Some places sin loudly. Others whisper behind stained glass and polite smiles.
This chapter uncovers the kind of darkness that does not need demons to exist… only silence.
---------------------------------------------------------------
We gathered in the village elder's dining hall. The room was small, dim, and smelled faintly of smoke and old wood. A modest meal waited on the table. Bread. Stew. Fruit that had clearly been saved rather than simply served.
We accepted it with a quiet blessing.
I made a silent note to leave money before we left. Rachel's admission about not eating the day before lingered in my mind heavier than the grief in the room.
Conversation eventually found rhythm again.
Marcus rested his elbows on the table and spoke low enough not to disturb the house.
"He wasn't speaking for himself," he said. "Something sent that message. The Heavensend was not a warning. It was a declaration."
Seth's jaw tightened.
My Flame stirred under my skin, protective and sharp, but the elder was within earshot. So I slapped my thigh like I was scolding a misbehaving toddler.
"I warned you earlier. If you don't behave, it won't be my thigh I'm slapping next."
Gabriel leaned closer, voice soft.
"Then the war isn't coming."
Seth finished it for him.
"It has already begun."
Silence followed. Not fearful. Acknowledging.
The elder returned carrying the last dish and placed it at the center of the table. He sat beside Marcus and every voice dissolved into stillness out of respect.
I softened my expression.
"Is Rachel still sleeping?"
He nodded and glanced toward the back room.
"My wife will call when she wakes. She is an early bird, she does not… speak of the she… ah."
His gaze snapped toward the hallway.
Footsteps.
Before he could rise, Seth was already at the doorway.
"May I?"
He did not wait for permission. He entered.
Rachel sat upright on the small bed, her eyes wide and unfocused as she searched unfamiliar walls. Panic fluttered across her features.
I joined Seth beside her and knelt, lowering myself to her level.
Her voice cracked.
"Is he… safe now?"
Seth's reply came barely above a whisper.
"He isn't hurting anymore."
She closed her eyes. Relief and grief collided behind them.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Later, under the pale morning sun, we stood beside a fresh mound of earth. Rachel sat quietly beside it, unmoving, refusing to shed a single tear as if grief required permission.
Seth knelt first. Not as the divine, but as someone who understood loss by name.
He pressed his hand gently to the soil.
"The suffering ends here."
I stepped forward, drew a glyph from my tongue and whispered it like prayer.
"Rest."
The symbol sank into the earth. There was no burst of light. No spectacle. Just a faint hum that rolled through the ground like a sigh finally released.
Peace settled.
For the first time since entering Albany, the oppressive heat lifted.
A breeze moved through the wheat.
Rachel finally cried.
We left when she was ready.
No one rushed her.
No one spoke.
Sometimes the only sacred language is silence.
Before we reached the path leading out of the graveyard, Seth paused beside her. The evening air was still, as if the land itself was holding its breath for her.
He crouched to her height and spoke gently.
"Rachel, listen to me."
Her eyes lifted, red and exhausted.
"When the time comes and you are the last of your family, you will not be alone. You are welcome in our home."
He reached into his coat pocket, wrote an address on a folded scrap of paper, and placed it in her hand.
"The twins and Israel could use a big sister."
For a heartbeat she stood frozen, paper clenched in her fingers.
Then everything in her broke at once.
She threw herself against Seth's chest, arms tight around him as if he were the last solid thing in the world.
The sound she made was not a sob.
It was relief finally given permission to exist.
"I will not say no," she whispered, voice shaking against him.
The road stretched ahead. The desert waited somewhere beyond towns and timelines we had barely begun to understand.
Hours later, mountains appeared on the horizon. Snow crowned their peaks and the air shifted from heat tortured to sharp and clean.
A sign appeared beside the road.
GLACIER HILLS
WELCOME TRAVELERS
The town looked perfect.
Clean fences. Quiet streets. Polished windows.
A place so normal it felt unreal.
We parked near a small grocery store. The bell above the door chimed softly as we entered.
At first glance, everything looked ordinary.
Then the cracks showed.
