CHAPTER 1059: GENERIC SPACE SPLITTING.

The city had no time to rest.

Smoke still bled from the shattered courtyard, the phantom’s shriek echoing in stone and marrow. Cain stood amidst the ruin, blade dripping ichor that refused to stain the ground. He didn’t relax. Creatures like this rarely died once.

"Hunter," he said.

Already the marksman was moving, eyes fixed on the broken shape writhing in the debris. The bolt he’d fired still burned, silver flame gnawing at the phantom’s shifting flesh. Its body pulsed like tar caught between worlds, struggling to knit itself whole.

"Not enough," Hunter muttered, drawing another shaft.

Susan stepped closer, her cloak torn and streaked with soot. "Then we push until it breaks."

Cain didn’t answer. He heard Steve’s voice again in his earpiece, brittle with static.

"City sensors are crawling. Power nodes flickering. If you don’t end this in sixty seconds, you’ll have an audience—and not the kind that forgets."

Cain exhaled once, steady. "Then we won’t give them a show."

He raised his blade.

The phantom reared, limbs unfurling into jagged spears, eyes blossoming across its hide like rotten fruit. It hissed, the sound like iron scraping bone. The silver bolt flared again, then sputtered.

"Move!" Cain barked.

Hunter loosed another arrow; Susan darted in from the flank. Cain struck low, his sword carving an arc that drew sparks across stone and shadow alike. The phantom twisted, but Susan’s strike carved a deep line, and Hunter’s bolt pinned one of its arms to the ground.

The courtyard shook. Buildings nearby shuddered, windows cracking as though the city itself resisted the fight.

Cain drove forward. His blade pierced the phantom’s torso—if it could be called that—and this time, the ichor boiled black. The creature convulsed, limbs spasming, its scream rattling every shutter for three streets.

Steve’s voice hissed again. "You’re lighting up every grid watcher in City Z—get out!"

Cain gritted his teeth, twisted the blade deeper, and snarled through clenched jaw. "Not yet."

With a final push, he tore the sword free. The phantom collapsed inward, folding into itself like smoke sucked into a single dying flame. A violent pulse rippled outward, shaking dust from every rooftop. Then silence.

Hunter lowered his bow slowly. "Gone?"

Susan didn’t sheath her blade. "Nothing in this city is ever gone."

Cain said nothing. He looked down at the space where the phantom had fallen. The stones were cracked, but beneath them a faint mark lingered—a spiral etched into the very foundation, as if carved there by the fight itself.

His stomach tightened. This wasn’t random.

"Cain." Susan’s voice was quiet now, but insistent. "What is that?"

He crouched, tracing the spiral without touching it. The grooves pulsed faintly, almost breathing. "Not their doing," he muttered. "This was waiting here long before."

Steve’s voice interrupted. "I don’t care if it’s a blessing or a curse, you’ve got twenty seconds before drones sweep this sector. Get moving."

Cain stood, sheathing his blade. "We’re done here. For now."

They vanished into the alleys, leaving behind only ruin, smoke, and the spiral burned into the stone.

---

By the time they reached the rooftop safehouse, dawn had broken across City Z. The skyline burned gold, but below, the streets were restless—patrols doubled, whispers swelling, fear thickening like fog.

Steve sat hunched over his console, eyes ringed with exhaustion. "You pulled every alarm in the lower grid," he muttered as they entered. "They’ll chalk it up to a power surge, but keep poking like this and someone upstairs is going to notice."

Hunter set his bow aside. "Someone already has."

Cain glanced at him. Hunter rarely spoke in riddles.

"Explain."

Hunter nodded toward the far wall. A small scrap of parchment had been nailed there, no one knowing when it had arrived. The ink was dark, precise. Only five words:

THE WITNESS HAS AWAKENED.

Susan’s eyes narrowed. "Not them again."

Steve looked between them, confused. "The Witness? What the hell does that mean?"

Cain didn’t answer. His gaze lingered on the words, a weight in his chest he refused to name.

"We move tonight," he said instead. "No waiting. No rest. If they think we’ve stirred something, they’ll move fast. Faster than we’ve seen."

Hunter’s jaw tightened. "And if the Witness is real?"

Cain finally looked at him, eyes steady, cold. "Then the city won’t survive hesitation."

Silence pressed down on the room. Outside, the first bells of the morning rang hollow through the streets.

The hunt hadn’t ended. It had only found its shape.

Cain crouched by the splintered doorway, running his fingers over the grooves left behind. The wood was cleanly severed, too clean for any ordinary blade. His mind catalogued it: angle, depth, precision. The phantom’s hand. It had been here, testing the ground, prodding the edges of their patience.

Susan shifted behind him, her cloak brushing against stone. "They’re getting closer to the core districts." Her voice carried a faint edge, the unspoken weight of what that meant—families, children, merchants asleep in their homes, oblivious.

Hunter spoke next, voice low and flat. "Then the time for patience is gone."

Cain didn’t answer immediately. His eyes traced the street ahead—narrow, choked with abandoned carts, lanterns swaying in the morning breeze. He saw not what was there but what could be: exits, ambush points, the likely line of retreat.

"They want us to strike fast, make noise, leave trails," Cain finally said. "We won’t. We bleed them quiet, one shadow at a time."

Steve tapped his wrist, the faint glow of his device painting his face in pale light. "I can mask us for another two blocks. After that, the grid sees everything."

Cain rose, blade resting against his shoulder. The faintest smile tugged at his mouth, more grim than amused. "Two blocks is enough."

He turned to the others, gaze sharp, unwavering. "We hunt forward. But remember—every strike you make, make it absolute. No half-measures. No chances left behind. The phantom isn’t a beast. It’s a message. Whoever sent it is watching."

The words settled heavy in the air, but none argued. The four of them moved again, slipping into the arteries of City Z, the city still yawning awake, unaware its veins carried war.