In the bleak midwinter of January 13, 2026, Chicago lies entombed in a frost so cruel it seems the city itself weeps ice. I am Carl Kolchak, a weary scribe for the Independent News Service, my soul as tattered as my overcoat, chasing shadows that gnaw at the edges of reason. This night, a ghastly tale unfolds: men and women, solitary and forsaken, are found dead in their homes, their faces contorted in silent screams, eyes wide as if staring into an abyss. Each corpse clutches a single black feather, and their hearts—God help me—are shriveled, as if drained of life’s essence. The police mutter of heart attacks, but I, who have peered into the void before, know this is no natural demise.

My editor, Tony Vincenzo, his temper as sharp as the wind, thrusts a crumpled note into my hand—a witness, a half-mad poet named Clara Vane, claims she saw a figure cloaked in shadow, its voice a sepulchral croak, lingering near a victim’s tenement. “It spoke in rhymes,” she whispered to a beat cop, “and the air grew heavy with sorrow.” I venture into the city’s underbelly, where gaslights flicker like dying stars, to find Clara in a crumbling boarding house. Her eyes are hollow, her voice a tremor. “It’s the Raven,” she says, “not Poe’s bird, but older, hungrier—a collector of grief.” She speaks of an entity born in the city’s infancy, bound to a forgotten poet’s curse, feeding on the despair that festers in lonely hearts.

The trail leads me to the Chicago Athenaeum, a decaying library shuttered since the ’90s, its stacks reeking of mold and sorrow. Clara mentioned a tome, The Lamentations of the Lost, said to be the Raven’s anchor to this world. I break in at midnight, my flashlight cutting through dust-choked air. The silence is oppressive, broken only by a faint tapping, like talons on wood. In a locked case, I find the book—bound in black leather, its pages brittle and stained with what I pray is ink. As I touch it, the air grows thick, and a voice, low and rhythmic, chants: “Evermore, thy grief I bore.” My chest tightens, memories of every loss—my father’s death, my ruined career, my own gnawing loneliness—flood my mind, each one a blade.

Then I see it: the Raven, not a bird but a man-shaped shadow, its face a void, its hands tipped with claws that clutch a writhing mass of feathers. Its eyes—two burning coals—fix on me, and I feel my heart stutter, as if it’s being squeezed dry. “Join the toll, Kolchak,” it croaks, and the room spins. I tear pages from the book, scattering them, and light a match from my pocket. The flames catch, and the Raven shrieks, its form unraveling into a storm of feathers and ash. The library burns, and I stumble into the snow, coughing, my pulse weak.

Morning comes, gray and merciless. Tony kills my story, calling it “Poe fan fiction gone mad.” The police blame the deaths on a gas leak, the feathers dismissed as debris. But my hands tremble, and at night, I hear that tapping, faint but relentless, at my window. A single black feather lies on my desk, and my reflection shows a face too pale, eyes too wide. The Raven’s gone, perhaps, but its toll lingers—in me, in Chicago, in every heart that breaks alone.

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