A girl walked beside a well-dressed woman. The woman's hand rested lightly on her shoulder, but the girl's eyes avoided everyone. Hollow. Silent. Owned.
Further down the aisle, another girl shifted her scarf and a faded ring of bruising bloomed across her throat.
Gabriel stilled.
He tapped a coin against his palm once, sharp and deliberate.
When my eyes met his, we didn't need words.
Something here was wrong.
My instincts stirred; the Flame waking, not loud, not dramatic, just a rising heat behind my ribs… warning.
Customers drifted around us like everything was normal, but the cracks were everywhere.
Shoulders tensed when we passed.
Smiles stretched too tight.
And every pair of eyes avoided ours like eye contact was dangerous.
Pretending was an art here.
Seth approached a store clerk.
"Excuse me, can we ask a few…"
The woman's smile flicked upward mechanically.
"Of course. Anything you need."
Her tone was perfect.
Her eyes screamed help.
Marcus murmured under his breath, "We should stay. A few days at least."
No one disagreed.
Finally, I nodded.
"Then Glacier Hills it is."
We found a small hotel tucked between two cafés and a candle shop. It smelled faintly of cinnamon and old carpet, but the beds looked clean enough and I had stopped judging comfort the moment pregnancy turned my spine into an ongoing negotiation.
After a much-needed shower, we sat side by side on the bed, towels still wrapped around us. I stared down at a pair of jeans I had packed with irrational optimism.
"I don't think pants will ever fit me again," I muttered.
Seth looked up at me from where he sat, his expression soft in a way that turned my ribcage into warm sand. I grabbed a pale blue dress from the suitcase and placed it beside him.
He wrapped his arms around my waist and pressed slow kisses across my bump.
"No matter what you wear, you are still the most beautiful woman I have ever met."
The twins responded at once, rolling beneath my skin like two determined goldfish. Seth chuckled, showering my belly with more kisses.
"Oh, I see how it is. Did my babies miss me, or are you just as hungry as your mother always is?"
I pressed finger guns to his temple and mimed shooting him. "Careful, Breath. My appetite for three still doesn't compete with Alec or Adrian. You have time to escape."
Later, we headed downstairs. Alec and Jamey both reached to pull my chair at the same time.
"Hey!" Jamey hissed. "Monkey see, monkey do."
Alec narrowed his eyes. "Who's your monkey, monkey?"
I blinked at Seth. "Why does that sound familiar?"
He smirked. "It does. Except last time monkey was idiot."
I picked up the menu and skimmed it. For the first time in days, food did not roar at me like a personal calling.
I ordered nachos and a chicken salad.
The table went quiet.
Alec leaned in. "Max… are you feeling okay?"
I didn't answer. Instead, I checked my phone. One unread message would have grounded me. There was none.
I stood. "I'm heading for the bathroom."
Except I didn't go toward the hallway. I headed for the exit. Three steps later, I heard chairs scrape.
Alec moved to follow. Seth stopped him with a hand to his wrist.
"Let her breathe," he said quietly. "She is carrying life while fighting death. She is allowed to feel off balance."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I stepped out onto the wooden deck, needing space more than food. The chatter of the restaurant faded behind me, replaced by the quiet lapping of water against the estuary banks.
For a moment, I just stood there.
Not thinking.
Not feeling.
Just breathing.
The breeze lifted my hair gently, brushing it across my cheek like a reminder that the world still moved, even when I did not.
Then the shift happened.
It was subtle at first, a low metallic rumble beneath my feet, like a train buried somewhere under the earth dragging chains too heavy for distance to soften.
My brows knit. I pressed two fingers to my temple.
The sound stopped.
Silence stretched.
Then the rumble returned, louder. Sharper. The vibration rolled up my legs and into my chest like thunder trapped in steel.
Air thinned.
Pressure built.
My dress stirred against my skin without wind. My hair lifted again, but this time it didn't fall. It held there, suspended, as if gravity forgot what to do with it.
The estuary shifted.
Ripples formed where there was no wind. Water lifted in droplets, hovering, trembling.
Not falling.
Not rising.
Waiting.
