The main steel door of the factory groaned. The rusted hinges screamed in the silence of Kensington, a sound that vibrated in Jude's teeth.
"This is wrong," Fernando whispered, voice trembling. "The door is unlocked. The lights are out. Kraz pays the electric bill. He's very punctual about utilities."
"Keep moving," Greta ordered, jamming the blunt end of the Labrys handle into the middle of Fernando's back.
They stepped inside.
The air was stale, heavy, and cold—much colder than the street outside. It smelled of old grease, sawdust, and something else. Something metallic and sharp that Jude couldn't quite place.
Blood, some distant part of his brain whispered. That's what blood smells like when there's a lot of it.
He pushed the thought away.
"Be careful," Jude murmured, shooting a look at Greta. He kept his bow drawn, the arrow of blue light casting long, dancing shadows across the floor.
"I'm always careful," Greta muttered back, though her eyes were darting into every dark corner. "Watch our six."
They moved onto the main assembly floor. It was a cavernous space swallowed by darkness so complete it felt like a physical weight pressing down on them. The faint moonlight from the shattered windows didn't reach the ground.
"I can't see," Fernando squeaked. "I'm going to trip on a pallet."
"Make a light." Greta's voice was a hiss. "Keep it small. If you signal a sniper, I'll cut your fucking hand off."
Fernando swallowed hard and raised his right palm.
Fwoosh.
A small ball of orange flame, no bigger than a fist, ignited in his hand. It flickered nervously, mirroring his heartbeat.
The light pushed back the dark just enough to reveal nothing.
Rows of empty workbenches. Silent conveyor belts. Stacks of crates gathering dust.
"Hello?" Fernando called out, his voice cracking. "Mr. Kraz? Rico? Is anyone here?"
Silence. Not even an echo.
They walked further in, the circle of firelight moving with them like a bubble of reality in an ocean of black. Jude scanned the catwalks above. Empty.
"They're gone," Jude whispered. "Or they're hiding."
"They're hiding," Greta snapped. "This is a kill box. Look at the layout, bottlenecks everywhere."
She stopped walking.
"I'm done." Greta shoved Fernando forward hard, sending him stumbling into the center of the aisle. The Labrys in her hands flared to life, neon-violet energy buzzing angrily, cutting through the silence like a scream.
"Greta?" Jude asked, though he didn't lower his bow.
"It's a fucking setup, Jude." Greta was staring at Fernando's back with murder in her eyes. "This dickhead led us right into the center of the room. Now we're sitting ducks while his buddies line up the shot."
"No!" Fernando spun around, his little fireball illuminating his terrified face. "No, I swear! I don't know where they are!"
"Liar." Greta took a step forward, raising the axe. "You brought us here to die. I'm just returning the favor."
Fernando's eyes found Jude, desperate and pleading. "Jude! Please! Tell her! I helped you with the demon!"
Jude looked at the boy.
He thought about the coffee shop—the fake stumble, the spilled coffee, the wide-eyed innocence that had been a performance. He thought about the library, about the questions disguised as small talk, about the way Fernando's smile had twitched when he talked about heroes. He thought about the demon nest they'd almost died in because this kid was playing spy games with their lives.
He used you, the voice in his head said. He saw the lonely guy who couldn't pass Economics and he used you like a tool.
Jude didn't say anything. He didn't lower his weapon. He just stared cold, hard daggers at the traitor.
Fernando saw the look. His hope shattered.
"Please!" Fernando wailed, backing up. "I don't know what's happening! I just want to go home!"
He scrambled backward into the dark, his feet tangling with something on the floor.
SQUELCH.
It wasn't a clumsy stumble. It was a wet, heavy slip.
"Ah!" Fernando yelped, falling hard onto his back. The fireball in his hand flared wildly as he hit the concrete, splashing into whatever liquid he'd tripped over.
"Don't move!" Greta shouted, closing the distance.
"I tripped!" Fernando cried, scrambling to push himself up. "I just—"
He looked down at his hand.
It was wet. Thick. Dark crimson in the flickering light.
Fernando froze. Slowly, he lifted his hand, the flame illuminating the floor around him.
He was sitting in a pool of blood.
And he hadn't tripped on a crate.
The firelight flickered over a massive shape lying on the concrete. It was a man—or it had been. Seven feet tall, easily, wearing a spiked leather vest that Jude recognized from Fernando's description of the Vypers.
But he was wrong. Twisted.
His arm was bent at an angle that bone shouldn't allow. His chest was open—not cut, but torn. Like wet cardboard pulled apart by something that didn't care about the mess.
