[Ravenfall: Hydra(luce), Leviathan(lev), Phoenix(ishaan), Griffin(veer), Valkyrie(avni), Cerberus(sayaka), Kraken(erik), Wyvern(raiden), Nymph(saira), Sphinx(dev). Others: Amber(isolde), Azure(damien), Basilisk(Vance), Pegasus(Sol)]
The Umbra safehouse sat at the edge of a sleepy Italian vineyard, the kind of place where nothing louder than cicadas should be heard. Inside, however, the air was thick with argument, sarcasm, and the faint scent of gun oil.
Hydra sat at the head of the oak table, the Codex open in front of him. It wasn’t much to look at—worn leather, pages filled with looping ecclesiastical Latin—but its margins were covered in symbols he recognized from Umbra’s darker files. He traced one phrase with his gloved finger.
“Sleeping Gate,” he murmured.
Leviathan glanced over from the couch, half-distracted by the fact Valkyrie was sitting with her arms crossed, refusing to look at him. “That’s a place?”
Hydra shook his head slowly. “No. A state. This isn’t a map—it’s a process. Dormant activation. Could be a weapon. Could be… something alive.”
Kraken and Wyvern exchanged a glance from across the room. Neither spoke, but their minds were on the same thing—the shadowy figure they’d glimpsed during the firefight in Rome. Something about the way it moved. The way it stood.
Amber leaned against the wall, arms folded. Azure sat on the arm of her chair, scrolling through intercepted comm chatter. “Sleeping Gate… Project Vulture… whatever it is, the Vatican’s not the only one after it,” he said.
“Great,” Griffin said from the kitchen. “We just stole a cursed mystery. Who’s up for wine?”
Valkyrie ignored him, glaring instead at Leviathan. “You swapped my ammo.”
Lev didn’t look guilty. “Non-lethal rounds. You were trigger-happy tonight.”
“You hid my comms before the mission,” she shot back.
“That was funny.”
“It was immature.”
Phoenix groaned from the other couch. “Please, both of you, I barely survived being fake-married to her for two hours—don’t drag me into this Cold War.”
Kraken muttered, “Feels more like kindergarten.”
Amber smirked. “You’re all aware these are supposed to be S-class mafia heirs, right? Not middle school drama club?”
Azure didn’t look up. “Still deciding which they’re better at.”
Hydra tuned out the bickering, turning another page of the Codex. His eyes lingered on a jagged sketch—tall silhouette, partial cybernetic lines, and beneath it, three words in faded ink: Vulture Host Prime. His grip on the page tightened.
The room seemed to fade into silence for him as his thoughts drifted back to Elior. Elior’s last moments—bloody, brutal, senseless—played in his head like a broken reel. The one who’d ordered it… still out there.
And then there was the figure he’d seen tonight.
Hydra wasn’t the only one haunted by it. Kraken and Wyvern had seen it too, just for a second under muzzle flashes. They hadn’t said the name they were thinking. Couldn’t.
Amber’s voice cut in, low. “That movement. The way it turned its head.”
Azure nodded, uneasy. “Yeah. Too familiar. But no way it’s who we think. That’s impossible.”
None of them spoke the name: Valken.
Unknown Location
The room was cold enough to fog the reinforced glass of the containment chamber. Inside, something shifted in the shadows—breathing, slow and heavy.
A figure stepped into the light. His hair caught gold under the fluorescents, but not like it once had; it was streaked with surgical scars, metallic threads glinting at his temples. Hazel eyes burned under the weight of inhuman calm. His posture was unmistakable to anyone who’d trained under him, but his frame was changed—broader, altered, a silent map of bio-engineering.
He smiled faintly at the glass. “Soon.”
No response from the thing inside. Only the steady hiss of the chamber’s life-support systems.
“Sleeping Gate will open,” he murmured. “And Project Vulture will succeed.”
He laughed then—not wildly, but with a deliberate, quiet mania that made the steel walls seem thinner.
Back at the safehouse, Wyvern was leaning against the window frame, watching the vineyard under the moonlight. Kraken joined him, voice low.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I’m thinking I didn’t want to think it,” Wyvern said. “But yeah.”
Neither said the name.
Meanwhile, Leviathan and Valkyrie’s quarrel had evolved into full-scale sabotage. She had reprogrammed his holo-scope to display pink glittering hearts with every target lock; he’d replaced her stealth knife with a butter spreader.
Phoenix, who was unfortunately seated between them on the couch, finally stood. “I’m going outside before one of you poisons the other’s coffee.”
Griffin, leaning in the doorway, smirked. “Don’t worry, Phoenix. You’re safe. The only one Leviathan wants to kill tonight is you.”
Lev shot him a look sharp enough to cut glass.
Amber glanced between them all and sighed. “Umbra’s top operatives,” she muttered to Azure. “I swear it’s like babysitting with live ammunition.”
Azure snorted. “Nah. Babysitting is easier. You can take the guns away from kids.”
Hydra finally closed the Codex. “Enough. We move at dawn. Whatever Sleeping Gate is, it’s in motion now.”
And though none of them said it aloud, every Shade in that room felt the same pull—toward the figure in the shadows of their memories, and toward the vengeance they didn’t yet know how to claim.
ns216.73.216.33da2
and then Add to home screen.