Chapter Text
The dead never stayed quiet.
Y/n had learned that long ago, when she was a small child who was haunted by nightmares; nightmares that not even her parents or the countless shrinks that she was sent to could figure out. Their voices murmured beneath her skin, a constant hum of sorrow, anger, and regret that only increased as she grew older. Some begged for release. Others wanted revenge. Most simply watched, their unseen presence pressing against the edges of her mind. She stood in the shadows of a crumbling warehouse, hidden from the neon glow of downtown Manhattan beyond the building. Rain dripped down from the rusted beams, pooling around her scuffed boots, but she didn’t move. The air here was thick with something wrong – a presence that didn’t belong.
A hunt was underway.
Y/n exhaled, letting the darkness stretch toward the corners of the room. Shadows obeyed her call, shifting, whispering secrets only she could understand. Whatever was lurking here, it wasn’t human-
And it wasn’t alone.
She tightened her grip, her knuckles forming into fists as she summoned a flicker of black flame along her fingertips. The souls within her stirred, restless.
“I know…” she whispered back, taking a deep breath as she tried to calm her racing thoughts. Chills raced down her spine as the room grew colder and the air grew heavier. “I feel it too.”
The flame along her fingers pulsed as she stepped deeper into the darkness. The shadows wrapped around her like a cloak, familiar and comforting, even as they stirred with unease. They knew that something was watching her.
She felt it before she saw it– a flicker in the corner of her vision, a shift in the air like a breath drawn in too sharply. Then, a low growl.
From the far end of the warehouse, two pinpricks of crimson light blinked open in the blackness. A shape emerged, massive and hunched, crawling on limbs far too long for a natural creature that you’d see on a day-to-day basis.
A soul-bound revenant. Corrupted. Hungry.
Y/n narrowed her eyes at the creature, straightening out her posture. “You’re not supposed to be here. Who brought you here-”
Suddenly, the creature lunged.
In one fluid motion, she lifted her hand and the shadows surged forward, solidifying into jagged tendrils that slammed into the creature midair. It shrieked as her shadows ignited along its skin–black flame consuming its corrupted flesh.
The revenant writhed, snapping at the coils of the shadowy flame that held it in place. The souls inside of Y/n screamed in warning, echoing through her bones. This revenant was stronger than she’d expected. She gritted her teeth, a bad habit that she always tried (and failed) to get rid of.
And for a faint moment, she remembered her mother lecturing her for always gritting her teeth, telling her it was bad-
Y/n shook her head, now was not the time for sappy reminiscing of a time that no longer existed.
“Fine,” she muttered gruffly, stepping closer to the bound spirit. “Let’s see what your soul has to say.”
She reached out and plunged her hand through the creature’s chest.
The room went still, the air somehow heavier than it was before.
For a moment, there was only silence… then the scream. But it wasn’t the creature’s scream, it was its soul's.
It wailed as it was drawn into her, its essence tearing apart as it merged with the mass of voices already inside her. Pain, rage, confusion–all of it burned through her like acid. She clenched her jaw, refusing to let it show despite being the only living being in the room.
Then, just like that, the warehouse grew quiet again, the only sound being the creature’s lifeless body crumpling to the ground in front of her.
Y/n stood over it, breathing heavily, fingers still glowing faintly with the shadow fire. Another soul added to the weight she carried, another ghost she’d never be free of.
And just like always, with her luck, the silence didn’t last.
A shiver ran through the air. The temperature dropped once more. Y/n froze. Her breath misted in front of her– the room was too cold, even for a damp, broken-down warehouse. The shadows around her recoiled, pulling tight like threads snapped in sudden fear.
She turned slowly, her breath shaky as she tried to calm her and the spirits inside her nerves.
The creature she’d just slain still lay crumpled on the ground, but something else was here now… something much, much older.
A figure emerged from the farthest corner of the room–tall, wrapped in robes of shadow that seemed to bleed into the air. No face, and as far as she could tell, no body. Just a hollow shape filled with smoke and bleeding with dread.
Her heart sank.
No….
“You again,” she said, voice low.
It didn’t speak. It never did. It simply watched, nothing but a mere sentinel of the realm between life and death. She didn’t know if it was some kind of warden, judge, or worse–but it always appeared when she absorbed something she shouldn’t have.
Y/n squared her shoulders. “I didn’t call you.”
The shadowy figure lifted what appeared to be its hand, the shadows around it curling upward, tendrils forming symbols in the air–old, broken runes, etched in the soul fire. She recognized the language. It was ancient. It was a warning.
“This… this thing isn’t yours,” she snapped, her hands clenching into fists once more as her eyes darkened. “The revenant was corrupted. No one claimed it.”
More symbols flared. More warnings. More silent threats.
The souls inside her stirred, whispering their unease. One of them screamed, the sound bursting behind her eyes. She staggered back, hand pressed to her temple.
“Get out,” she hissed to the being, her fingers still pressed to her temple. “You are not meant to be here. Not now.”
