Caligo didn't wait for a bell.
"Round two," Greta spat, raising her axe.
Caligo simply pointed a finger.
"Burn," he whispered.
Fernando's scream was instantaneous. The white fire around his hands snuffed out as his nervous system flooded with the sensation of being dipped in boiling oil. He collapsed, convulsing, glasses clattering across the concrete.
"Don't let him focus!" Jude yelled.
He launched himself into the air, wings flaring wide to catch the stagnant factory air, becoming a blur of golden light diving toward Caligo from the left. Greta roared and charged from the right, the Wyrmmaker dragging sparks along the floor like a comet's tail.
Caligo didn't panic. Didn't even turn his head.
He released Fernando, who gasped as the phantom fire vanished, and snapped his hand toward Greta.
"Halt."
Greta froze mid-stride, heavy boots skidding on concrete as her muscles locked to stone. She became a statue of rage, mouth open in a scream that couldn't escape, an easy target.
Caligo stepped forward, raising a fist to shatter her jaw—
FWIP.
Jude's twin blades carved an X into Caligo's back.
The cut wasn't deep; the gray, dead muscle was dense as tire rubber. But it was enough to break his concentration. Greta gasped as the lock shattered and swung the axe in a desperate arc.
Caligo ducked under the neon blade with unnatural smoothness, spinning to catch Jude's ankle as he tried to gain altitude.
"Grounded," Caligo droned.
He yanked Jude out of the air and slammed him into the floor hard enough to crack concrete. He raised a foot to stomp on Jude's chest—
FWOOSH.
A stream of concentrated fire hit Caligo square in the face. Fernando was back up, tears streaming down his cheeks, pouring every ounce of trauma and terror into his palms.
Caligo stumbled back, face sizzling, the smell of burning meat filling the air.
"Now!" Jude screamed, scrambling to his feet. "Overwhelm him! He can't hold us all at once!"
They didn't need a strategy meeting. Survival instinct was enough.
The fight became a violent, chaotic dance. The moment Caligo turned his dead eyes toward Jude, Fernando would blast him with heat. The moment he tried to freeze Fernando, Greta would be there, swinging eighty pounds of divine death at his ribs. The moment he focused on Greta, Jude would carve another line into his back.
He was the conductor, but the orchestra was rioting.
"Too fast," Caligo muttered, blocking a strike from Jude and absorbing a kick from Greta that should have shattered bone. "Variables… escalating."
"Escalate this!" Greta shrieked.
She didn't swing for a kill. She swung at the floor.
CRACK.
The Wyrmmaker slammed into concrete directly in front of Caligo, shattering the foundation in a spiderweb of fractures. The shockwave knocked the pale man off balance for the first time since the fight began.
Jude saw the opening.
"Fernando! NOW!"
Fernando didn't ask questions. He thrust both hands forward, narrowing the flame into a blinding, cutting torch of white plasma aimed directly at Caligo's eyes.
Caligo threw his hands up to block the thermal lance. His gray flesh blackened and peeled, suit sleeves disintegrating to ash. He was blinded. Defensive.
Open.
"Greta! Low!"
"Jude! High!"
They moved as one.
Greta dropped into a slide, the neon-violet axe sweeping horizontally at waist height, trailing sparks across the broken floor.
Jude kicked off Fernando's shoulder, launching himself into a tight spin, wings pressed flat against his back to maximize speed, twin golden blades extended like a second pair of wings.
Caligo lowered his arms to block Greta—
SHING.
Jude passed him in mid-air.
CRUNCH.
Greta passed him on the ground.
The world seemed to pause.
Caligo stood still. Then, wetly, heavily, both of his arms detached from his shoulders.
They hit the floor with a synchronized thud, blackened hands still curled into fists. Black blood sprayed like oil from a burst pipe, splattering across the concrete in thick, tar-like gouts.
Caligo stared at the stumps where his arms used to be. He didn't scream. He looked mildly inconvenienced, like a man who had just missed his bus.
Jude landed behind him, skidding to a halt on the blood-slicked floor. He didn't celebrate. He spun around, combining his two blades back into the Celestial Bow in a flash of golden light.
He drew the string. An arrow of pure, blinding judgment manifested, aimed directly at the back of Caligo's skull.
"It's over," Jude panted.
He released the string.
The arrow flew—
And passed through empty air.
Caligo flickered. Like a corrupted video file, his body distorted, stretching and tearing into static before snapping back together somewhere else entirely.
Jude blinked. Caligo was suddenly facing him, standing five feet away, his body translucent and made of wavering shadows that bled at the edges like smoke.
He was armless. Burned. Beaten.
But he was smiling.
