This chapter is quieter in pace but heavy in emotion and meaning. The story shifts here, not with battle, but with something more personal and unsettling. Read at your own pace and breathe when you need to.
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I chose Alec, Jamey, Adrian, and Gabriel to travel with Seth and me. After everyone finally cleared out, the remaining five of us, along with Marcus, were gathered in the living room to plan the trip.
The Sams would stay behind with Elizabeth and Israel. Judging by the way Adrian kept glancing toward the hallway, he was not thrilled about leaving her, and the feeling looked mutual. I wasn't going to comment. We all had our roles, and right now, I needed him more.
Marcus spread maps across the coffee table and tapped a route with quiet confidence.
"We will pass through three towns before reaching the Sinobi Desert."
Jamey blinked slowly, horror dawning. "Desert? You never mentioned a desert."
Marcus paused, amused.
Jamey continued, voice rising, "If there is one thing I hate more than cold weather, it is heat. I melt. I am not built for that environment. Humans should not simmer like soup."
Seth patted his shoulder, entirely unsympathetic.
"I can help."
He breathed into his hand and opened it as tiny perfect ice cubes glittered in his palm.
Before Jamey could react, Seth flicked them down the back of his sweatshirt.
Jamey let out a shriek that could haunt security footage.
"Why are you like this," he wheezed, spinning in a panicked attempt to shake out the invasion.
Alec smirked. "Dignified. Very warrior-like."
Jamey ignored him and rounded on Marcus.
"Tell me right now. Is it a desert or not. Because if it is, I will personally empty Seth of all the ice powers he owns."
Marcus pointed to an open stretch of blank parchment, then flicked his gaze up with a sly almost-smile.
"What if I told you it looks like a desert… but isn't."
Jamey stood so fast his chair screeched across the floor.
"Great. Wonderful. Either you are lying, hiding secrets, or being mystical for dramatic effect, and I cannot handle any of those on an empty sanity bar."
Marcus lifted a brow.
"Then I suggest patience."
Jamey threw his hands up. "I suggest clarity."
Marcus chuckled softly.
"You will see when we arrive."
Jamey collapsed back into his seat with the dramatic suffering of someone betrayed by the universe.
"Fantastic. A mystery disguised as a climate. I can't wait."
Alec leaned back, arms crossed, amusement in his eyes.
"This is going to be fun."
Gabriel finally spoke, voice calm and unreadable.
"Fun is a strong word."
Seth grinned.
"Fun is the only word."
I exhaled, rubbing my temples.
"Well then," I muttered, "pack light, prepare mentally, and maybe pray."
Jamey groaned into a cushion.
"I already am."
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We left just after sunrise.
Seven in the morning and the world still smelled like dew and coffee. I told Seth I needed a grocery stop before we left town and, surprisingly, we were back on the road in under an hour.
Alec stared at me like he had just witnessed a miracle.
"I think you just broke the time–space continuum. That was the shortest shopping trip you've ever done."
I shot him a wink. "Please. I barely bought anything. Samantha already packed half the pantry into the trunk."
Seth slid his arm across Alec's shoulders, lowering his voice just enough to pretend I couldn't hear.
"She fit nearly the entire house in there."
I jabbed him in the ribs without breaking my smile.
"I heard that, and I am choosing disappointment over violence."
The drive stretched onward. Highway, farmland, and the slow crawl of open road. After about an hour, my bladder issued its royal decree.
"I'm cashing in the pee card," I announced.
No one argued.
While the guys filled the tank, Jamey escorted me toward the small convenience store restroom, muttering about how gas stations were portals for questionable decisions.
On our way back, my phone buzzed.
Samuel.
I answered. "Morning, Sam. What's up?"
There was shuffling on his end, like he was searching for somewhere private. When he finally spoke, his tone was clipped and intentional.
"Boss, I got intel. A six–year–old boy is showing signs of possession."
I exhaled. "Sam, come on. Kids chant weird phrases, see shadows, get moody, and suddenly everyone thinks they're wrestling demons. You know how dramatic people get."
His sigh carried weight. "You know I don't waste calls. And you know my sources don't deal in gossip."
That shut me up.
I nudged Jamey, motioning to the others. He waved them over while I sat on a concrete stool outside the shop.
"You're right," I said quietly. "Blame the pregnancy brain. I trust you. Tell me."
Samuel continued.
"The boy is speaking in tongues. Not mimicry. Not nonsense. Real dialects. And every time it happens, something catastrophic hits someone nearby."
My back stiffened.
"Catastrophic how?"
"Broken bones. Seizures. One woman collapsed and temporarily lost her sight."
Jamey mouthed: What is happening?
I held up a finger.
"One sec," I told Samuel. "I'm putting you on speaker."