A continuous low roar rolled through the air. The sound was deep enough to feel rather than hear, like an earthquake breathing.
The twins jolted inside me.
A sharp pulse forced me to grit my teeth. The nausea hit next, cold and sudden.
The Flame surged forward, wrapping me in a thin shimmering shield. The discomfort eased instantly.
The roar deepened.
Night slammed into place in the span of a blink.
One heartbeat ago it was daylight. Now the sky stretched pitch black and endless, filled with stars that pulsed like they were breathing in time with the sound.
Then Neptune appeared.
Not distant and unreachable.
Close.
Too close.
It loomed beside the moon, massive, blue, alive with storms twisting across its surface. White lightning forked through its clouds in spirals that that churned with intelligence rather than weather.
The wind finally moved again, sweeping across the water in a single slow inhale.
Droplets rose higher.
It rose beside Earth like a twin world, swirling with deep sapphire storms A soft blue dust fell from it like celestial snow. It drifted downward, slow and deliberate, reaching for me.
My Flame responded.
Gold dust uncoiled from beneath my skin, lifting upward in a graceful arc. Not aggressive. Not curious.
Answering.
The blue and gold dust met between us, swirling together, forming a single luminous sphere.
The moon pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
Then the sphere exploded outward in a silent burst of light.
A vision slammed into me.
Not whispered.
Not symbolic.
Experienced.
A cage.
Metal.
Square.
Small enough someone curled inside could barely move.
A girl, late teens, maybe, kneeling on the cold floor, her wrists bruised and bound.
Children's laughter echoed above her, bright and distant. A playground. Life continuing overhead as if the darkness beneath their feet did not exist.
A single window high above let in a thin column of light. Dust drifted through it, glowing softly as if mocking her silence.
Then a voice; cold, close, familiar:
"Find her."
The twins froze. My breath did too.
Then everything snapped.
Daylight slammed back into existence.
The wind roared forward.
My hair dropped against my shoulders.
The suspended droplets fell with tiny sharp plinks, like glass beads striking water.
I stood there, breath thin, heart racing, fingers trembling.
Nothing in the world looked different.
But everything felt different.
Footsteps approached softly behind me.
I didn't need to turn.
Seth never walked like a man interrupting.
He walked like someone joining what was already unfolding.
He stopped beside me, not asking, not assuming.
Just waiting.
I exhaled slowly, grounding myself before speaking.
"There was a warning."
His body tensed just enough to notice.
"What kind?" he asked quietly.
The words caught in my throat.
Not because I didn't know how to say them…
But because saying them made them real.
So I forced the truth out, steady and low.
"It wasn't a vision. Not a sign. Not symbolism."
My fingers curled around the railing.
"It was a message. Direct."
Seth's hand slid into mine. Warm. Present.
"From who?"
I swallowed.
"Neptune."
A beat.
"And someone else."
His jaw clenched. "The Zodiac."
I nodded.
For a long breath we said nothing. The wind moved again as if time had permission to continue.
Seth squeezed my hand gently.
"Come on," he murmured. "You shouldn't carry this alone."
We walked back inside.
Alec noticed first. His smirk vanished like someone flipped a switch.
Jamey and Adrian both leaned forward in their chair.
Gabriel set down his fork.
Marcus stilled like a man hearing an unheard bell.
Seth pulled out my chair and waited for me to sit before he spoke.
"Max saw something," he said. "Something we need to hear."
No dramatics. No panic.
Just attention. Absolute.
I placed both hands on the table and inhaled.
"Neptune appeared, and when he did, the world shifted. Time… paused."
Their faces changed, concern replacing curiosity.
"And when my Flame met its signal… I saw her."
"Her?" Alec asked.
"A girl. Locked underground. In a metal cage."
My voice wavered only once.
"She isn't the only one there."
Silence spread like wildfire.
Jamey whispered, "That explains the eyes. Those kids in the store."
Gabriel nodded slowly. "The bruises. The silence."
Marcus leaned in, voice firm.
"Where?"
I closed my eyes and the memory replayed with brutal clarity.
"Somewhere here," I breathed. "Beneath this town."
