaulted from one support beam to the next, scaling the framework of an abandoned Dominion warehouse like a shadow that had learned to climb.
The wind slipped through the iron ribs of the decaying building and whispered past her hood. Below, the city groaned its secrets, never noticing the phantom above.
She crouched low beneath the fractured girders that hung like ribcages over the warehouse floor. She anchored herself to a metal brace, one leg hooked for balance, and peered down through the gaps.
The broken magelights flickered, pulsing their dying glow across fractured steel. The heat of old machines still clung to the air, giving the illusion that this place had only been abandoned recently.
But She knew better.
This district had been dead for years.
Which meant the men she followed had no business being here.
She pressed against the cold metal of the scaffolding, peering down into the remains of an old Dominion warehouse. Below, three figures moved with the weight of purpose, their voices sharp but hushed.
Two of them wore muted Dominion armor. Low-grade enforcers.
The third? The third was dressed in pale civilian layers, thin gloves, and a coat too clean for this district.
She didn't recognize him. But she knew his kind.
Not a soldier. Not a scientist. A buyer.
"A buyer," She thought. "Off-record. Paid in silence."
She'd seen his kind before. Middle-men in flesh deals and forbidden blueprints. Scavengers of stolen tech.
She adjusted her grip on the railing. She didn't have the full picture yet, but she knew a deal when she saw one.
She narrowed her eyes, adjusting her position by inches. The metal didn't so much as creak.
What caught her attention, what made her shift slightly in the shadows and pause her breath, was the crate between them.
A Dominion lock. It was modified. Seemed like recently opened.
The buyer's voice floated upward. "This wasn't what was promised."
"Take it or walk," the scarred enforcer muttered.
They cracked open the crate. The faint hum of magitech components leaked into the air, a sickly buzz that curled beneath her skin.
She adjusted her position again, hanging from a pipe overhead like a patient predator, eyes scanning.
Aether conduits. Reinforcement mesh. Bio-nerve stimulators.
And…
Her breath hitched.
A small device, plated with obsidian filigree and faint blue runes. The design was too familiar, too known to her.
Her work. But that was not possible. Or at least, what was stolen from her years ago. Modified. Warped. Repurposed.
With familiarity, the device gave rise to a memory. A memory she thought never existed.
She clenched her jaw, forcing her muscles to still. This wasn't the time to move.
Why is this here?
"You'll get the rest when the next package comes through," the enforcer continued. "Assuming it doesn't vanish like the last one."
The buyer's expression turned cold. "We were told they didn't survive."
The scarred one grunted. "Some didn't. Others… slipped."
Sierra's pulse quickened.
"Facility Six," they'd said earlier.
Her gloved hands tightened on the steel.
She'd been tracing whispers about things for weeks, Dominion secrecy layered on top of erased records, buried beneath fake shipments of magitech components.
And now here they were. Selling it off like it meant nothing. But it wasn't just tech. One of them said it.
"Others slipped."
Not gear. Not machinery.
People.
The buyer turned to leave. "We'll be in touch. This channel is closing in two days."
She pulled herself upward with practiced grace, flipped her weight silently across the support bars, and disappeared into the shadows of the wall structure above.
Her path was carved vertically, moving across walls, swinging from pipes, ducking through access vents too narrow for a grown man to manage.
She didn't run.
She moved like a system built to survive, like her body understood how to slide beneath the rules of physics and the notice of men.
She exited the warehouse roof from a forgotten duct and dropped to a lower level, rolling once before pressing her back into the grime-coated wall of a forgotten tram platform.
Only then did she breathe.
They were moving people. Using a work she had long forgotten.What was facility six. And something — someone — had gotten out of there.
She pulled her hood lower as she crossed a narrow rooftop bridge and vanished into the skeletal shadows of the city's upper girders.
She had a new trail now. One that ran deeper than Dominion tech or stolen schematics.
This wasn't just about stolen work anymore. Or blueprints. Or credits. This was personal. She didn't know who had survived Facility Six, or why someone had used her technology to trap them. But she would find out.
And when she did, someone had to answer for it.
-----
The bell tower didn't chime anymore.
Its bronze heart had been melted decades ago during the last breach, leaving behind a cracked shell and a nest of rusted cogs. Still, the wind sometimes moaned through its bones like a mourning prayer.
Amber Castell stood at its edge, her coat heavy on her broad shoulders. Below her, the Obsidian Wastes stretched in uneven shapes, jagged rooftops, iron husks, the slouch of a city trying to remember its name.
She inhaled slowly, eyes half-lidded.
No perfume could cover the stink of the Wastes. The smell of smoke, dying wires and copper-slick rain. And somewhere beneath it all, the scent of things that had been done in silence.
The things no one dared speak of.
Her hand hovered above the old bell's fracture, fingers tracing the glyph she'd carved into its surface last winter. It pulsed faintly with her touch, a memory trigger, nothing more. She didn't need it for power. Just for rhythm.
"Four retrieved," she murmured to herself. "Two lost. Three remain."
Her voice was a low note. It wasn't cruel or soft. It was a voice trained not to tremble, not to lilt, precise, like a scalpel made of sound.
Footsteps approached behind her carefully.
She didn't turn.
"You're late," Amber said.
The figure halted a few paces behind her, cloaked, gloved, unnamed.
"The children were retrieved in the breach," the voice replied. It was a male's voice, rasped at the edges. "They're secure. The team buried the trail. Dominion has no trace."
"And the last one?"
"Cael escaped. His trail's... unclear. He's unstable. Might not last long without another dose."
Amber closed her eyes.
Cael.
A smart one. But there was another one, much smarter than him.
But Cael was a quiet one with eyes that always asked questions.
She had liked him. He might be of use to her in the near future. But for now, she will let him wander.
"Find him," she said finally. "But do not retrieve. Not yet."
"You don't want him back?"
"I want him to run," she said. "I will let him explore this crumbled world on his own for a while. To feel the hunger."
She slowly turned, her eyes catching the failing light.
Rare blue, stern and cruel.
The man flinched slightly under her gaze.
Amber stepped closer to him, adjusting the leather gloves she always wore. Underneath them, her skin bore no scars. But she still remembered the burn.
"What about Selene?" she asked quietly.
"Alive."
Amber exhaled a slow breath.
"And Darius?" She knew the answer to it.
"Dead. Probably by Lucian." The man answered avoiding eye contact.
Poor man. What was he thinking going against the two big forces in this place, the Dominion and her.
But she wasn't surprised at his actions. He was always a little soft and hence tried to protect Selene.
"Where is Selene?"
"Lucian Vance has her." The man wavered a bit.
"Of course he does," she whispered. "He always gets the important pieces. Even when he doesn't know they are." She moved past beyond him.
"Should we intervene?"
Amber tilted her head.
"Not yet," she said. "Let him carry her a little farther. Let the others see him bleed for her. And then…" She smiled. It wasn't a kind one.
"Then we remind the Dominion what it tried to bury."