"Move!" Cain pushed them forward.

They stumbled down the stairs, emerging into the courtyard of broken statues—the place they'd entered hours ago before everything went sideways. The sky burned orange across the horizon, the last light of day washing over fractured marble and dried grass.

Susan doubled over, bracing on her knees. "Okay. Think we bought time."

The wall behind them imploded.

The creature crawled out, its movements jerky and fast, like each limb operated on its own mind. No eyes. Just that slit-mouth, opening wider now, peeling up toward where its nose should've been.

Steve choked out, "You've got to be kidding me."

Cain grabbed the nearest intact statue piece—a broken arm carved in granite—and hurled it at the creature. It hit the thing dead center. The creature absorbed the impact like clay, body denting inward before snapping back into shape.

"Great," Susan muttered, pulling a knife from her boot. "It's elastic."

"That's not elastic," Cain said. "It's unfinished."

"What does that even—"

He didn't answer. He felt it again—the mark on his arm responding to the thing. This wasn't a Fallen's servant. It was something they'd sent still forming, a construct built from leftover essence and designed to track whatever triggered the beacon.

Meaning it was here for him.

The creature lunged.

Cain intercepted it, slamming his forearm across its neck. It clamped its too-wide mouth around his wrist. It didn't bite. It held him, jaw locking like a vise.

Susan attacked from the side, driving her knife into its flank. The blade sank in but didn't bleed. The creature twisted, knocking her away with a single, violent jerk.

Steve threw stones. None mattered.

Cain felt the cold spreading from where its mouth touched him, sinking through the marks on his skin.

The creature was reading him.

Not killing.

Syncing.

Cain grabbed its head with his free hand and forced it back. It hissed, jaw widening until the split nearly reached its skull.

The marks on Cain's arm surged once—then burned hot.

He slammed his marked palm into the creature's chest.

Light ruptured between them. Not bright. Not holy. A raw discharge of whatever the Watcher had left in him. The creature convulsed, shrieked without sound, and tore backward, its form distorting like fabric caught in a gale.

Cain drove forward and struck again.

This time the creature collapsed inward, folding into itself, shrinking until it snapped out of existence like a candle being pinched.

Silence dropped hard.

Cain staggered and braced on a fallen slab. The cold in his arm settled into an ache deep in the bone.

Susan limped toward him. "Cain. Look at me."

"I'm still here."

"Barely."

Steve pointed shakily at the vanished creature. "That… thing… was hunting you. Just you."

Cain didn't deny it.

Susan stepped closer. "The Fallen sent it. That's what the beacon pulled."

Cain stared back at the ruined hall, at the dying light in the fracture.

"They won't stop with one," he said.

The sun dipped lower.

The sky darkened.

And for the first time since the Watcher fell, Cain understood exactly what the Fallen had noticed when the tether touched him:

He was marked.

And they intended to reclaim what their corrupted brother had left inside him.

The sound behind the walls wasn't footsteps or the grind of stone. It was lighter—like claws tracing the inside of a coffin lid. Cain rose slowly, shoulders tense. Susan put herself beside him without being asked, and Steve stayed just close enough to pretend he wasn't terrified.

The beacon on the floor glowed faintly. Not bright. Not active. More like a memory burned in the stone and waiting for someone to claim it.

Cain stared at it too long. The black lattice under his skin pulsed in time with the mark, syncing to something he didn't understand. He forced his hand behind his back to keep Susan from seeing the pulse.

A second sound came. This one closer, traveling through the cracked foundation upward.

Steve's voice cracked. "Tell me Fallen Angels don't crawl."

"They don't," Susan said.

"Then what the hell is—"

"They don't crawl," she repeated, jaw tight. "Whatever this is, it's not a Fallen. But it's coming because they want it to."

Cain took a step toward the far wall. The hall was broken, half-collapsed, but the architecture remained old enough to hide a hundred passageways beneath the rubble. Whatever moved behind the stone didn't care about tunnels—it moved through them like it knew the layout by instinct.

He knelt, placing a palm on the floor beside the beacon mark. The stone hummed like it had a pulse.

"Cain," Susan warned. "Don't touch it."

"I'm not touching it." He slid his hand closer. The hum grew louder, vibrating through his fingertips. "I need to know if it's calling out."

Steve grabbed a broken tablet shard and held it like a weapon. "I hate that you're saying that like it's normal."

The hum shifted, low then high in a quick spike, like something had answered through the stone before breaking the connection again.

Cain stood. "It's been activated."

"You activated it," Susan said.

"Didn't mean to."

"Doesn't change the fact it happened."

Stone cracked behind them. Dust rained from above. A narrow fracture spread across the far wall like something pressing from the other side.

Steve backed up until he hit debris. "Okay, nope, we need to leave. Now. I vote running. I don't care where."

Cain scanned the hall. One exit remained intact, choked with rubble but passable if they moved fast. The creature—whatever it was—sounded small, but the Fallen didn't send anything small unless it had a purpose.

He pointed to the far doorway. "We go."

Susan dragged Steve by the collar when he hesitated. Cain followed, keeping himself between the others and the cracking wall.

Halfway across the hall, the fracture split open. A slender arm, pale and jointed in all the wrong places, slipped through and latched onto the stone. The fingers were too long. Too thin. They bent backward as easily as forward.

Steve gagged. "Absolutely not."

The arm pulled again, widening the gap. A head pressed through next—round, eyeless, and smooth. A slit opened across its face like a wound deciding to become a mouth.

Cain considered attacking it. Then he felt the marks in his skin surge in response to the thing's presence. It recognized him. Or it recognized the tether.

Not good.