A shift moved through their expressions of grief, anger, and purpose.
Seth reached for my hand again, grounding the moment.
"We came here by accident," Alec muttered.
"No," Seth corrected softly.
"We were called."
The table had fallen silent long before the plates were empty.
No one wanted to be the first to speak, yet every one of us felt the same invisible thread tugging at the back of the mind. Seth nudged his plate away and rested his forearms on the table.
"So," he said quietly, "we all saw the same thing."
Alec tapped a finger against his glass. "Girls with bruises. Boys who wouldn't make eye contact. People smiling like someone was twisting a knife in their spine just off-camera."
Marcus lowered his voice. "And everyone looking at us like we are the storm they were warned about."
Gabriel leaned back. His posture relaxed, but his eyes said otherwise. "Whatever is happening here, it is not chaos. It is structured."
"Organized." Jamey added, stabbing his fork into a nacho like it personally offended him.
I folded my napkin slowly, aware that my hands were trembling more than I wanted to admit.
"It is easy to fight demons," I murmured. "They howl. They claw. They declare themselves."
My gaze lifted.
"But humans? Humans hide behind kindness. Behind pearls and perfume. Behind churches and scripture."
Jamey swallowed, voice small despite the attempt at humor. "So what you are saying is… we are dealing with the smiling type of evil."
No one disagreed.
We finished quietly.
When Seth motioned for the bill, the waitress appeared almost instantly, like she had been waiting. She did not look up. Did not smile. Her posture was perfect in the way fear can sculpt obedience.
She placed the card machine in front of Seth.
"Thank you," he said gently.
She only nodded.
Then she set a ceramic bowl in the center of the table.
Fortune cookies.
Ordinary. Cheerful. Innocent.
A bowl of fortune cookies sat in the center of the table like a joke someone forgot to laugh at.
I blinked once.
I honestly could not remember the last time I had one.
Jamey perked up and grabbed a cookie with both hands, grinning like a kid seeing fireworks for the first time.
"I loved these as a kid."
Alec took one too, shook his head, smirking.
"You're still a kid."
Jamey snapped his cookie open and flicked a piece straight at Alec's face.
"Yeah? Says Peter Pan."
Alec blinked as the crumb stuck to his cheek.
"…Did you just weaponize dessert?"
Jamey leaned back, satisfied.
"Only against people who deserve it."
Then he stopped smiling.
Just like that, the atmosphere shifted.
Seth unfolded his strip first and placed it on the table.
Four quiet words sat there like a warning.
With chains dragging behind them.
Alec set his next to Seth's.
Leave them alone and they will come home.
Jamey slowly lowered his own to complete the row.
And doesn't know where to find them.
He swallowed hard.
"Um… guys? I have goosebumps."
Gabriel read his silently. His jaw tightened. He placed it down.
Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep.
My turn.
I cracked mine open.
A single strip.
My pulse hammered in my throat.
Not all saints wear light.
Silence.
We began rearranging instinctively. Words falling into order like bones snapping into the shape of truth.
Gabriel slid his to the top.
Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep.
I placed Alec's beneath it.
And doesn't know where to find them.
Then Jamey's.
Leave them alone and they will come home.
Seth's.
With chains dragging behind them.
Adrian cleared his throat and added his message beneath the rhyme.
The shepherd is the wolf.
Marcus settled the last line with a firm hand.
I bleat among wolves.
No one breathed.
Alec's stare tracked the waitress. His tone was flat and dangerous.
"She did not serve the table."
A beat.
"She served us."
Marcus drummed his fingers once.
"Fantastic. Now I feel full. Not in a good way."
Seth scanned the restaurant with the kind of calculation that made men kneel or run.
"They cannot speak openly. Someone is listening."
My hand closed around the strips.
The Flame inside me stirred. Not loud. Not dramatic.
Aware.
The waitress passed by again with slow, practiced steps.
She never looked at us.
But as she set down a glass at a nearby table, her voice broke the space like a quiet blade.
"Tomorrow. Third bell. The church."
She walked away without turning.
Near the bar, a man lifted a phone.