I lowered the phone and pressed the speaker icon.
"Sam, repeat that," I said.
He did, same tone, same weight.
"A six–year–old boy is speaking in tongues. Every time he does, someone nearby gets hurt. Bones break. Bodies seize. One woman lost her sight temporarily. And it's escalating."
Everyone went still as his voice filled the space.
"I checked the map," Samuel added. "The town is about twenty minutes off your current route, so you won't lose much time."
Marcus already had his phone out, scrolling through a map.
"What town?"
"Albany," Sam answered.
Marcus nodded like the name tugged on a memory.
"I know where that is," he said.
All eyes shifted to me.
Decision time.
I closed my eyes for a breath, listening to that faint spiritual hum that always carried truth beneath fear.
Then:
"We're heading there now."
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The drive into Albany felt wrong before the town even appeared.
Heat pressed in, not warm, but hostile. The kind of air that felt like a warning rather than weather. Even sound seemed reluctant here, as though the world itself held its breath.
A rusted green sign marked the entrance. The paint peeled off in strips and someone had carved a crooked cross into the metal. Desperate. Uneven. Already fading.
I nudged Seth to slow the car and tapped the phone.
"Sam. We're here. Where's the boy?"
Shuffling on the other end, then Samuel's voice, low and careful.
"East side. The old harvest fields. Follow the tire tracks. You will hear the people before you see them."
As if cued by his words, a figure stepped into the road.
A girl. Fourteen at most. Mud-covered shoes. A shirt too thick for the heat. Fear in her eyes that did not belong to a child.
She stopped two steps from the car.
"You're her?" she whispered. Not a question. A fragile confirmation.
I nodded.
She did not bow. Did not gasp. Did not tremble.
She simply exhaled, her lips trembling as tears pooled at the corners of her eyes. She stared at us like she feared blinking would make us disappear.
"Come," she murmured. "I'll take you."
We followed her down the dirt path, brittle grass crunching under our steps. None of us spoke. Not Alec. Not even Jamey, which felt unnatural enough to qualify as a divine omen.
The air thickened around us. Heavy. Wrong.
I swept a hand across my brow but found no sweat. Heat without sweat was never normal.
"Is it just me," Jamey muttered low, "or does it feel like we're being slow-cooked alive?"
Seth handed me the water bottle and I drank like the air itself was stealing moisture from my bones.
The girl's gaze drifted to the bottle. Hunger could hide. Thirst couldn't.
I passed it to her.
She drank like she remembered thirst intimately, mouth sealed tight, refusing to waste a single drop.
Gabriel nudged Seth, voice low but alert. "They don't seem bothered by the heat."
I followed his line of sight. An elderly couple walked nearby, wearing cardigans. Cardigans. In this suffocating heat.
The girl spoke without looking up. "It doesn't affect others like it does us. To them…" she hesitated, voice thinning, "…this is just a normal morning."
Her eyes flicked to the crackers in Seth's hand.
"May I have some, please?"
He lifted them toward her, but she whispered before touching them,
"I haven't eaten since yesterday morning."
Only then did the full cruelty of her reality settle like weight in my chest.
We reached a clearing.
And there he was.
A boy. Small. Barely conscious. Standing only because chains forced his body upright.
A ring of wooden crosses surrounded him in uneven rows. Some were cracked. Some were charred. All of them trembled faintly.
Chains far too heavy for a body his size draped across him like someone mistook him for a monster. Metal carved deep into his skin, leaving raw welts and black dried blood. His struggles had scraped his skin open in jagged patterns no child should bear.
Someone had tried protection. Holy oil smeared across his cheeks. Salt clinging to his shirt. Scripture pages tied to his wrists like fragile shields.
Villagers lingered behind the line of crosses, clutching rosaries, worn Bibles, and whatever fear had told them counted as armor.
The girl swallowed hard.
"He was normal," she whispered. "It started a month ago. Whatever is inside him grows stronger. Every time it speaks… he disappears more."
Her voice sounded too old. Too rehearsed.
The boy lifted his head, straining against the restraints. His gaze locked onto mine.
Everything shifted.
His eyes did not look possessed.
They looked aware.
Too aware.
Then he spoke.
Not English.
Not Latin.
Not tongues.
My language.
A language no mortal should know. One carved into my bones before birth.
His voice was rough and strained.
"Flame. Breath. Vessel.
You have come."
The Flame inside me surged. Heat flared beneath my skin and I whispered under my breath, "Not now. We have an audience."
The Flame reluctantly settled. The insult still hung in the air like a threat.
Seth stepped forward.
The boy's head snapped toward him with unnatural precision. His jaw unhinged slightly wider than human anatomy allowed.
