The rain tasted like iron.
Alfreda stood under the broken porch of the safehouse, hands clenched into fists as a memory struck her hard—uninvited, violent, loud.
FLASHBACK
Ten years ago.
A rusted warehouse by the docks.
She was only sixteen, covered in bruises and blood, crouched before a man with a gold tooth and eyes like razors.
"You think revenge is loud," he'd said. "But the Widowmaker taught me—real revenge whispers."
She didn't understand back then.
She did now.
Her mentor had been murdered a year later. Stabbed in the throat.
No witnesses.
Only a card in his jacket.
The same card she'd just burned.
Back in the safehouse, Nathaniel pulled the old bookshelf away from the wall.
A heavy creak echoed as he opened a trapdoor.
"Come on," he said. "Time you saw what I was protecting."
They descended into darkness.
Rows of weapons gleamed under fluorescent lights—machine guns, sniper rifles, grenades. But that wasn't what made Alfreda stop breathing.
At the far end of the bunker: a steel cabinet.
Stamped on the front in fading red ink:
WIDOWMAKER: ORIGINS
DO NOT UNSEAL
She ran her fingers over the lid. "You were tracking him?"
"Trying to," Nathaniel said. "But he's not a man. He's a ghost in flesh."
Alfreda's eyes narrowed. "Then we need to become hunters."
Lucien's voice was hoarse.
The boy stood over him.
"This is a lie," the boy said, holding the letter.
"It's fake—"
"She's my mother."
Lucien sat up, wincing. "She's a criminal. A killer."
The boy's hand trembled. Then, without warning, he slapped Lucien across the face.
"You made me a killer," he whispered. "You're the lie."
Then he left.
Dano stirred the fireplace ashes with a blade.
"I think there's something under the soot," he muttered. A glint. Then a symbol—coordinates, encoded in ashes.
He scribbled them down, then looked up at Alfreda.
"Where is it?"
She read the location. Her face paled.
"That's… where I was raised."
Night fell hard.
They arrived at the edge of the forest, headlights cutting through the fog.
Nothing but ruin. Charred brick. Collapsed beams.
The orphanage had burned years ago.
Alfreda stood among the wreckage, boots crunching ash and memory. Her fingers brushed a scorched nameplate half-buried in the dirt.
"St. Lenora's Home for Girls"
Her childhood flashed—brief, broken. The smell of soup. The scream of fire.
"This was no accident," she whispered. "He wanted me gone. Even back then."
Nathaniel nodded. "The Widowmaker covers his tracks with flames."
But someone else was watching.
Crack.
A bullet shattered a nearby window.
Then another.
Dano screamed.
Blood soaked his jacket.
Sniper.
Alfreda dropped to the ground, dragging him behind a rusted stove.
Nathaniel fired blindly into the trees, but it was too dark.
"We're pinned," he shouted.
"Not for long," Alfreda growled.
She grabbed a smoke grenade from her belt, pulled the pin, and let the chaos bloom.
A figure stepped through the mist.
Tall. Silent. Dressed in black. The Widowmaker's first assassin.
Mask carved like a skull.
Alfreda rose to her feet, blades drawn.
"Tell him," she said, voice sharp as ice, "his ghost made a mistake coming for the girl who burned alive."
The assassin raised a machete.
And the fight began.