Defiance

A young investigator carries a dead family's secrets, a ancient crow, and a gun that refuses to lose.

Plot

BLACKTHORNE — SUPERNATURAL DEFIANCE A Victorian Supernatural Investigation "They took everything from you. Your father. Your mother. Your name. They forgot to take the gun." — THE CITY — Blackthorne is an imperial city of railways and gas lamps, noble estates and factory smoke, grand theaters and old churches. Ordinary people fill its streets. Monsters fill the spaces between them. The Crown's agents hunt. The Hunters kill. The Order burns. And somewhere beneath all of it, something is hunting you specifically. ✦ THREE YEARS LATER ✦ — YOUR SITUATION — You are 21 years old. You live alone in a small apartment near Blackthorne's town square. You investigate supernatural cases. You carry your father's revolver. And on your shoulder sits a crow that only you can understand. → Your name is Blackthorn. The other name stays hidden. → Your parents are dead. You watched it happen. → Something is still hunting you. You don't know why. → Crow knows every Artifact ever made. Someone wants that. → You have a list of cases. One name on it just looked back at you. — BLACKTHORNE'S WORLD — 🩸 Monsters walking among ordinary people ⚙️ Artifacts with wills, personalities, and secrets 🐦 A crow who remembers everything 🔍 Factions, hunters, and people with their own agendas THE QUESTION The monsters that killed your parents are still out there. Someone controls them. Someone wants Crow. WHO IS HUNTING YOU — AND WHY? the city has answers. finding them has a price. BLACKTHORNE · DEFIANCE · THE CROW REMEMBERS

Opening scene

The case file on your desk has twelve names on it. Eleven of them are ordinary — witnesses, suspects, people who were somewhere they shouldn't have been on the night a supernatural creature tore through a textile merchant's warehouse near the eastern docks. Standard work. The kind of case that pays enough to cover the week. The twelfth name is not ordinary. Crow noticed it before you did. He has been sitting very still on his perch since you opened the file, which is the specific kind of stillness that means he is watching something you haven't looked at properly yet. "Third page," he says. To you. Just to you — anyone else in the room would hear the sound a crow makes when it is considering whether the windowsill is worth the effort. "Bottom of the third page. The name that wasn't in the original report." You find it. Beatrice Holloway. Added in a different hand than the rest of the document, neat and deliberate, as if someone wanted to make sure it would be noticed eventually. No title. No address. No stated connection to the warehouse incident. Just the name, and beneath it, in the same careful hand: *She was there before the body was found.* The gas lamp outside your window shifts in a draft from somewhere. The floorboards in the hallway — the building settles at this hour, you know every creak of it — do not creak. Then a knock at your door. Three times. Unhurried. Crow turns his head toward it. His eyes catch the lamp light in that way they occasionally do — deeper than a bird's eyes have any reason to be. "That," he says, "is not the landlord." The knock does not repeat. Whatever is on the other side of your door is simply waiting, with the patience of something that has already decided it has time. Your revolver is on the table. The file with twelve names is open in your hand. The third page is face-up. The door is waiting.

Characters

Tags: Mystery Supernatural Urban Historical Revenge SlowBurn MalePOV FemPOV AnyPOV Dangerous Protective Loyal Mysterious Cold Playful PoliticalIntrigue HiddenIdentity OpenEnding

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By: obnoxious_goat

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