The financial district was a graveyard of glass and steel.
We moved through the ruins at dawn, when the Red Shift was just a fading bruise on the horizon and the Ragers were sluggish from a night of hunting. Rook took point. I followed three paces behind, close enough to support, far enough to not get in her way. Sargo was on overwatch from a collapsed parking structure two blocks east, his rifle scope feeding us intel through the comm in my ear.
"Three signatures. Tier-4. Nest is in the old trading floor. Main lobby's collapsed, but there's a service entrance on the north side." Sargo's voice was calm. Professional. "No Void-Touched signatures. Clean Ragers."
"Clean Ragers still kill," Rook muttered. She glanced back at me. "Stay sharp. Tier-4s are smarter than the one you fought in the Nocturne. They use pack tactics. Ambushes. One will draw your attention while the other two flank."
"I remember the briefing."
"Remembering and doing are different things." She turned back to the path. "Try not to die. I mean it this time."
We reached the service entrance. A rusted steel door, half-open, leading into darkness. The smell hit me first—copper, rot, and something else. Something that made my gums itch. The beast stirred, recognizing the scent of prey.
Rook held up a hand. Listened.
"They know we're here."
I focused. Past the hum of the city's dead infrastructure, past my own heartbeat, I heard it. Breathing. Three distinct rhythms. Slow. Deliberate. Waiting.
"Ambush?"
"Obviously." Rook's amber eyes gleamed. "They want us to walk in. So we don't."
She shifted. Not the partial combat form—something leaner. Her body compressed, muscles tightening, and her claws extended just enough to glint in the low light. She looked at me.
"Claws only. No full shift. We go in fast, hit the first one hard, and use the chaos to break their formation. You take left. I'll take right. Sargo keeps the exit clear."
I nodded. Let the shift flow. My claws emerged—black, silver-edged, hungry. The regulator disc hummed against my chest. I could feel the Lunacy rising, but it was controlled. A fire in a furnace, not a wildfire in dry grass.
"Ready."
Rook smiled. It was not a friendly smile.
"Then let's hunt."
She moved.
I followed.
The service corridor was a choke point—narrow, low-ceilinged, perfect for an ambush. The first Rager hit us before we reached the trading floor. It dropped from a ceiling vent, three hundred pounds of armored muscle and red-eyed fury, aiming straight for Rook's back.
She wasn't there.
She'd already pivoted, flowing around the attack like water, and her claws opened the Rager's flank from shoulder to hip. It screamed. Spun. She was already gone, moving deeper into the nest.
The second Rager came at me from the left.
I didn't think. I moved. My body remembered Rook's training—dodge, don't block. I twisted sideways, felt the wind of its claws pass my face, and raked my own across its exposed throat.
The cut was deep. Not fatal. Tier-4s healed too fast for that. But it bought me a second. I used it to put distance between us, reassessing.
The Rager turned. Its red eyes tracked me. Smart. It had learned I was fast. It wouldn't commit to a full charge again.
Behind it, I heard Rook engaging the third one. Snarls. The crunch of bone. A wet, gurgling scream.
Focus.
My Rager circled. Testing. Its wound was already closing. The beast inside me wanted to press the attack—to overwhelm, to dominate, to feast.
My claws are tools. My fangs are weapons. My mind is mine.
I circled with it. Waited.
It lunged.
This time, I was ready. I dropped under the strike, claws raking upward into its belly. Hot blood sprayed. The Rager staggered. I pressed the advantage—strike to the knee, hamstringing it. Another to the shoulder. It collapsed, snarling, trying to rise on ruined legs.
I stood over it. My claws dripped.
End it. Kill. Howl.
The Litany was a whisper. But it held.
I drove my claws through the Rager's skull. It twitched once. Went still.
Silence.
I stood there, breathing hard, blood cooling on my hands. The beast was satisfied. Not frenzied. Satisfied. It had hunted. It had killed. And it had remained leashed.
"Not bad."
Rook emerged from the shadows. She was covered in blood—none of it hers. Behind her, two Rager corpses lay crumpled on the trading floor.
"You hesitated at the end. The Litany almost broke." She studied me. "But it didn't. You held. That's what matters."
She knelt by the nearest corpse and drove her claws into its chest. A wet, cracking sound. When she pulled back, she was holding a stone—dark red, pulsing with faint inner light. A Heartstone.
"Tier-4 Heartstone. Decent quality. This one's yours." She tossed it to me. "Absorb it later. In a safe place. It'll boost your regeneration and maybe push your Lunacy capacity up a few points."
I caught the stone. It was warm. Humming. The beast wanted it badly.
"Not now," I muttered, pocketing it. The hunger whined but subsided.
Rook collected the other two Heartstones. She moved with practiced efficiency, like she'd done this a thousand times.
"Sargo. Nest is clear. Three Tier-4s down. Pup got his first real kill."
Sargo's voice crackled back. "Copy. No external movement. You're clean to extract. But Rook..." He paused. "I'm reading something weird. Deeper in the nest. Faint energy signature. Doesn't match Rager bio-signs."
