I was sitting in the open doorway of the Estate’s only classroom. I’d picked this spot because it gave me a nice breeze from the hallway and a clean exit if anyone said anything stupid. Which, given the people in this room, was basically guaranteed.

  Lawson stood at the front of the classroom like he was born there—back straight, sleeves rolled up, marker in one hand, drawing on a hovering chalkboard that probably wasn’t there ten minutes ago, and probably would disappear again in another ten. He looked like the kind of professor who made you read the works of three philosophers before breakfast and then asked you what you thought about death. The kind of guy who could talk about particle theory while reassembling a rifle with one hand and sipping black tea with the other.

  He was calm, exact; handsome in that exhausted, "I'm married to my job and also my job is international murder-prevention" way. Or just, “I’m married to my job” will also do in case the, “also my job is international murder-prevention” part is too oddly specific and you’ve never encountered such a man who could fit under that category.

  “Three factions,” he said, gesturing with his marker towards the whiteboard. “That’s where we start. If you don’t understand this part, none of what we do here will make sense. Which means you’ll probably die. Or we will recognize that you are useless to us, in which case we will feed you to Ben, and you will still die.”

  He pointed with his marker towards the back of the room where the red spiky vaguely snake-shaped monstrosity with a disturbingly humanoid face was coiled.

  I smiled. This was going to be fun.

  “Back on track,” Lawson said, adjusting the floating chalkboard with a flick of his hand. “The Guardians. The Sibilants. The Blades. Three factions. Three ways of seeing the world. Three wildly different moral structures, all fighting for influence over Earth.”

  He paused, wrote the words on the board in elegant, slanted script. I noted he wrote Blades a little bigger. Subtle.

  “Guardians first,” he said. “They think of themselves as noble. Untouchable. Pure. The cosmic conscience of humanity. They live in a pocket dimension stacked so high above human reality that even most anyone who’s been there gets altitude sickness just thinking about it.”

  He wrote the word “ORDER” and circled it.

  “They can’t manifest physically on Earth,” Lawson continued. “So instead, they influence people. Think of it like a whisper in the back of your mind telling you to resist the intrusive thoughts when you’re about to do something stupid. Like adopt a raccoon, or text your ex.”

  A few snorts from the trainees. Good. They were awake.

  He paused and turned to gesture at one of the rookies. My sister, to be specific. “Liz. Stand up.”

  Liz blinked, then got to her feet, adjusting the sleeves of her green hoodie like it might shield her from the attention. She didn’t speak. Just looked around at everyone with a tired sort of half-smile.

  “This is Liz,” Lawson said. “She used to be one of them.”

  A murmur ran through the class. Liz gave me a brief, rueful glance, then sat back down. Tobe—leather jacket, duct-taped boots, more energy than sense—opened his mouth like he was about to say something, then seemed to remember Liz could incinerate him with a thought and closed it again.

  Good instincts, that one.

  “Next,” Lawson said, turning back to the board. “The Sibilants. The opposite of the Guardians in every way. They live below, not above. If the Guardians are order, then the Sibilants are pure, unadulterated chaos. They are sly, manipulative, and definitely out for blood.”

  He wrote the word “CHAOS” on the board.

  “They can’t appear on Earth unless they’re summoned. Once they are, they form contracts. A human gives them something—hope, fear, blood, a favorite memory, can be anything really—and in return, the Sibilant gives them power.”

  He pointed with the marker toward the back, where the nightmarish creatures that were Maroon, Charcoal, Ben, and Sagittarius had been sitting in a loose, vaguely predatory semicircle. Maroon lifted his hat in greeting.

  “These four used to be Sibilants,” Lawson said, completely deadpan. “Luckily, they’ve been on our side ever since a charming young man bribed them with country music vinyls, forever winning their loyalty.”

  Ben smiled. The students flinched.

  “They’re also all bulletproof,” Lawson added, “so don’t get clever.”

  “Aww Lawson, you didn’t have to warn them about that,” Maroon drawled. “You’re ruining all of my fun.”

  Tobe, in the second row, raised his hand. “You mentioned contracts earlier. Say if we were to hypothetically agree to one, what would happen?”

  “Good question,” Lawson nodded, “Caz. Stand up.”

  Caz rose without hesitation, stone-faced. His prosthetic arm gleamed in the dim light, a patchwork of brass and steel and something that might have once been bone.