The specter didn’t move, simply staring at Y/n as it faded and dissolved into smoke, as if it had never been there. But Y/n knew better: that thing didn’t leave because it was done… it left because it was waiting.
What was it waiting for? Y/n hadn’t been able to figure it out, even after all of these years of dealing with these cursed abilities.
She knelt by the revenant’s remains, inspecting the cracked skin, and the glowing ash it was crumbling into. This wasn’t random, revenants don’t just appear out of nowhere. This thing had been summoned. Bound to something.
Someone was playing with forces they didn’t understand.
She stood, staring out into the night beyond the warehouse and out into the noisy streets of Manhattan. Somewhere in the city, someone was pulling souls from the other side and twisting them into monsters.
And now, they would know that she was hunting them.
Y/n let the shadows rise again, curling around her legs, then stepped into the dark –and just like that, she vanished.
The alley behind the warehouse was soaked and silent, the only sound being the distant buzz of traffic and the slow patter of rain. Y/n stepped out of the shadows, breath fogging up in the cold, and leaned back against the slick brick wall, her head tilted back toward the sky.
She let the quiet settle over her, but the souls inside of her didn’t. They never did.
One was still screaming. The revenant's soul–new, raw, half-torn–fought against its confinement, clawing at the edges of her being. She clenched her fists under her knuckles popped.
“Shut up,” she whispered harshly. “You lost. You’re stuck here now.”
The voice didn’t stop but dulled down, relieving Y/n’s headache as it finally quieted. She knew she would have to deal with it later–if it didn’t break something first.
Y/n pulled a small, leather-bound notebook from her leather coat; the cover was scratched, worn down by years of use, but still intact. She flipped it open to a page already scribbled on with black ink and a long, vertical line of names– some scratched out, some circled, some left to fade.
At the bottom of the list, she scribbled:
Revenant-Human host, unknown summoner. Ritual sigil branded under its sternum. Pattern consistent with Ashmoor cult variant. Behavior: feral, aggressive. Purpose: Unclear. Location: Abandoned warehouse, just outside of the Lower East Side in Manhattan.
She tapped the pen against the edge of the page. That was the third one this week. Three different boroughs. Three different hosts. Same twisted soul signature, the same corrupted necro-binding. These were not random, this was a trail. Someone was calling these corrupted spirits up from the spirit realm, and using them to do their bidding.
And they were getting bolder.
Her eyes narrowed, and she stuffed her notebook back into her pocket. Looking around, she emerged from the shadows and left the alleyway of the old warehouse, keeping her head lowered as she walked down the streets of the historic neighborhood.
Y/n didn’t take jobs anymore–not in the way that organizations like SHIELD and “Earth’s Mightiest Heros” would call official, at least. She tried so hard to leave this life behind, to free herself…But when whispers of soul-ripped husks wandering into city limits started surfacing in her usual channels, she could no longer ignore them.
She felt the imbalance before she even confirmed it. Something was breaking through.
Her fingers curled around the notebook in her pocket as she walked, making a quick detour to reach a fire escape on the side of another building.
She took the fire escape three floors up, ducked through a rusted door, and slipped into the abandoned loft that she’d been using for the past few weeks. It wasn’t much–peeling paint, flickering lightbulbs, a permanent draft through the broken window, and the unignorable smell of mildew that was trapped in this historic building’s walls–but it was high up, quiet, and hard to trace.
More importantly, it was heavily warded.
Y/n brushed her fingers across the runes etched in chalk along the doorframe. The souls inside of her recoiled as the magic shimmered faintly in response–repelled negative beings, but kept her safe. Without another thought, she took a step inside.
The loft was scattered with relics that she’d collected over the years; old books, burnt incense, cracked skulls marked with sealing runes, maps pinned to the wall with threads connecting to different crime scenes, ley lines, and places no one talked about in the daylight.
In the center of the room, a circle was scrawled into the floorboards. She stepped into it, dropping to one knee, letting the souls flow through her fingertips and into the circle.
The shadows pulsed. The circle glowed faintly.
One by one, images began to form–fragmented memories from the revenant she’d taken:
A candlelit room, a robed figure drawing a blade across their palm, chains, and a name whispered in a language that she couldn’t yet place.
It was a ritual. Not just a summoning. It was a sacrifice.
She pulled back, breath shaky, vision swimming. The souls were louder now, agitated, rattling against the edges of her mind. One voice–female, one she no longer recognized–kept whispering the same word over and over.
“Ashmoor.”
Whoever these people were, they weren’t just conjuring monsters for chaos… they were channeling something deeper. Something older than anything SHIELD classified as a threat.
She ran a hand through her hair and allowed herself to fall back against the cold, wooden floors of the old loft. The rain had picked up since she’d returned, and her heartbeat finally began to slow.
But, she knew sleep wouldn’t come tonight… at least not easily.
Especially not with a new soul gnawing at her from the inside. Not with the memory of that same hollow-faced wraith watching her in silence.
And not when she knew that this was only the beginning.