And held gently between his gray teeth was a single, glowing white feather.
Jude reached for his wing. His fingers found a gap in the plumage where something had been torn away.
"Assessment complete," Caligo's voice echoed, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. "Sample acquired."
"No!" Jude lunged, swiping with a hastily reformed dagger.
Caligo chuckled—a dry, rasping sound like bones grinding together. "The angel is strong. We will be in touch, Mr. Miller."
The shadow collapsed inward. The pale man dissolved into a puddle of dark fog that evaporated into nothing, leaving behind only the smell of blood, rotting flesh, and two severed arms lying on the factory floor.
Silence rushed back into the room, somehow louder than the screaming had been.
Jude stared at the spot where the monster had stood. His adrenaline crashed all at once, legs turning to water beneath him.
He dropped to his knees, bow dissolving into motes of fading light.
"He took a feather," Jude wheezed, staring at the ground. "He… why would he take a feather?"
Greta let the Wyrmmaker clang to the floor. She didn't sit so much as fall backward, sprawling out on the cold concrete, staring up at the dark ceiling with glassy eyes.
"Don't care," Greta groaned, clutching her cauterized shoulder. "He's gone. We're alive. That's all that matters right now."
Fernando didn't say anything. He walked to the nearest wall, slid down it until he hit the floor, and pulled his knees to his chest. He stared at his hands—shaking, blackened with ash, still radiating heat he couldn't fully control.
They lay there in the dark, three broken employees surrounded by corpses and severed limbs, listening to the sound of each other trying to remember how to breathe.
The silence didn't last.
The air in the factory; thick with ash, burnt flesh, and blood, suddenly ripped open. Not the jagged, violent tear of a demon breach, but a clean vertical incision of pure white light, slicing through reality like a scalpel.
Jude, still on his knees, shielded his eyes. "What now?" he muttered.
Two figures stepped through the rift.
The first was Bob.
Jude's handler looked like he'd been dragged backward through a frat house basement. His cheap gray suit was rumpled beyond recovery, tie loose and hanging off to the left, and there was a suspicious smear of what looked like spinach dip on his collar. He was holding a plastic "Happy Birthday" noisemaker in one hand and the remnants of a cocktail shrimp in the other.
"I'm telling you, it's not a big deal, I just—" Bob started, stepping onto the factory floor mid-conversation.
Then he looked down.
He saw the pool of black blood. The two severed gray arms lying by his shoe. The mutilated corpse of Brick in the distance.
Bob stopped talking. His face went a shade of green that matched Greta's axe.
"Oh god," Bob gagged.
He doubled over, bracing hands on knees, and violently emptied the contents of his stomach, mostly cheap beer and shrimp, onto the factory floor.
SPLASH.
"Jesus, Bob," Greta whispered, too exhausted to look away.
The second figure didn't vomit.
Seraphile stepped through the portal. She didn't walk; she glided, feet hovering an inch above the blood-slicked concrete as if touching it would be beneath her. She wore a pristine white pantsuit that seemed to actively repel the grime of the room, fabric remaining immaculate despite the carnage. Her face was terrifyingly beautiful, like a marble statue brought to life, with eyes that looked like burning wheels of gold, ancient and infinite and utterly inhuman.
She didn't speak. Didn't acknowledge Bob, who was still heaving behind her.
She looked at the trio.
Her gaze swept over the scene with the clinical precision of a general surveying a battlefield. It took in Fernando, huddled against the wall with hands blackened by soot. It took in Greta, bruised and bloody, lying next to her massive axe like a warrior who'd collapsed mid-swing.
And finally, it landed on Jude.
Jude felt the weight of that stare physically, like standing under a building as it began to fall. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to run, to hide, to make himself small.
Instinct took over. He scrambled into a proper kneeling position, ignoring the pain in his bruised ribs. He looked up at her, wide-eyed and trembling, like a puppy who had just shredded the living room couch and was waiting for the rolled-up newspaper.
"We… uh…" Jude stammered, pointing a shaking finger at the severed arms. "He started it."
Greta didn't speak. She knew what Seraphile was, she had felt the weight of that divine presence before, she had heard the threat delivered in that same beautiful, terrible voice. She pushed herself back against the concrete, eyes wide with a primal terror that Caligo hadn't even inspired. The demon had wanted to kill her. Seraphile could unmake her entirely.
Fernando just stared, mouth hanging open, gaze jumping between the vomiting case manager and the floating woman in white.
"Is…" Fernando whispered, voice cracking. "Is that an angel?"
Bob wiped his mouth with his sleeve and straightened up unsteadily, looking around the slaughterhouse with bulging eyes.