"Brick?" Fernando whispered, barely audible.
The light danced over the ruin of the Vyper's strongest enforcer. His face was frozen in a mask of primal horror, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, mouth open in a scream that never finished.
Fernando scrambled back, kicking his heels in the blood, hyperventilating so hard he was almost retching.
"Oh god." Fernando gagged. "Oh god, that's Brick. That's Brick."
Greta lowered her axe, the neon buzz faltering. Even she looked sick.
"What in the fuck," Greta whispered, staring at the corpse. "What could do that to him? He was built like a truck."
Jude stepped into the light, studying the wounds with a clinical detachment he didn't feel. They weren't clean cuts. No bullet holes. No claw marks.
It looked like something had simply… erased parts of him. Like reality had rejected his existence in specific, surgical places.
This isn't demon work, Jude realized. Demons are messy. This is something else.
Fernando scrambled to his feet, slipping in the blood, breath coming in short, jagged gasps. He held his hand out, the flame in his palm flaring wildly, casting frantic strobe-like shadows across the factory floor.
"No… no, no, no…" Fernando wheezed, spinning in a circle.
The light caught a workbench to their left.
Spikes—the woman with the mohawk who'd been sharpening a machete just a day ago—was pinned to the wall. She wasn't holding her weapon. She was embedded in the brickwork, her body shattered on impact like she'd been thrown by something with the strength of a freight train.
Fernando swung the light to the right.
Rico, the quiet kid who liked fantasy novels, was lying near an overturned crate. His chest was caved in, ribs visible through the ruin of his shirt. The copy of The Hobbit he'd been reading was soaked in red, lying open next to his hand. He'd died mid-chapter.
"Rico!" Fernando screamed, a raw, broken sound that echoed through the dead space. "Spikes! Wake up! Guys, get up!"
"Shut up!" Greta hissed, though her voice lacked its usual bite. She was scanning the darkness, axe raised, but her face had gone pale. "You're gonna bring whatever did this right to us."
"They're dead!" Fernando sobbed, grabbing at his hair with bloody hands, smearing crimson into his dark curls. "Everyone! They're all dead! My family! They killed my family!"
Jude stepped back, his boots crunching on something wet. He looked down and immediately wished he hadn't.
More blood. More bodies in the shadows, half-visible at the edge of Fernando's failing light.
"This isn't a trap," Jude said, the realization settling into his bones like ice water. "Greta. Look at this."
He gestured to the carnage with his bow.
"You don't slaughter your own army just to catch two people. We walked into a crime scene." He swallowed hard. "A fresh one."
"Who?" Greta demanded, spinning on Fernando. "Who did this? Who were you fighting?"
"Nobody!" Fernando wailed, falling to his knees in the blood. "We don't fight big things! We stop muggers! We stop shoplifters! We don't have enemies like this!"
"Well, you have one now," Greta growled.
Then the sound stopped them all.
THUD.
It came from the deep darkness at the far end of the factory floor.
It sounded like a slab of granite being dropped onto concrete. Heavy. Flat. Final.
THUD.
The floor vibrated. Dust drifted down from the rafters like snow.
THUD.
Getting closer.
"What is that?" Jude whispered, aiming his bow into the abyss. "That doesn't sound human."
"It sounds like a coffin walking," Greta muttered, gripping the Wyrmmaker until her knuckles went white.
Fernando stopped crying. He went rigid, eyes locked on the darkness, the flame in his hand shrinking down to a trembling flicker.
"Kraz?" Fernando whispered, desperate and hopeful. "Boss? Is that you?"
From the shadows, a shape began to emerge.
It wasn't Kraz.
It was a man. Or at least, it was wearing the shape of one.
Average height. A dark suit that looked like it had been pulled off a hanger at a funeral home. His skin was the color of old parchment—pale, waxy, utterly bloodless. His eyes were glassy and unblinking, fixed forward with a terrifying lack of focus.
He didn't fidget. He didn't breathe. His chest didn't rise or fall. He moved with mechanical, eerie precision, like a puppet being pulled by invisible strings.
He stopped directly under the overhead floodlight. The bulb buzzed angrily, flickering rapid-fire as if the electricity itself was recoiling from his presence.
The air in the room grew heavy. Not heat, but pressure. It felt like the atmospheric drop before a tornado touches down, that moment when every animal instinct screams run but your legs have forgotten how.
"Who are you?" Jude shouted, stepping in front of Fernando.
