**The city knew two very different people.**

By day, he was **Rowan Corwyn**.

A second-year fine arts student who was easy to overlook. He wasn't popular, but neither was he an outcast. Professors appreciated the precision of his sketches, classmates knew him as the quiet guy who always sat by the window with charcoal-stained fingers. He rarely started conversations, yet he never ignored anyone who spoke to him.

Every afternoon, Rowan could usually be found in the same park.

He carried a small paper bag filled with unsalted peanuts, scattering them across the grass for the local murder of crows. They gathered around him without fear, some even hopping onto the bench beside him. To strangers, he simply looked like another student who loved birds.

He helped an elderly woman carry groceries without expecting thanks. Returned wallets before anyone noticed they were missing. Offered tourists directions despite barely making eye contact. If someone's pencil broke in class, Rowan silently placed one of his own on their desk.

His professors praised his eye for composition.

His classmates thought he would probably become an illustrator.

No one noticed how carefully he observed people.

How he remembered faces after seeing them only once.

Or how often he disappeared before sunset.

---

When darkness settled over the city...

**Rowan Corwyn ceased to exist.**

A white hood concealed his silver hair, its shadow swallowing half of his face. His movements were silent, deliberate, almost graceful—as though every rooftop, fire escape, and narrow alley had been sketched into memory long before he ever stepped foot there.

The underworld knew only one name.

**Yatagarasu.**

No fingerprints.

No DNA.

No surviving witnesses who could describe more than a pale hood disappearing into the night.

Authorities argued whether Yatagarasu was one person or an organization. Detectives built entire careers chasing a ghost that never seemed to exist until another body appeared.

Each contract ended the same way.

A single black raven feather, carefully placed beside the victim.

No note.

No message.

Just the feather.

Soon, the media coined the title **"The Raven Feather Killer."** Criminals preferred another name—one spoken in hushed voices, as if saying it too loudly might summon him.

**Yatagarasu.**

By sunrise, the hood and weapon were gone.

The feather-stained gloves were replaced with charcoal-smudged hands.

The legendary assassin became nothing more than Rowan Corwyn, quietly sketching beneath the trees while a handful of crows pecked happily at the peanuts around his feet.

And no one—not his professors, not his classmates, not the people he helped every day—would ever imagine that the kind art student they greeted each morning was the same phantom who haunted the city's nights