"What did you do?" Bob shrieked, voice pitching up an octave. "I leave you alone for three hours! Three hours! I was at Michael the Archangel's retirement party! There was cake! Cake, Jude! And I come back to… to a war crime?!"
He gestured frantically at the severed arms.
"Are those arms? Did you dismember a Class-A Threat? Do you have any idea the paperwork involved in a dismemberment? The forms alone—"
"Silence," Seraphile said.
The word wasn't loud, but it killed all sound in the room instantly, like someone had pressed mute on reality itself. Bob clamped his mouth shut so fast his teeth clicked.
Seraphile drifted forward, stopping in front of Jude.
She looked down at the severed arms. Then at the empty space where Caligo had vanished. Finally, at the single glowing white feather lying in a puddle of black sludge—the one Jude had lost.
Her expression didn't change. Remained perfectly, terrifyingly blank.
"You are alive," she stated. Not a question. The tone carried something that might have been surprise, or disappointment, or simply the cold acknowledgment of an unexpected variable.
"Yeah," Jude squeaked.
Seraphile turned her golden eyes to Fernando. The boy flinched, pressing himself harder against the wall as if he could phase through the brick through sheer force of will.
"And you have acquired a stray," she noted.
She drifted closer to him. Fernando tried to push himself through the wall, eyes darting between the floating woman and the puddle of vomit Bob had left on the floor.
"Fernando García," Seraphile said. Her voice wasn't loud, but it resonated in his chest, vibrating against his ribs like a tuning fork struck against bone.
Fernando's breath caught. "How do you know my—"
"Born in San Diego. Moved to Philadelphia four years ago. You work two jobs to pay for tuition. You possess a high aptitude for thermal manipulation, likely a genetic inheritance from your father's bloodline."
She paused, expression unreadable.
"You are questioning your sanity," she stated. "You believe this is a stress-induced psychotic break. But I assure you, Fernando, I am quite real. As is the vomit on my Case Manager's shoe."
Fernando swallowed hard, hands trembling. "I don't… I didn't…"
"You are familiar with power," Seraphile continued, voice softening just a fraction without losing any of its intensity. "You grew up in its shadow. Your father made sure of that, didn't he? Even before he left."
Fernando flinched as if she'd slapped him. His posture went rigid, the terror in his eyes suddenly replaced by sharp, jagged pain. He looked down at his shoes, jaw clenching so hard the muscles in his neck stood out.
"He's not…" Fernando started, then stopped. Took a shaky breath. "He's gone. It was just me and my mom after that. Until she passed."
"I know," Seraphile said. "I saw the hospital room. You were very brave for fourteen."
Fernando looked like he was about to shatter into a thousand pieces. He scrambled to his feet, wiping soot-stained hands on his pants, voice rising in panic.
"Look, I'm sorry!" Fernando blurted, bowing his head frantically. "I didn't mean to get involved! I just followed Jude because I was worried, and then there were bodies, and the big guy was hurting them, and I just—I reacted! Please don't smite me or whatever! I promise I won't tell anyone!"
He braced for a lightning bolt from the ceiling.
Seraphile raised a hand.
"Peace," she commanded.
The panic in Fernando's chest vanished instantly, replaced by a strange, unnatural calm that settled over him like a warm blanket, soothing and deeply unsettling in equal measure.
"You are not in trouble, child," Seraphile said. "We do not punish the righteous. Your actions today were born of compassion, not malice or ambition. Your heart is pure. That is a currency we recognize."
She lowered her hand, dismissing him from her scrutiny. Fernando slumped against the wall, breathing hard, looking like he'd just survived a bomb defusal with seconds to spare.
Seraphile turned back to the trio; Jude still kneeling, Greta still sprawled, Fernando still trembling.
"However," she said, tone dropping back to business. "While your intentions were noble, the outcome is… complicated."
She floated over to the spot where Caligo had dissolved, hovering above the blackened scorch marks on the concrete.
"You have narrowly avoided death," Seraphile said. "But do not mistake survival for safety. You are far from safe."
"He got away," Jude muttered, rubbing his bruised throat. "He turned into smoke. Or shadows. I don't know."
"He did not flee. He relocated." Seraphile's voice carried the weight of absolute certainty. "What you fought was not a man. It was a husk."
She gestured to the severed arms on the floor.
"Caligo is a revenant, a living corpse, if you will. His biology has been hollowed out and replaced with high-density demonic energy that flows through his bloodstream like a parasite, animating dead tissue and granting him abilities far beyond human limits."
She turned to Jude, golden eyes locking onto his with an intensity that made his soul feel naked.
"He is a vessel, Jude Miller," Seraphile said gravely. "Just like you."