Not hurried.
Not afraid.
Reporting.
Jamey exhaled.
"Great. Perfect. Amazing. We are officially in a horror movie."
Seth stood slowly.
"We are not prey."
His hand brushed mine.
"And tomorrow… the wolves learn that."
Gabriel's gaze tracked the bartender ending the call, eyes cold.
"The walls have ears," he murmured. "Tomorrow might be too late."
I followed his stare.
The bartender stared right back.
I leaned in, voice low.
"Then we move tonight."
Seth nodded once.
Marcus rose from his chair.
Alec cracked his knuckles.
And Jamey, pale and trying to pretend otherwise, whispered:
"…I suddenly miss the possessed child."
---------------------------------------------------------------
We stepped out beneath warm streetlamps pretending this town was harmless.
Gabriel turned to leave, but I called him back with a soft, sharp "Wait."
He leaned in without question.
I peeled a glyph from my skin and pressed it to his forehead. It dissolved instantly, like ink sinking into paper rather than flesh.
"When you follow him," I murmured, "I see what you see."
Gabriel didn't flinch. He just nodded once.
Marcus adjusted the beads at his wrist, rolled his shoulders, and the two slipped away into the dark.
The rest of us walked toward the hotel, silent and pretending that fatigue was the reason our nerves were tight.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Back at the hotel, the others waited with us in the foyer. The room smelled of coffee and quiet exhaustion. Soft lighting and floral wallpaper attempted to disguise the weight settling over us.
Alec sat forward in his chair, elbows on knees.
Jamey paced in short, jittery loops.
Adrian leaned against a wall, arms folded, his eyes sharp.
Seth and I took the loveseat across from them. His hand found mine.
The glyph activated.
The world shifted.
Black and white vision bled across my perception like film overlaying reality.
Gabriel and Marcus were walking. Not hurried. Not timid. Shadowing the bartender with patient focus.
He moved down the street and turned toward a narrow dirt lane lined with yellowing grass.
Then he stopped at a small yellow house.
We watched as he knocked three times. Quick. Hesitant. Someone opened the door, pale hands pulling him inside. Voices moved like muffled alarms. A bottle clinked. Something metallic scraped tile.
No one spoke in the foyer.
The bartender left the house looking lighter. Not relieved. Just emptied. As if he had confessed rather than visited family.
He walked toward the church.
The vision followed him through two narrow streets, past shuttered windows and tidy flower boxes pretending innocence.
He reached the tall stone steps leading to the chapel.
Marcus and Gabriel paused at the gate, waiting until the door closed before approaching.
Marcus murmured something too soft to hear. One of his spirits slipped free, smoke and intent, flattening itself across the ground before seeping into the church door through a thin line of light at the hinges.
Every hair on my arms lifted.
Seth held my hand tighter.
Inside the church, rows of wooden pews sat in dim light. Some parishioners prayed. Others watched shadows instead of scripture.
The spirit reformed behind a pew and pointed downward.
Marcus moved first, shifting a wooden chair sitting strangely alone beneath one window. A rug lifted with it, exposing a faint square outline. A trapdoor.
Every hair on my arms rose.
"Max," Seth said softly, already rising, "we need to move."
No one argued.
We stood.
And for the first time since we arrived in this town, every step felt like walking toward something waiting.
We reached the church ten minutes later.
None of us spoke.
I walked ahead, guiding them the same way the spirit had guided Marcus and Gabriel earlier. It did not feel like guessing. It felt like following footsteps already carved into the air.
Every turn felt inevitable.
The church waited under the weight of night, its stained glass catching moonlight like silent witnesses.
I stopped at the entrance and rested my palm against the heavy wooden door.
"Here," I said softly. "This is where it starts, and where we find the basement."
Alec whispered, "They have a basement?"
Jamey swallowed. "That is never good. Nobody builds a basement under a church unless something terrible is happening."
The trapdoor creaked open.
A stale metallic smell seeped outward.
Seth descended first.
Alec followed.
Stone stairs spiraled down, the air growing colder and fouler with every step.