  “Caz made a contract,” Lawson said. “Didn’t know what he was getting into. Almost died. Lost an arm, and a lot of other stuff. Gained a list of powers no one’s fully charted yet. Lives with visions. Constant headaches. Developed an extremely poor opinion of basement cults.”

  Caz sat back down. I saw Maroon reach out and lightly pat his shoulder.

  “Now,” Lawson said, clapping once. “Us. The Blades.”

  He tapped the word on the board. It pulsed faintly, a ripple of silver like moonlight on water.

  “We’re the balance. Not good. Not evil. Not moral. Not cruel. We exist to make sure the other two don’t win. Guardians pull too hard toward order. Sibilants pull too hard toward chaos. We’re the knife that cuts the rope, sending them both falling back on their behinds.”

  He glanced back at me, just for a second. I gave him a lazy little salute.

  “Our founder—Dagger’s father—built this little group to act as a buffer. A firewall. A scalpel to remove corruption. Pick your metaphor and/or other rhetorical device. We train to resist both sides. And we train hard.”

  At this, his voice dropped just a bit. The rookies leaned in.

  “Because once you’ve seen what the world really is—once you’ve felt it crawl under your skin and whisper that everything could be yours if you just say yes—you can’t unsee it. And if you don’t know how to fight back... it’ll eat you alive.”

  Silence.

  Then Tobe raised his hand.

  “So... the Guardians are like your guilt-tripping grandma, the Sibilants are your toxic ex, and we’re the morally ambiguous hitmen hunting them both down?”

  Lawson smiled. “Yes. Exactly.”

  He crossed his arms and began pacing slowly in front of the chalkboard, the floating letters rippling slightly as he passed.

  “Guardians whisper to those who pray. Sibilants form contracts with those who scream in vain. The Blades? We show up when things fall apart. Because sometimes, that whisper turns into a Crusade. Sometimes, that contract creates an unstoppable warlord who ends up dominating a continent and a half. One bad decision, one desperate moment, one lonely kid looking for power—”

  He paused at that, just for a second. Glanced at Caz again.

  “—and suddenly, you’ve got a whole town under the influence of something they don’t understand. And if no one shows up to cut it off at the source? People die. The whole world could die.”

  “So, you said the Guardians were the good guys though?” Harper asked. “Why wouldn’t they step in?”

  “Well, first off, I wouldn’t necessarily be calling the Guardians ‘good guys’,” Lawson said. “But I believe the answer you're looking for is: because they can’t. Guardians are observers. They watch. They influence. But to act directly? They’d have to fall and become something else.”

  Liz’s jaw tightened, but she said nothing. Tobe leaned over and whispered something that sounded suspiciously like What’s it like to be a fallen grandma, and Harper elbowed him hard enough that he made a choked little noise.

  Lawson kept going like he hadn’t noticed.

  “The Blades were founded to deal with these influences directly, whenever we like, however we like, in ways neither the Guardians nor the Sibilants could. Now—”

  He gestured to the back of the room again.

  “—Allow me to reintroduce the specialists.”

  Sagittarius tilted his eyeless head like a mantis sensing movement. Ben coiled around the base of one of the crumbling columns with a slow, sinuous grace.

  Charcoal picked his teeth with a nail and muttered, “Specialist in country music and murder, at your service.”

  “You’re not a specialist in music,” Maroon replied. “You’re a walking insult to every man who ever picked up a banjo in earnest.”

  “I play six instruments,” Charcoal snapped.

  “You sample six instruments,” Maroon corrected. “Through a laptop. That ain’t music, that’s math with an attitude problem.”

  “I swear, if you say real music died with Merle Haggard one more time—”

  “Real music died with Merle Haggard,” Maroon said immediately, tipping his hat.

  Lawson didn’t even blink. “And this is why we only use them for demonstrations.”

  Ben raised his hand—or rather, uncoiled a segment of his body into a vague approximation of a raised hand. “For the record,” he said, voice smooth as wet velvet, “I have a harpsichord inside me.”

  Silence.

  Lawson opened his mouth, paused, then said, “That feels like a threat.”

  “It was,” Ben said pleasantly.

