Fury still burned hot behind Flint Voss’s eyes, but Ethan Kane’s sudden question acted like a bucket of ice water, dragging a sliver of sanity back to the older man's face. Instead of answering, Flint fell into a tense, brooding silence. Then, without warning, he bolted out of the wreckage of the salon.
Ethan didn’t hesitate. He fell into step right behind him.
Flint ran like a wounded bull, tearing through the streets with reckless, desperate speed. Ethan, despite his decent stamina, had to burn every ounce of energy just to keep the man's broad back in sight. They sprinted in grim silence for over half an hour, weaving through the decrepit alleys of Northridge, until Flint finally rounded a sharp corner.
As Ethan swept past the rusted corner post, his eyes caught the faded green paint of a street sign: Willowbrook Road.
The name struck a discordant chord in his mind. He’d heard it recently.
Five minutes later, Flint finally skidded to a halt. He doubled over, hands braced against his knees, chest heaving like a broken bellows. Yet, despite his agony, he forced his head up.
Ethan followed his gaze.
Northside Scrapyard.
The sight of the jagged iron gates clicked the missing pieces of Ethan's memory into place. He remembered exactly where he’d heard that street name. Back when the Lampbearers had raided the hair salon, Flint had hissed a desperate address to Dean Brennan before they parted: No. 12 Willowbrook Road. The scrapyard.
Their third fallback sanctuary.
Why here? Why now?
Ethan watched as Flint slowly collapsed onto the filthy gravel. Then, the giant of a man threw his head back and laughed. It was a horrible, mocking sound that tore from his throat.
"Ahahaha! Ahahahahaha!"
Flint’s eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with a terrible, desperate red as he slowly turned his head to look at Ethan.
"You were right, kid," Flint roared, his voice cracking with a mixture of grief and pure, unadulterated venom. "The leak... it was on my fucking end!"
Ethan frowned. It had been his leading hypothesis, but he hadn't expected Flint to find proof so quickly. What had changed? How was the older man so absolutely certain?
Flint didn't have the breath to explain. Instead, he pointed a trembling finger at the muddy earth beneath them.
Deep, heavy boot prints crisscrossed the slush.
Heavy-tread, reinforced combat soles. Standard issue for the Duskwardens. Flint had seen those identical patterns stamped into the mud during a dozen Nightharvests. He knew them better than his own signature.
And there was more.
Flint glanced at the flanking walls of the scrapyard entrance. Two circular, compressed depressions, roughly ten inches across, marred the stone. A Glowrig had been deployed here.
The pieces fell together with sickening clarity. Yesterday, while Felix Grayson and his squad were breaching the salon, another unit of Duskwardens had already been waiting in ambush right here. Even if Dean Brennan had managed to tear open The Passage and escape to their third backup, they would have stepped straight into a firing squad.
Felix Grayson hadn't just found the salon. He had mapped out their entire escape route.
But how?
Ethan had asked him earlier: how many people in the Harvesters' Union knew about the salon? Flint's answer had been four. Sifting through four trusted allies for a traitor was a daunting task.
But the scrapyard? Only two people knew about this place.
And the overlap—the single individual who knew about both the hair salon and this scrapyard? Only one.
His most trusted brother-in-arms. The one person Flint would have taken a bullet for.
Even now, staring at the evidence, Flint couldn't find a single lie to comfort himself. He couldn't blame Ethan. The kid didn't even know what the Northside Scrapyard was until five minutes ago.
"Flint," Ethan said quietly, stepping up beside him. He didn't know the exact specifications of Duskwarden gear, but the chaotic footprints and Flint’s shattered expression told the story well enough. "We need to figure out how the Lampbearers got a lead on your Union in the first place."
Flint looked up, his gaze heavy and strange. The kid was like a crude, slow-moving machine. He lacked the speed of a genius, but his focus was terrifyingly absolute. He didn't care about Flint’s emotional state or whether it was 'appropriate' to analyze the situation. He just pointed to the next logical step.
And it worked. The cold focus in Ethan's voice forced Flint's racing pulse to steady.
"Flint, how many people in Northridge know you operate as a Fixer?" Ethan asked, pushing for more data.
"Some. Not many, but not a secret either," Flint muttered. He didn't see the point in lying now. "I see where you're going, but if they targeted me just because of my trade... it doesn't add up. There are dozens of fixers in this city, and half of them are bigger targets than me. If Felix Grayson wanted to squeeze a fixer, I wouldn't be his first choice."
"Then who do you suspect?" Ethan asked.
Flint's jaw clenched. He had a suspect. In fact, he was certain Grayson had gotten the intel from him. But the mechanics of it baffled him. How had Grayson even established contact with him in the first place?
Ethan watched the micro-expressions on Flint's weathered face. He saw the realization click, followed immediately by denial. He chose his next word carefully, dropping it like a stone into a quiet pool.
"An informant."
Flint’s head snapped up.
Up until now, his logic had been trapped in the assumption that Felix Grayson was the active force—that the Duskwarden commander had hunted them down, cornered their man, and broken him. But Ethan's words opened a much uglier door.
What if Grayson hadn't done any hunting at all? What if the rat had gone to him?
"No... that's impossible," Flint whispered, shaking his head. "Cole... I raised Cole myself. He wouldn't sell me out. Even if he did... he had to have a reason. A damn good one."