The vision flickered. The Flame strained. Even the Breath recoiled.
The hallway at the bottom was long, concrete, and silent except for the faintest sound.
Whimpering.
We met Gabriel and Marcus waiting in the dark.
The spirit stood at the end of the corridor, motionless.
Gabriel pushed the final door open.
What waited beyond made my stomach knot.
Row after row of metal cages. Small. Rusted. Barely large enough for a child to curl inside.
Some cages held children.
Some held teenagers.
Some held adults so thin they barely resembled anything human.
Skin bruised.
Clothes torn.
Eyes hollow.
One girl crawled forward when she saw us.
Her voice cracked.
"You heard us."
Seth's hand tightened on mine.
Not in fear.
In restraint.
The room was too silent.
Too full of breath that did not belong to the living.
A sob trembled somewhere in the darkness.
Another.
Then a whisper.
"Help… please… I'm dying…"
Something inside Seth snapped.
Not violently.
Quietly.
Like a final door being unlocked.
He rose.
His feet left the ground as if gravity could no longer bear the weight of divinity. His hair lifted in a slow, soundless drift. His eyes turned silver. Not bright. Not glowing.
Cold.
Knowing.
Judicial.
The Breath poured from him in strands. Thin, liquid silver that unspooled like threads of moonlight. They spread across the concrete and through the cages like a living woven net. The air thickened with the sound of it. Not wind. Not magic. Something closer to language older than law.
Victims flinched when the threads touched them.
Then relief washed over their faces.
One child pressed tiny fingers through the bars, reaching toward Seth.
"Save me…"
A teenage girl bowed her head, forehead to cold metal bars, voice broken.
"Please… don't leave us here."
Seth did not look away.
He did not speak.
He simply existed. A quiet verdict in human skin.
The silver threads dissolved.
And in that dissolution came truth.
My body reacted before thought.
The Flame surged upward in me, furious and grieving. Ancient script ignited across my skin in black rows. Not elegant. Not ceremonial. Jagged, primal markings that crawled across my ribs, throat, and face like living war paint.
I rose after him.
Higher.
Steady.
My hand pressed to his shoulder.
The connection hit like a storm.
Seth's breath became my sight.
My Flame became his will.
The Scripture did not wait for permission.
It erupted.
Gold mist streamed from me in rolling waves, and within it, the black glyphs twisted and multiplied like wings unfolding. The Flame shot outward in dozens of separate tendrils, each one seeking the ones the Breath had marked as guilty.
The guilty did not run.
They could not.
The Flame wrapped around them like divine serpents, squeezing ribs, bending joints, ripping them from the ground. Bodies slammed against concrete. Another crashed into the metal bars, denting them inward. One struck the ceiling before crumpling to the floor, gasping and choking on judgment.
Bones snapped like wet branches.
Screams erupted.
Not one sounded innocent.
And yet the Flame did not kill.
It only punished.
It made them feel everything they had taken.
The victims watched through the bars.
Some clasped hands over their mouths.
Some cried.
Some simply stared, hollow-eyed, as if finally seeing proof that justice existed.
One boy. Small, shaking, barely clothed. Stood in his cage and lifted his hand toward us.
Not begging.
Believing.
"Are you… angels?"
The Flame paused mid-strike.
The Breath rippled.
Seth's silver gaze flicked down to him, and his voice came softly. The kind of softness that makes the world listen.
"No."
I lowered beside him, my markings burning, my voice raw.
"But Heaven heard you."
The room fell silent.
Somewhere in the rows of cages, barely louder than breath, came a whisper:
"And you heard me."
--------------------------------------------------
Tonight's chapter was difficult, not because of fantasy or monsters, but because parts of it reflect a reality many would rather not look at.
If your heart hurt for the boy, for Rachel, or for the children beneath the church, then good.
Stories should make us feel, even the uncomfortable things.
Not all evil comes with fangs or rituals.
Sometimes it wears jewelry, prays publicly, and smiles at its victims.
To everyone reading:
Thank you for staying.
Thank you for feeling.
And thank you for remembering, kindness is a weapon too.
See you in the next chapter.