"You cannot help him," he rasped. "You cannot help."
Black sludge mixed with blood spilled from his mouth. His stomach convulsed and a bone cracked as one arm twisted wrong inside the chains.
Silver mist seeped from his lips.
Aura.
One of the stolen ones.
Only we could see it.
The boy's ruined voice rasped the count.
"Three… two… one."
Black sludge oozed from his mouth, thick and tar-dark, carrying a stench that hit the air like decay given breath. Villagers staggered back, hands over noses and mouths, too late to hide their fear.
One man inhaled.
Just a breath, and everything inside him changed.
His eyes widened until whites overtook iris. A strangled sound clawed up his throat, raw and wet, as though his vocal cords were being shredded from within. He clutched his skull with both hands and stumbled backward, then forward, then sideways, dragged across the gravel as if seized by something invisible, something impatient.
His shoes scraped. Stones scattered. His body twisted against his own will.
Every scream tore through the clearing, sharp enough to lift the fine hairs along my spine.
Alec moved first, stepping forward on instinct.
I reached for him, Seth reached for me, but something unseen bound us where we stood. The Flame struck hard beneath my skin, the Breath answering through Seth, and it held us still. Not powerless. Warned.
No one else noticed.
To them, we were frozen because we were horrified.
The man jerked upright, suspended for a heartbeat, limbs locked, chest heaving. Then his knees buckled and he crashed to the dirt with a sound heavy enough to make someone gasp.
His body arched once.
Then collapsed.
Silence followed, thick and suffocating.
A final tremor rippled through him before black liquid forced its way from every opening, bubbling, frothing, pooling beneath him in a steaming stain that smelled like rot and scorched metal.
Jamey choked on a breath.
"Nope," he whispered. "Nope. No thank you. Reality can take several seats."
Silence lingered.
Even the wind refused to move.
Then Jamey added, voice thin but sincere:
"Also, I am deeply upset that whatever killed that poor guy was basically a voicemail from whatever is inside the kid."
Alec did not laugh.
No one did.
Because the boy, the chained, trembling boy, was watching us.
And smiling.
But he was not finished.
His body sagged. Minutes passed.
Then he lifted his head again.
This time, his eyes softened. His voice trembled with the fragile ache of a terrified child.
"Rachel…"
His gaze dragged toward her like something inside was pulling all the wrong muscles. His eyes softened for a heartbeat, human again.
"It hurts."
His throat worked once, twice, then a wet sound crawled up from inside him. When he opened his mouth, the words did not come first.
Something alive did.
Tiny white worms slid across his tongue and fell to the dirt. A few wriggled back toward him as if they belonged there. The smell was sickening, sweet and rotting.
He trembled.
"Please…" His voice cracked. "Make it stop."
Rachel folded. Tears spilled, her whole body shaking, but she did not step back. She stared at him the way someone clings to the last thread of hope, even when the rope is already snapping.
He tried to lift an arm toward her. The chain bit deeper into his skin and fresh blood ran. He sucked in a sharp breath and his ribs heaved unevenly.
"It is ripping me apart," he whispered. "Inside. I can feel it pulling pieces of me. Like teeth."
His gaze flicked to Seth, then to me, then back to his sister.
"I do not think… I will live long enough to tell anyone what it feels like."
Rachel covered her mouth, but the sob still tore out.
He leaned forward until the chain stopped him. His voice dropped to something fragile.
"You must stay strong. When I am gone."
Another insect crawled from his cheek, pushing through the broken skin. He didn't seem to notice.
"It is not your fault."
His eyes dimmed. Not dead. Not unconscious.
Just… slipping.
Like the boy was stepping back and something else was stepping forward.
When his eyes opened next, it was no longer the child.
"We do not bow to you holy one."
His gaze cut to Seth.
"Nor to you divine one."
A low laugh crawled from his throat. The chains rattled with the sound, metal grinding against bone.
"We move as one. In strength. In silence."
His eyes lifted, finding mine first.
Then his gaze dropped. Not to my face, not to my expression, but lower.
To my stomach.
To the twins.
"To end the lives of the Heavensend."
Silence followed.
Five seconds.
Ten.
Twenty.
Then Rachel screamed.
Her knees buckled and she collapsed beside him.
Seth moved in beside me, silent.
One arm slipped around my shoulders, grounding me.
The other came to rest over my stomach, not gentle, not casual.
Protective.
His palm pressed there like he was drawing a line the unseen could not cross.
Like whatever had spoken through that child would have to go through him first.
Jamey eased closer and whispered, voice thin,
"What the fump just happened."
No one answered him.
There were no words gentle enough.
And no truth soft enough.
The villagers dispersed one by one, quiet as retreating ghosts.
We stayed.