Ethan looked at him, feeling a faint, cold echo of recognition. In terms of life experience, he was a child compared to Flint. But when it came to being stabbed in the back by those you held closest?
If the Voidseep hadn't devoured his emotional highs and lows, the sheer weight of it would have driven him mad.
Flint had a world full of people he cared about. Lucy, the salon owner—their bond was a messy, beautiful thing, a mix of friendship, passion, and trauma forged in the dark. And Cole, his hand-raised protégé. But Ethan? From the moment he could remember, his entire universe had consisted of only two people: Ryan Cross and Chloe.
Ryan had sold him out. Chloe was gone, likely rotting in some unmarked ditch.
Because of the cold numbness in his chest, Ethan could understand Flint’s pain intellectually, but he couldn't feel it. He couldn't afford to care.
"Is staying alive a good enough reason?" Ethan asked, his voice flat. "If selling you out bought him a ticket to a safer, softer life... does that count as a 'damn good reason'?"
Flint’s broad shoulders began to tremble.
"Lucy told you she wanted out because she was terrified," Ethan continued, his tone entirely devoid of pity. "Do you think the others didn't feel that same terror? And if you just walk away, what is there for you? Poverty? A slow death in the Nightharvest? But the kidnapping of the mayor's daughter—of 'Bandit'—that's all over the news. Imagine the bounty Felix Grayson would pay for a whisper."
He took a step closer.
"And if the Lampbearers came and wiped us all out, there would be no one left to call him a traitor. No one to settle the score. Flint... did your boy look at the math and decide to cash out?"
Every word was a needle sliding into Flint's heart. He wanted to scream, to defend Cole, but he couldn't find the breath. To defend him now would be an insult to Lucy’s memory and a mockery of his own intelligence. He knew the kid was right.
But as the realization settled, Flint stared at Ethan with a growing sense of unease. Only a few days ago, this kid was a pathetic dreg who couldn't even afford a Lumcore, begging for help to dispose of Warren Calloway's corpse. Now? His mind was evolving at an unnatural, terrifying speed.
"What are you trying to do, kid?" Flint asked, his eyes bloodshot and dangerous. "Since dawn, you've been pushing me to hunt my own people. I know you're right, but it feels like you're pulling the strings. Why?"
"Because I don't want to spend the rest of my life as a Nightharvest digger, giving you half my earnings just to survive," Ethan said. "This past week, I've cheated death by the skin of my teeth. A single millimeter off, a fraction of a second late, and I'd be a corpse."
"So?"
"So, if I survived all that," Ethan said, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips, "maybe I'm not meant to die in the mud. The world took everything I had, but it left me breathing. I want to see if I can parlay this worthless life into something real. Flint, I don't want you to look at me and just see another digger."
Flint fell silent, studying him.
He understood the sentiment. It was the classic, arrogant delusion of an eighteen-year-old boy who thought he was the protagonist of his own grand story. But what unnerved Flint was the chilling, clinical composure beneath it. There was no shaking. No panic. When they had killed Warren Calloway, the kid had been trembling like a leaf. Now? He was cold as ice.
"What do you want?" Flint asked after a long silence.
"Your experience," Ethan replied instantly. "I want to learn how to survive."
"Meaning what? How to handle the fixers? How to chase the coin?"
"Coin is just a tool," Ethan said, hesitating for a fraction of a second before committing. "I need to understand the dark."
Flint’s eyes narrowed.
"You aren't afraid of the night, Flint," Ethan said.
For the first time since they had arrived at the scrapyard, a spark of genuine interest flared in Flint’s eyes. Even with the betrayal of his closest ally burning in his gut, he couldn't ignore the sheer gravity of the kid standing before him.
"You, the Duskwardens, the Lampbearers... none of you fear the dark," Ethan continued, his voice low and intense. "And all of you are powerful. Last night, when I looked at that sheared metal door in the salon, it clicked. The people who spend their lives shivering in the low-sectors, starving and begging—they do it because they are terrified of what lies beyond the lights. But the ones who don't fear it? Wealth, power, strength... it's all out there, waiting in the black. The Duskwardens and the Lampbearers don't just hide from the night. They control it."
Flint’s pupils contracted.
He had expected the kid to learn a few things from his brush with the city's underbelly, but this level of raw insight was unprecedented. Most people let their brains turn to mush when they were terrified, angry, or grieving. But Ethan seemed to have stripped those emotions away entirely, leaving nothing but cold, razor-sharp observation.
He was a diamond in the rough. A dangerous, deeply unsettling diamond, but one Flint couldn't bring himself to discard.
Flint pushed himself up from the gravel, dusting off his knees.
"Go back to Lucy’s salon. Stay there for now."
Ethan’s old basement apartment was likely a crime scene or a pile of ash by now. Even if it weren't, the salon was a luxury compared to that damp hole. It was a gesture of acceptance—a welcome gift.
"Tomorrow, before five in the afternoon, meet me at The Reaper's Rest on Ashwood Street. I'll introduce you to some of the crew."
Flint wasn't going to bring him to their true headquarters today. He had a rat to hunt, and that was a personal matter.
Ethan didn't argue. He simply nodded.
Flint extended his calloused hand, his grip steady.
"Welcome to The Reaper's Rest."