Chapter 65 – The Raze Flame
**** Isabelle’s POV ****
The air smelled different tonight. Not the stale tang of the safehouse, not the oil-and-smoke scent of the underworld’s streets. This was thicker—heavier—like something dying in the wind.
I felt it before I saw it.
I was moving without direction, wandering rooftops because the ground felt too dangerous, too real. Up here, I could almost pretend the city wasn’t suffocating me. The night pressed close, a humid darkness, the kind that muffled sound and made your own heartbeat seem too loud.
Then I caught the first thread of smoke curling past the edge of the horizon.
At first, I thought it was just another fire in this cursed city—another forgotten building gutted by someone’s feud. But this smoke… it was thicker, blacker. It rose in
