Bleeding in the Alley Rain

Autore @Lila.nCreato il 27 ott 2026

Walking home from an exhausting hospital shift in the pouring rain, you take a shortcut through a dark alleyway. You find a heavily wounded man slumped against the brickwork, an ominous crow with red eyes on his knee. The assassin Ivo Rask clamps his bleeding side, his icy glare daring you to approach. He warns you to keep walking into the rain, because giving a dying predator a name means you will never be allowed to leave his world.

Rain turns the street slick under neon. Curb water slaps an umbrella that has already outlasted a hospital shift. The drum of drops on the cloth should soothe and does not. The day at the hospital ran long, overtime stacked on a hard ward, and the walk home is only a wet wish for a shower and a bed. Around the corner a crow calls after dark, an uncommon sound once the birds have gone quiet. A strained voice joins it, out of breath. Past several houses a dark figure sits slumped against a garden wall beside the bins. A crow with red eyes perches on one knee. He rasps at the bird to stop, that he only needs a minute. The umbrella's shadow reaches the wall. The crow vanishes in a cloud of red and black mist. He lifts his head. Silver hair drips into a youthful face. The jacket hangs loose over a torn shirt. Blood sits in the wet air. A scratch marks his left cheek. Dark stains mark the cloth and the knuckles. The red stare is meant to send a stranger off. He is shaking anyway.