CHAPTER 1058: STYGIAN ANGEL.

The rain had come in the night. It clung to the stone walls of City Z like a second skin, dripping from gutters and pooling in the hollow places where no one dared to tread. Cain stood beneath a rusted archway, the faint glow of a broken street-lamp staining half his face in weak amber.

Susan moved beside him, cloak drawn tight. Her voice was low, each word cut to fit the silence.

"They’re adapting. Whatever’s guiding them has started to test the perimeter. They’ll come harder next time."

Cain didn’t answer immediately. He let the city speak first—the trickle of water through the drains, the murmur of traders reopening their stalls too early, the faint scrape of steel where patrols rehearsed discipline they no longer believed in. Beneath those sounds, he could almost hear it: the breath of something waiting, watching.

Finally, he said, "Then we’ll adapt faster."

Hunter emerged from the shadows, crossbow cradled against his chest. His eyes were rimmed with exhaustion, though his stance betrayed nothing. "Faster won’t matter if the council keeps denying what’s already here. They’ll label the wreckage as an accident, blame it on rebels, anything but what we saw."

"That’s their problem," Cain replied. His gaze cut to the horizon, where dawn bled through smoke-hung clouds. "Ours is simpler. Survive the next wave. Shape the field before they do."

Steve’s voice crackled faintly through the comm clipped at Cain’s collar. The man was stationed three rooftops away, his nest of machines buzzing like trapped insects.

"Survive? Cute word, Cain. You might want to try something a little more ambitious. I’m staring at grid-maps that don’t make sense anymore. Paths that should be dead are pulsing like veins. You know what that means? It means whatever we’re chasing isn’t just moving through the city—it’s changing the city."

Cain’s jaw tightened. "Then map the change. Make it bleed coordinates."

A pause. Then the sound of keys clattering, curses muttered under Steve’s breath. "Working on it. But if this thing keeps rewriting the grid, my machines won’t last long. And when they burn out, we’ll be blind."

Susan’s hand brushed her blade. She was restless, her silence brimming with the urge to strike. "Then we don’t give it time to rewrite. We corner it. Break it."

"Easier said," Hunter murmured.

Cain turned sharply, meeting each of their eyes in turn. "No. Easier done. Because it doesn’t know yet what it’s cornered. It still thinks this is its city." His voice sank, cold and flat. "It’s wrong."

The group moved as one, flowing through the artery-streets of City Z. Rain glistened off cobbles, muffling their passage. Cain counted every step, tracing the map that existed only in his head: choke points, escape lines, hidden sight-lines. The phantom thought it owned the darkness. He would prove it was mistaken.

They reached the edge of the market district where stalls lay half-toppled, goods abandoned mid-sale. Blood had dried along the stones, washed pale by the night’s rain. Hunter crouched, pressing his palm to a faint track etched into the mud.

"It passed here. Recently."

Cain studied the trail. The imprints weren’t footprints—too jagged, too uncertain. They rippled outward as though the ground itself had recoiled from the thing that touched it.

Susan stepped closer, brow furrowed. "It’s feeding. That’s why the paths are warping. It isn’t just walking through the city. It’s remaking it with every step."

Steve’s voice cut in again, static-laced. "Not to interrupt the field trip, but if you’re right, then we’re standing in its stomach. And I don’t recommend staying there long."

Cain drew his blade, the steel whispering like rain as it cleared the sheath. "Then we don’t stay."

He gestured, and they moved—Susan covering the left flank, Hunter sweeping the alleys with his crossbow, Steve guiding them remotely through shifting coordinates. The city was alive with silence, the kind that rang too loud.

They found it two blocks later.

The phantom stood at the heart of a collapsed courtyard, its form indistinct, like smoke given flesh. Limbs stretched wrong, bending into angles that tore the eye. Around it, walls sagged as if drained of will, stone bleeding into shapes that should not exist.

It lifted its head as they approached. No eyes—only a hollow glow where sight should have been.

Cain felt the tension coil inside him, sharp as wire. He did not wait.

"Strike," he ordered.

Susan moved first, her blade flashing like silver lightning. Hunter’s bolt followed, a silent arrow splitting the air. Steve’s drones screamed overhead, red dots locking onto the phantom’s frame.

For a heartbeat, Cain thought they might pin it. But the phantom bent—no, it folded—sliding past the assault like a shadow poured across water. Hunter’s bolt struck stone. Susan’s blade met air. The drones scrambled, signals warping.

Cain surged forward, steel low, steps certain. The phantom lunged.

When they met, the courtyard shattered with the sound of stone collapsing, sparks and bloodless ichor lighting the rain.

Cain surged forward, steel low, steps certain. The phantom lunged.

When they met, the courtyard shattered with the sound of stone collapsing, sparks and bloodless ichor lighting the rain.

Cain’s blade cut deep, but not true. The phantom’s body yielded like smoke, then hardened like iron, forcing him to wrench his weapon free. A tendril lashed out, striking the ground where he’d stood an instant before. The cobbles split, dust rising in choking clouds.

Susan darted past him, her movements quicksilver. She slashed twice, one blow grazing the phantom’s side, the other severing something that looked like bone—but the thing didn’t falter. Instead, the wound closed, swallowing itself with a hiss.

Hunter fired again, a bolt tipped with silver flame. This time the arrow lodged, burning bright. The phantom convulsed, its shape blurring, the courtyard trembling with its fury.

"Now!" Cain barked, and pressed the attack. His blade sang as he drove it toward the phantom’s core.

The thing shrieked—not with sound, but with pressure, the world itself bowing under its rage.

Steve’s voice cracked through the comm, urgent, raw. "Whatever you’re doing, finish it—because the grid’s collapsing!"