The spire screamed.

Not in sound, but in vibration—a rising shudder that rattled the teeth and made the marrow twitch. Every rib of metal quivered like it had been strung as a harp, the air vibrating in violent resonance. The glow climbed higher, streaking crimson veins across the carcass crucified at its core. The once-dead Phantom twitched, limbs jerking like a puppet testing its strings.

Cain's blade dripped ichor as he squared himself.

"Steve. Tell me you've got a kill-switch."

A frantic shuffle of keys came through the comm. "Not here. This isn't on the grid—it's running on something else, Cain. Something alive. You shut it down, you cut flesh, not wires."

"That," Susan spat, ducking under a swipe from one of the bone-plated creatures, "I can do."

She drove her blade into its throat, severing the spine clean, then ripped the blade free with a twist that sprayed black fluid over the stones. But as the body collapsed, the spire flared brighter—pulsing like a heart thrilled by blood.

Hunter's rifle cracked again, clean shot through another crawler's core. The thing spasmed, fell twitching. And again the glow intensified, as though the spire fed on death itself, storing it, converting it.

Cain realized then what the mark on the ruins had meant. It wasn't a warning. It was a claim. Everything they killed here became an offering.

"Stop wasting kills," Cain barked. He smashed the pommel of his blade into a crawler's skull instead of cleaving it, leaving it stunned, crippled but not dead. "They want bodies. Don't give them bodies."

The team adjusted. Susan began cutting tendons, leaving limbs dangling useless. Hunter switched to disabling shots, blowing joints apart without finishing. The courtyard turned into a graveyard of half-alive things writhing in muted fury. But the spire still pulsed, light climbing faster up its twisted frame, crackling arcs now licking the cables overhead.

"It's drawing from more than corpses," Steve said, voice tight with dread. "It's using resonance. Every strike, every ounce of violence, feeds the surge."

Cain's jaw tightened. "So we're fueling it by fighting?"

"Exactly."

A rumble split the courtyard. The carcass on the spire jolted hard, head snapping back, jaws opening in a silent roar as energy coursed through its hollow chest. Light burst from its ribs, stabbing skyward in a column that burned through the fog, painting the towers in scarlet veins.

Hunter swore. "If that signal gets out—"

"It's already out," Cain cut in. His eyes tracked the beam disappearing into the stormed sky. They weren't stopping this with restraint. They needed rupture. They needed collapse.

Susan's voice came sharp, a blade against his ear. "Then we bring it down."

She was already moving, climbing the twisted scaffolds that ringed the courtyard. Her coat clung wet to her frame, blade strapped across her back as she scaled upward like a shadow. Cain wanted to stop her—wanted to remind her the structure wasn't just metal, it was bone and machine and god-knew-what binding it together—but there wasn't time.

Hunter covered her climb, shots picking off any crawler that tried to follow. Cain cut a path to the base, carving through tendrils of cable that writhed like veins. Each cut bled sparks, each spark drew the spire's glow tighter, angrier.

Above, Susan reached the ribs. She swung herself onto the crucified Phantom's torso, braced on the jutting cage of bone. The glow painted her in firelight, her face half-etched in crimson shadow.

"Now what?" Hunter growled, never letting his scope drift.

Susan drove her blade into the cavity.

The Phantom convulsed. The glow spiked into white, blinding, searing. A shockwave blasted outward, hurling Cain to the stones, smashing Hunter against a wall. The crawlers screeched in static, collapsing into heaps of smoking limbs.

Cain forced himself up, teeth grit against the weight pressing on his chest. Through the flare, he saw Susan—hands locked on her blade, driving deeper into the core. The spire wailed. The crucified body twisted, ribs cracking, bone splitting under the pressure of too much energy caged in dying flesh.

Then it broke.

Light exploded, a geyser of fire and ash. The spire tore itself apart in a scream that rattled every window in the sector. Chunks of bone and twisted steel rained across the courtyard, embedding in walls, splitting pavement. Cain threw himself behind a slab, shielding against the storm.

When the blast faded, the rain returned, hissing on smoldering wreckage. The spire was gone—reduced to ruin and smoke. The carcass had collapsed into nothing more than charred husk, blackened beyond form. The glow had vanished.

Cain staggered upright. His ears rang. His vision pulsed red at the edges. But his eyes found the wreckage immediately, searching.

Susan stood in the ruins.

Her blade hung slack in her grip, smoke curling from its edge. Her coat was torn, her skin streaked with soot, but she was alive. More than alive—her eyes burned faintly, as though they had caught some ember of the spire's light and refused to let it go.

Cain froze. He knew that look. He'd seen it once before, years ago, in the eyes of a soldier who hadn't come back entirely human.

Hunter joined him, rifle slung, breath ragged. He followed Cain's gaze. His jaw set hard. "What the hell did she take from that thing?"

Susan looked down at her hands as if the question had been hers too. Her fingers trembled. Her lips parted, forming words she didn't seem to recognize as her own.

"They… called me."

Cain's grip tightened on his sword.

The courtyard lay in ruin. The spire was ash. But the hunt hadn't ended.

It had only found a new vessel.

Susan's voice faltered, but the silence after was heavier than the blast.

The rain hissed on broken stone, running in rivulets over ichor and ash. Cain said nothing. Hunter did not lower his rifle. And Susan, standing in the ruins, seemed less like their comrade and more like the echo of something they hadn't meant to wake.