I walked toward the girl as she knelt beside her brother, fingers trembling as she tried to lift the chains from his small body. She did not make a sound, but grief lived loud in the way her shoulders shook and how her breath broke in her chest.
I did not touch her.
Comfort too early can feel like intrusion.
Alec stepped forward and lifted the boy. His body was weightless in the worst possible way. Too light. Too fragile.
Tears slid down Alec's face without shame.
Behind me, Jamey cleared his throat, then sniffed into a tissue like a man trying to pretend he was not falling apart.
Marcus turned away and clasped one red bead between his fingers. It glowed like an ember waiting for command. The air barely shifted, yet I felt it.
I nodded to Adrian. He moved instantly.
He approached the girl and placed two fingers lightly against her wrist. Her body loosened as sleep took her, her head dropping softly against his shoulder. An elderly man stepped forward and helped guide her weight.
He looked at me as though I was something he had prayed for and never believed would come.
"If you will," he said quietly, "come."
He led us to a building near the center of the abandoned town. It was old, but clean, as if someone had scrubbed it by hand every day with devotion instead of hope.
When we stepped inside, the smell of death wrapped around us. Old. Patient. Expected.
The man walked slowly, leaning on his cane, and stopped near a doorway.
"Nat and Rachel are orphans," he said, voice thin. "Their mother's aunt cares for them, but she is near her final years." His lower lip trembled. "I do not know how she will survive this. I don't know how Rachel is going to survive the loss of her baby brother."
Alec laid the boy on the metal table in the back room. The sight of him there felt wrong. Too final. Too still.
The old man stepped closer and rested both hands on the edge of the table, staring down at the boy like he was trying to memorize what was left of him.
I touched his shoulder gently.
"May I have a moment with him?" I asked.
He didn't answer right away. His eyes flicked to my belly, as if remembering life and loss in the same breath. His hesitation softened.
Marcus stepped in beside him, steady and quiet.
"She won't be alone," he reassured the man. "Her husband and I will stay."
Only then did the man nod and step back, shoulders sagging under grief and relief.
The door closed.
Silence waited with us.
I placed my hand on the boy's forehead, bowed my head, and prayed. Not for resurrection. Not even for justice.
For rest.
When the prayer ended, I exhaled slowly. A glyph rippled onto my tongue, warm and personal like breath leaving a secret.
"Restore."
The glyph sank into his skin. A soft glow spread beneath it, gold and gentle. Bones realigned. Wounds sealed. Bruises lightened.
Not to save him.
To make him whole for burial.
The corruption had burned too deep. Bringing him back would only bring the thing with him.
I turned to Marcus. "You caught the spirit."
He nodded once. "Yes. But I do not want it. I will release it only when a suitable host is found."
I opened my mouth to argue. He lifted a hand, calm but firm.
"I know what I carry."
Seth stepped in front of me and rested both hands on my shoulders.
"Did you hear what he said?" His voice was quiet but charged. "About the Heavensend."
My gaze dropped to my belly.
"Yes," I whispered. "We all did."
Alec, Jamey, and Gabriel joined us. For a moment, no one spoke.
Then Gabriel broke the quiet.
His eyes held Seth, steady and searching.
"If she is holy," he said, pointing slightly toward me, "then why did the spirit call you divine? Why not holy as well?"
Seth did not answer immediately. His jaw tightened first. His expression softened second.
Then his voice came, low, measured, without ego or apology.
"Holiness speaks of purpose. It is earned through sacrifice, obedience, and the weight of choosing what hurts but must be done."
His gaze moved to me for a heartbeat. The room didn't breathe until he looked away.
"Divinity speaks of origin. It is what we are before we take shape or name. Before we step into the world that will judge us."
He let the words settle.
"Max is both divine and holy. She carries Heaven's intention, and the world sees it."
His tone warmed, steady as moonrise.
"I am divine. But I have not yet earned holiness."
Silence wrapped the room.
Gabriel nodded once. "Then the boy knew exactly who he was speaking to."
Seth did not deny it.
No one did.
Because somewhere in that room, beneath fear and grief and unanswered prophecy…
Truth had already taken its seat.
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Thank you for reading this chapter.
Stories like this are difficult to write, not because of the supernatural, but because they touch the uncomfortable spaces we often avoid. Innocence, suffering, and the weight of powers no one should carry.
If this chapter left you uneasy or emotional, then it did what it needed to. Pain in fiction reminds us of compassion in reality, and sometimes mercy comes in forms we would never choose.
I am grateful you are walking this journey with me.
And because we need a little light after all that darkness:
Rate Jamey's coping skills:
A) Chaos incarnate
B) Emotional support disaster
C) Somehow both
Thank you for staying.
See you in Chapter 13.