He raised his bow, the blue light trembling despite his best efforts to keep it steady. He puffed out his chest, forced his voice to drop an octave, tried to channel the confident hero he pretended to be on dates with Natalia.
Fake it till you make it. Fake it till you make it.
"Identify yourself!" Jude demanded, arrow pointed squarely at the man's heart. "Are you a demon? Did you do this?"
The man didn't blink. He tilted his head to the side in a slow, ratcheting motion that cracked audibly in the silence.
"The big one," the man said.
His voice was a nightmare. Flat and monotone on the surface, like a dead man speaking through a broken radio. But layered underneath was a wet, guttural growl that sounded like something drowning in its own throat.
"Brick." He savored the name like wine. "He didn't scream. He just… broke. I snapped his arm first. Then his ribs. One by one. He tried to crawl away." A pause. "It was a failure."
Fernando let out a choked sob, clapping his hands over his ears.
"Stop it!" Fernando wailed.
The man turned his glassy eyes toward the crying boy. He didn't smile. His expression remained perfectly, horribly neutral.
"And the girl with the hair." His voice was almost gentle now. "Spikes. She was faster. She tried to run. I caught her by the neck. She felt so fragile." He paused, as if savoring a memory. "Like a bird made of wet paper."
"Shut up!" Jude yelled, drawing the bowstring tighter. "I said identify yourself!"
The man looked at Jude. For the first time, something flickered behind those dead eyes. Not life.
Hunger.
"I am Caligo," he said.
He took a step forward. The sound was heavy—THUD—like a tombstone hitting dirt.
"And you are Jude Miller." The words fell like stones into still water. "The Angel. The vessel."
He turned his gaze to the woman holding the axe.
"And Greta. The addict. The failure. The one who breaks everything she touches."
The air seemed to crystallize around them. Jude felt Greta go rigid beside him, felt the rage building in her like pressure in a sealed container.
"They begged for you," Caligo said softly. "Before the end. The leader… Kraz. He knew you would come. He led me right to you."
They begged for you.
They died because of you.
Another trap. And you walked right into it.
Something inside Greta snapped.
It wasn't tactical. It wasn't strategic. It was raw, visceral fury at the violation of everything—the bodies, the mockery, the casual recitation of horror like a grocery list.
"YOU FUCKER!" Greta screamed.
"Greta, wait!" Jude yelled.
She didn't wait.
She launched herself forward, the Wyrmmaker Labrys igniting with a roar of neon-violet energy. She covered the distance in a blur of speed, swinging the massive axe with enough force to cleave a tank in half.
"DIE!" she shrieked, aiming for his neck.
The axe blade hissed through the air—
And stopped.
Caligo didn't flinch. Didn't brace himself. He simply raised one pale, waxy hand and caught the handle of the axe like a man catching a thrown tennis ball.
CLANG.
And then the world stopped.
It wasn't a time freeze. It was biological.
The moment Greta crossed into Caligo's space, her body simply forgot how to function.
Her heart stuttered, then locked in her chest like a seized engine. Her lungs, filled with air for a scream, turned to stone, unable to exhale. Her muscles, firing with adrenaline, snapped into rigid, painful deadlock.
She didn't stop because she wanted to. She stopped because the signal from her brain to her body had been severed.
She froze mid-swing, the axe hanging in the air, her face a mask of paralyzed rage. Her eyes were darting wildly in terror—she was conscious, aware, feeling every second of it—but she was a statue. A living corpse trapped in her own skin.
Caligo didn't freeze.
He stepped forward, movements fluid and easy against the backdrop of her unnatural stillness. He reached up with a pale, waxy hand and wrapped his fingers around the handle of the axe.
He didn't need to pull it away. Her hands were frozen, but they had no strength behind them anymore. He gently, almost lovingly, uncurled her rigid fingers from the weapon.
He took the Wyrmmaker from her.
The neon energy crackled against his skin, sizzling and popping, but he didn't even blink. He held the massive weapon in one hand, weighing it like a curious artifact, before letting it clang loudly to the concrete floor.
He looked at Greta, who was trapped in her own body, suffocating without taking a breath.
His lips curled up slightly at the corners. A stiff, unnatural smile that didn't reach his dead eyes.
"Is that all?" Caligo asked, his voice dripping with something worse than amusement.
Disappointment.
He placed a hand on her chest, right over her silent heart.
He pushed.
Greta, stiff as a mannequin, couldn't roll with the impact. She tipped backward and slammed into the concrete floor with a bone-rattling CRACK.