CHAPTER 1057: OVERINFLATED EGOS.

The air above City Z still carried the faint stench of burned ichor. Cain stood on a rooftop, one boot resting against a cracked chimney, his gaze sweeping the streets below. Dawn had peeled open the city, and with it came the murmur of ordinary life—merchants unlatching shutters, children scuttling barefoot across stones, guards yawning at their posts. The city wanted to forget the night, to carry on as if nothing had happened.

But Cain knew better.

"Looks calm," Susan said behind him, though the tension in her jaw betrayed her. She leaned against the roof’s edge, arms crossed. "Almost too calm."

Hunter crouched near the tiles, checking the fletching on his bolts. His silence said more than words ever could. He didn’t trust stillness; stillness was the skin predators wore before they struck.

Cain’s eyes narrowed on an alley where two figures in drab cloaks slipped from shadow to shadow. Too careful. Too quick. "They’re already back," he muttered. "Scouts. Testing the ground."

Susan swore under her breath. "Can’t even give us one sunrise."

"They don’t sleep," Cain replied. "Not really."

Below, the streets of the market district were being cleared of last night’s wreckage. Broken carts were dragged into piles, a corpse covered in sackcloth was loaded onto a wagon, and men with hard eyes swept ash into corners. The city’s veins pulsed, trying to erase the wound—but scars don’t vanish overnight.

Steve appeared from the hatch with a grunt, setting down a battered satchel that clinked with glass. His mask was tilted back, and his grin was sharp. "You’ll love this," he said, pulling free a small brass orb lined with runes. "Shatters illusions, disrupts whispers. Might just give our phantom friends a headache."

Cain glanced at the device, then at Steve. "And how wide a radius before it gives us a headache?"

Steve hesitated, then gave a shrug too casual to be reassuring. "Depends how close you stand when it goes off."

Susan shot him a glare. "You’re going to get us all killed one day."

"Better me than them," Steve said with a lopsided grin.

Cain silenced them with a look. "Enough. We use what works. But we use it with precision."

He crouched, tracing lines in the dust coating the rooftop tiles. "Hunter, you’ll track the scouts. Don’t touch them yet—see if they lead us to the nest. Susan, I want you in the open again, stir the streets. Make them think you’re our shield. Steve..." he looked at the man’s twitching hands and restless eyes, "...you’ll lace the district. Give me three traps—no more. I don’t want the whole city choking on your brilliance."

Steve gave a mock bow. "As you command, conductor."

"And me?" Roselle’s voice slid in from the shadows, smooth and edged. She stepped out from behind a tower of stacked tiles, her blades catching a flash of dawn.

Cain met her gaze without flinching. "You stay with me."

Her lips curved, just barely. She didn’t question it.

The plan fractured outward. Hunter slipped from rooftop to balcony, his form melting into the rhythm of the streets below. Susan adjusted her cloak and strode toward the market district, shoulders square, daring the watchers to see her. Steve hummed to himself as he tinkered with his devices, already muttering equations under his breath.

Cain and Roselle remained on the roof, silent. The city’s noise swelled beneath them—vendors hawking fish, carts rattling, the hollow laughter of men still drunk from the night before. But Cain’s focus never wavered. He watched the alleys, the rooftops, the angles of movement most people never saw.

After a long stretch, Roselle broke the silence. "You don’t look at them like soldiers."

Cain didn’t turn. "Because they’re not."

"What, then?"

He let the question hang. His eyes followed the two cloaked scouts as they drifted toward the north quarter, careful not to break cover. "Pieces. Each with their own weight. Some heavy, some brittle. You use them, or you break them."

Roselle studied him, her expression unreadable. "And you? Which are you?"

Cain’s mouth curved in the faintest echo of a smile. "The hand that moves them."

The words lingered in the air, heavy with conviction. Roselle said nothing more.

A crow shrieked overhead, scattering dust from the roof beams. Cain tracked its flight, then shifted his gaze to the horizon. Beyond the towers, beyond the waking city, smoke coiled upward in the far distance—thin, faint, but unmistakable.

"Another fire," Roselle said.

"Not just fire," Cain replied. "Message."

Hunter reappeared on the rooftop, landing silent as a shadow. He didn’t waste time. "Scouts led me north. Into the warrens. They weren’t alone. Whole cell down there. Dozens, maybe more."

Susan arrived moments later, breath steady but eyes sharp. "I let myself be seen. Whoever’s pulling their strings—they’ll be twitching by now."

Cain straightened, the pieces clicking into place. "Good. Then the board is set."

He looked over each of them—Hunter stone, Susan fire, Steve storm, Roselle steel. And then his gaze fell to the north, where the warrens twisted like veins through the city’s underbelly.

"That’s where we cut," he said.

The sun had climbed higher now, pale and cold, casting long fingers of light into the streets. To the people of City Z, it was just another morning. To Cain and his, it was the opening move of the day’s war.

He drew his blade, letting the steel catch the light. "We move at dusk," he said. "Until then, watch. Wait. Let them think the city breathes easy."

And beneath the calm, the current began to coil tighter, unseen.

The market bell tolled, echoing through the quarter like a heartbeat. Cain listened to it, measuring the rhythm, the rise and fall, the way even sound could be bent into a tool. Around him, the others shifted into their roles with a quiet trust that came not from faith, but from necessity.

Cain sheathed his blade, but his eyes never left the north. That distant smoke was more than fire; it was a signal, a summons, a warning. Dusk would come, and with it the clash. Until then, patience. The city might pretend to rest. He would not.