The door did not simply close; it detonated. The impact rattled the cheap frames on the walls and sent a tremor through the floorboards, as though the house itself flinched. Then came the silence: thick, leaden, the kind that presses on the eardrums and makes the heart forget its rhythm.
Aurora stopped breathing.
A wave of crest energy slammed into her without warning, raw and electric, searing along her skin like a thousand invisible needles. The air turned heavy with the smell of ozone and something older—something that tasted of turned earth and buried bones. Her arms prickled; every hair rose in violent salute. Deep beneath the foundations of the city, something ancient flexed, restless and ravenous.
The surge teased her, ghosting across her palms, then vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving only a cold shiver crawling up her spine. Earth spirit, she told herself. Just the earth spirit. She almost believed it.
In the kitchen, Elisa's voice came out small and cracked.
"I shouldn't have slapped him." The confession hung in the air like smoke. She stared at the linoleum as if it might open and swallow her. "I want to apologize." She lifted her eyes to Jack, pleading. "Was he… very angry?"
Aurora answered before Jack could open his mouth.
"Angry?" The word cracked across the rooms like a whip. "He pulled you out of the sky, Elisa. He carried Jack through fire. He bled for me tonight. And you struck him. How do you think he feels right now? Like every wound he took for us was worth nothing."
Elisa flushed scarlet. Shame and fury collided inside her chest, hot and suffocating. "If you'd told me sooner—" Her voice splintered. "If someone had just told me—"
The sentence died between them, jagged and bleeding. Jack looked from one woman to the other, helpless. No one moved. The silence grew teeth.
Across the city, in a bar that smelled of stale smoke and regret, Steve let the door swing shut behind him.
The yellow lights were too dim, the laughter too loud. He dropped onto a stool that had seen better decades and curled his fingers around the beer the bartender slid over without being asked. The glass was cold, slick with condensation. He drank as though the burn might cauterize something inside him.
It didn't.
The slap echoed in his skull—sharp, humiliating, final. He saw again the shock on Elisa's face, the way her hand had flown before thought caught up with it. He saw the others standing frozen behind her. All of them alive because of him. All of them watching him walk away like a kicked dog.
He drained half the bottle in one pull. The bitterness sat on his tongue like an accusation.
Unworthy. Unwanted. Unforgiven.
His knuckles whitened around the glass until the cheap rim groaned.
Far beyond the city lights, the forest remembered what it had lost.
Particles of torn flesh and spilled crest rose from the earth like glowing ash, drawn together by a will that was no longer scattered. They whirled, faster, tighter, knitting muscle to shadow, bone to malice. A low thrum vibrated through root and soil, through every buried thing that had ever hungered.
Wings unfurled—black feathers edged with starlight. A body took shape, tall and wrong-angled, beautiful in the way a guillotine is beautiful.
Killing intent rolled out of it in a single, freezing wave.
High above, in halls of impossible light, Roy watched the birth and allowed himself a smile that never reached his eyes.
"They merge," he said, voice smooth as oil, sharp as broken glass. "They grow stronger. Their crest becomes a tide nothing in the mortal world can withstand."
He turned. The smile vanished.
"Bring me the Neptune weapon," he ordered. "And kill the girl."
Down in the dark, the newborn creature lifted its head. Its voice was a blade dragged slowly across stone.
"Yes, master. The girl dies. The weapon will be yours. Wait, and see."
A flashlight bobbed between the trees—a lone man, late, lost, calling softly for a trail that no longer existed. On his left hand, a worn silver ring caught the moon and threw back a final, feeble glint.
The creature inhaled.
Killing intent thickened until the air itself seemed to clot. The hiker staggered, clutched his chest, eyes wide with a terror he could not name. His breath came in ragged, frost-white puffs though the night was mild.
He never had time to scream.
The monster crossed the distance in a heartbeat of silence. Wings folded like a closing trap. Talons punched through cloth and flesh with wet, intimate sounds. Blood hit the leaves in a brief, warm rain. The flashlight spun away, beam strobing across a face already emptying of life.
Jaws opened far beyond human limits. Bone cracked like green wood in a fire. The creature fed quickly, greedily, crest energy blazing brighter with every swallowed heartbeat.
When it straightened, the wings were gone. The claws retracted. Skin settled into place like a perfect mask.
A man stepped out from the trees—tall, unremarkable, eyes flat and depthless.
No one would ever look twice.
And somewhere, in that quiet house across the city, Aurora's shiver did not fade.
It sharpened.
The air in the living room turned suddenly, impossibly cold, as though winter had been invited inside without knocking. The faint hum she had dismissed as the earth spirit returned—not distant now, not teasing, but close. Crushing. A pressure that pressed against the walls, the windows, the inside of her skull.
Aurora's breath fogged in front of her. The lights flickered once, twice, then steadied—dimmer than before.
Footsteps.
Slow. Deliberate. Not from the street. Not from the porch. From directly beneath the floorboards.
Something vast and newly fed was rising through the foundations, crest energy flooding the house like black water. The presence carried the reek of fresh blood and wet feathers, the copper tang of a life recently ended. It knew her name. It knew all their names.
Elisa froze in the kitchen, eyes wide, sensing it too. Jack took an involuntary step back, his hand reaching for a weapon that wasn't there.
Aurora's heart thundered so loudly she almost missed the soft, polite knock at the front door.
Three measured taps.
Human-sounding.
Perfect.
The thing outside waited, patient as death, wearing a stolen face and a worn silver ring that no longer fit quite right.
Everything was not fine.
Everything had only just begun to rot