|Gryphon's POV|
The city breathes differently when you're walking into its belly with blood on your mind and someone worth killing for in your heart, and as I cut through traffic in a blacked-out SUV that smells like oil and gunmetal and something older than conscience, I feel the calm settle into my bones—not the absence of fear, but the sharp-edged clarity that only comes when everything you love is at risk and the only language left is violence spoken in measured destruction.
Draven's waiting at the warehouse just off Dock 9, that half-abandoned stretch of asphalt and sea-stink where forgotten cargo sits like coffins no one's willing to claim, and when I step out of the car, the wind rips through my coat like it's trying to remind me what it feels like to be hollowed out by ghosts I n