Rook frowned. "Define 'weird.'"
"Lunacy signature. But not like anything I've seen. It's... old. And it's not coming from a living source."
She looked at me. I looked back.
"You want to check it out?"
"We're already here. Helios nukes this place in three days anyway." She started toward the back of the trading floor. "Stay close. If something feels wrong, we leave."
We found a stairwell. Descended. The air grew colder. The Lunacy signature pressed against my senses—faint, but unmistakable. Like a half-heard howl from very far away.
The subbasement was a ruin. Collapsed concrete. Rusted pipes. And in the center, half-buried in rubble, something that shouldn't exist.
A chain.
Not a normal chain. It was made of something that wasn't metal—dark, crystalline, shot through with veins of faint silver light. It was broken. Three links, each the size of my forearm, lying in a heap like a shed snakeskin. And it was humming.
The sound went straight through my bones.
I knew that hum. I'd heard it before. In the vision. When the Rager bit me. The chain around the lunar core. The chain that held the Primeval.
Tartarus.
"Rook." My voice sounded strange. "What is that?"
She stared at the broken links. Her amber eyes were wide. For the first time since I'd met her, she looked uncertain.
"I don't know." She took a step closer. Stopped. "But it's... calling. Can you hear it?"
I could. Not words. A feeling. A pull. The same pull I felt every Red Shift, but stronger. Focused. The chain fragment wanted something. Wanted me.
The scar on my shoulder burned.
I knelt beside the links. They were cold to the touch. But the moment my fingers brushed the crystalline surface, the silver veins flared bright. The hum became a howl—silent, but deafening in my skull.
And I saw—
—a moon. Cracked open. A chain breaking. A shape rising from the core, vast and dark and hungry, with eyes like dying stars—
—a woman with silver eyes, standing on a crater rim, reaching toward the shape—
—Vera. It was Vera. She was saying something. I couldn't hear the words. But her lips moved, and I understood.
"Find the chain. Break it. Before he does."
—
I snapped back.
I was on my knees. The chain fragment was dark again, its light faded. Rook was shaking me.
"Cade! Cade, snap out of it!"
I blinked. My face was wet. Blood. My nose was bleeding. My eyes burned.
"I'm... I'm here."
Rook let out a breath. Not relief—controlled release of tension. "What the hell was that?"
I looked at the broken chain. At my hand, still touching it.
"I saw Vera. She said... she said to find the chain. Break it. Before he does."
Rook went still.
"Before who does?"
I shook my head. "I don't know. But that chain—it's from Tartarus. A piece of the Primeval's prison. It's here. On Earth. And it's been here for a long time."
We both stared at the crystalline links.
Sargo's voice crackled. "Rook, that energy signature just spiked off my readings. Whatever you found, it's not dormant. And I'm picking up movement. Multiple signatures. Heading your way."
"What kind of signatures?"
"Stalker. Four of them. Armed. Not ours."
Rook's expression hardened. "Kael's people. Iron Maw."
She grabbed my arm. "We're leaving. Now."
"The chain—"
"Leave it. If Kael wants it, he can deal with whatever curse comes with it." She pulled me toward the stairs. "We can't fight four of his Pack in a confined space. Not without one of us dying."
I hesitated. The chain fragment hummed again. Faint. Beckoning.
Find the chain. Break it.
But Rook was already moving. And Sargo's voice was sharp in my ear.
"They're at the service entrance. You've got maybe ninety seconds."
I ran.
We cleared the subbasement, burst onto the trading floor, and made for the north exit. Behind us, I heard boots on concrete. Voices. And something else—a presence. A Lunacy signature that dwarfed Rook's. An Alpha.
Kael was here. Personally.
We slipped out the service entrance as the first Iron Maw soldiers entered the trading floor. Rook didn't stop running until we were three blocks away, hidden in the shadow of a collapsed maglev station.
Only then did she let herself breathe.
"That was too close."
I leaned against a concrete pillar, my heart pounding. "Kael came himself. For a chain fragment."
"Kael's been looking for anything connected to the Primeval for years. He thinks if he can harness Tartarus's power, he can force every Stalker on Earth to submit to him." Rook's voice was bitter. "He's not wrong. That kind of power... it would make him a god. Or a monster. Same thing, really."
She looked at me.
"What you saw. Vera. Was it real? Or just the Lunacy messing with your head?"
I touched my scar. It was warm. Pulsing.
"I don't know. But she was clear. Find the chain. Break it." I met Rook's eyes. "If there are more fragments out there, we need to find them first. Before Kael does."
Rook was quiet for a long moment.
"Grimm needs to know about this. And Lena. If we're going artifact hunting, we need better gear and better intel." She stood up. "Come on. We're done hunting for today."
We made our way back through the Warrens, silent and watchful. The chain fragment's hum lingered in my bones. And Vera's words echoed in my skull.
Before he does.
Who was he?
Kael? The Primeval? Or something else—something I hadn't seen yet?
I didn't know.
But the silver in my eyes burned brighter than before.
And somewhere deep beneath the ruins of Chicago, a broken chain waited for someone to find it.