CHAPTER 1060: BREAKING TO THE NEXT TIER.

The city stirred beneath the pale wash of morning. Market shutters creaked open, bread ovens exhaled their first smoke, and the sound of carts grinding over cobblestone carried through the waking streets. To anyone else, it was ordinary. To Cain, every sound carried weight. Every clatter of wheels and murmur of voices blurred with the phantom’s echo.

They had stalked it through half the lower ward. The path was deliberate, never frantic, never sloppy. This wasn’t some stray abomination crawling out of the dark. This thing had purpose, and Cain hated that more than he admitted.

Susan walked beside him, her eyes restless, flicking toward every corner shadow. She had tied her cloak tighter, but Cain could see the tension in her shoulders. Hunter trailed behind, quiet as the grave, his crossbow dismantled into pieces strapped across his back, ready to be rebuilt at the flick of his wrists.

Steve moved with his usual nervous energy, fingers twitching against the control band at his wrist. His devices hummed faintly, a sound Cain alone seemed to notice. The kid was too smart for his own good—too loud, too fragile—but Cain tolerated him for one reason: every hunt needed someone who could bend the city’s bones, even if only for a moment.

They reached the lip of an abandoned square. Statues, long defaced, jutted from cracked stone. A fountain dribbled a thin stream of brown water into its basin. Cain stopped, his hand raised.

"There," he said.

The others froze. At first, Susan frowned, seeing only the empty expanse. But then Hunter caught it—the faint scuff across the dirt, too heavy for a rat, too sharp for a dog. A footprint. Bare, elongated, twisted.

The phantom was close.

Cain lowered into a crouch, brushing his fingers against the print. Fresh. Minutes, no more.

He straightened. "Fan out. Quietly. It’s probing this place."

They split without question. Susan slipped along the western arch, Hunter melted into the broken pillars, Steve ducked behind the fountain with his lenses blinking faintly. Cain remained in the open, head tilted as though listening for a sound beneath the city’s breath.

The wind shifted.

Something moved.

A ripple of motion between the pillars. The phantom stepped into view—not quite flesh, not quite shadow. Its limbs dragged long across the stone, each step slow, deliberate. Its head turned, featureless yet somehow focused, as if it saw far more than its blank face suggested.

Susan’s grip tightened around her blade. Hunter’s bow clicked into place, silent, practiced. Steve’s breath hitched.

Cain only watched.

The phantom did not rush them. It tilted its head, its body swaying faintly, testing the air. Then it did something Cain hadn’t expected. It raised its hand and pressed two long fingers into its own chest. The sound carried across the square, a hollow thump, steady, rhythmic. Like a heart.

Then it stopped. The fingers pointed outward. At Cain.

Hunter tensed. Susan whispered a curse.

Cain’s eyes narrowed. "Message confirmed."

The phantom lunged.

The square erupted. Hunter’s bolt sang through the air, striking deep into the phantom’s side. Black ichor hissed where it landed, but the creature didn’t falter. Susan dashed in from the flank, blade flashing. Sparks flew as her steel carved against its arm, severing half the limb.

It shrieked, not with sound, but with vibration. The statues rattled, cracks spread through the fountain’s basin, and Steve yelped as his devices screamed in static.

Cain moved last. He stepped into the phantom’s reach, his blade low, and with one clean cut he split its other arm from its body. The ichor sprayed, burning against stone.

But instead of falling, the phantom staggered back and dragged its fingers through the ichor pooling beneath it. The substance clung to the stone, spreading like veins. Symbols began to burn, twisting, curling into patterns Cain had never seen before.

"Steve!" Cain barked.

"I—I don’t know what that is!" the boy stammered, fumbling with his wristband. "It’s rewriting itself—like code—but alive!"

The ichor veins pulsed once, twice—then the phantom collapsed, its body unraveling into smoke. What remained was the web of symbols glowing across the square.

Hunter emerged from the shadows, weapon still ready. "Trap?"

Susan shook her head, eyes fixed on the spreading lines. "No. A mark."

Cain crouched near the burning symbols, his gaze cold, calculating. He could feel it—something vast pressed against the edges of the city, watching through this sigil. The phantom hadn’t been the threat. It had been the herald.

Steve’s voice cracked as he whispered, "It’s... still broadcasting. Someone’s on the other side, listening."

Cain’s blade hovered over the center of the web. For a moment, silence reigned, heavy and suffocating. Then he drove the steel into the stone, cutting through the heart of the mark.

The glow sputtered. The veins shrieked like dying things, then dissolved into ash.

Cain stood, sheathing his weapon. "They know we’re here. All of us. Which means they’ll send more."

Susan’s jaw tightened. Hunter’s expression didn’t change, though his grip on the crossbow did.

Steve swallowed hard, whispering the only truth left in him. "Then this was just the beginning."

Cain looked across the square, at the cracked statues and broken stones. He said nothing, but his silence weighed more than any vow. The hunt wasn’t over. It was becoming something else.

Cain didn’t sheath his blade this time. He left it bare, gleaming in the fractured light as if the steel itself needed to breathe. Around him, the city groaned awake—doors opening, shutters dragged back, voices rising in the distance—but none of that sound touched the street he occupied. Here, the silence was too sharp, too deliberate.

Susan’s eyes tracked the rooftops. "They’re not done," she said, not as a warning but as fact.

"I know." Cain stepped into the middle of the street, boots echoing with the weight of certainty. His presence dared whatever lingered in the shadows to meet him, to show itself before the dawn claimed it.

A gutter whispered. A single bottle rolled across the cobblestones. Cain’s head tilted slightly, and his grip tightened.

"They watch because they fear," Hunter muttered, appearing from the veil of a side alley. "But fear has a limit. It turns to desperation."

"Then let them cross it," Cain replied. His voice carried low and steady, spreading through the narrow passage like smoke. "And when they do, we’ll break them here—before they think themselves capable of ruling this city."

Above, the phantom stirred again. The hunt was far from over.