  Harper looked over and raised a brow. “You’re just gonna let them hijack your lecture like that?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Watching a former Sibilant argue about country music is part of the training experience. You ever hear how we test loyalty here in the Estate? We play one note from a Luke Bryan song and see who cries.”

  Maroon grinned at me. “Darlin’, you joke, but that’s how we lost Denver.”

  Tobe raised his hand. “Wait. That’s not a joke?”

  “No,” I said. “It was a Tuesday. And a banjo. In that order.”

  Lawson sighed, rubbing his temples. “Okay. Before this spirals further into surreal banter therapy, let’s get back to the practical. Any questions before we get to the demonstration portion of the lecture with our lovely specialists?”

  Harper raised a cautious hand. “What does the demonstration portion of the lecture entail, exactly? I’m not exactly sure these ‘specialists’ of yours are qualified to teach anything.”

  “No, they’re quite qualified,” Lawson said. “For hands-on combat exercises, at least. For any advice related to music, hard no.”

  Tobe fist-pumped. “Finally.”

  “You’re fighting Maroon,” I added.

  Tobe’s face dropped.

  “Wait—can I—can I switch teams?”

  “You’re not on a team,” Lawson said. “You’re a target.”

  “Well… there are six of us,” Tobe said. “And one Maroon. Maybe he could use some help?”

  “I highly doubt that,” Lawson replied, moving to the side of the room with the same kind of casual detachment I’d seen him use while walking away from live grenades. “Good luck.”

  “No like—strategy? Objective? Rules?” Harper asked, eyeing Maroon like he might start foaming at the mouth.

  “The objective,” Lawson said, “is to not die.”

  Harper looked at me. “He’s kidding, right?”

  I gave a long, thoughtful pause. “No.”

  Maroon stood and stretched, spine cracking like gravel under boots. He adjusted his shotgun, slung it over his back—politely—and sauntered to the middle of the classroom, spurs jingling.

  “Alright, baby Blades,” he said cheerfully. “Let’s see what y’all got. Try not to break anything I can’t grow back.”

  Caz stood first. No fanfare. No hesitation. Just rose to his feet like someone had flipped a switch and walked toward the center of the room. Liz stood next, arms tucked into her hoodie sleeves, not looking at Maroon so much as through him. Harper followed, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like a prayer to Wi-Fi. Tobe tripped over the leg of his chair on the way up and styled it into a spin move that fooled absolutely no one.

  I remained where I was, already having a perfect view of the disaster that was about to unfold. Charcoal had scooted closer to watch, a fresh bag of popcorn crinkling in his lap that I was certain hadn’t been there before. Ben had oozed into a new coil with a look of quiet expectation, and Sagittarius had climbed the wall with his spider-like legs until he was upside down on the ceiling , and then crouched there like a chandelier nobody ordered.

  Lawson clapped once. “Begin.”

  Silence.

  Then Tobe lunged.

  Maroon didn’t move. He just smiled.

  Tobe came in fast, cocky, leading with a sweeping roundhouse that would've looked amazing if Maroon were, say, asleep and chained to the wall. But instead, Maroon caught the kick mid-air with one hand like he was plucking a particularly boring daisy, turned, and spun Tobe like a human fidget toy, letting him fly backward into a spine-shaped chair that coughed dust as it collapsed under him.

  “No extra credit for enthusiasm,” Maroon said.

  Caz was next. He moved like a shadow looking for a body—low, fast, quiet. His prosthetic arm glowed faintly as he closed the gap in a blur.

  Maroon dodged him. The cowboy hat dipped, boots shuffled, and Caz’s punch whistled past empty air.

  The second punch did connect—metal against meat—but Maroon only chuckled and let it land. He staggered back a half-step, grinning like he’d just been offered a second helping of dessert.

  “Strong one, ain’t ya?” he said, shaking out his shoulder. “That’s good. Most of y’all throw punches like wet pasta.”

  Caz didn’t answer. He went in again—this time with a feint and a low sweep. Maroon jumped clear over him.

  Liz hadn’t moved yet. She was still standing at the edge of the makeshift ring, eyes slightly unfocused, hands clenched at her sides.

  I watched her carefully. I always did. She was my sister after all.

  “Liz,” Lawson called. “You in or out?”

  She flinched slightly, but nodded. Took a few slow steps forward.

  Maroon turned to her, his expression softening in that weirdly paternal way he got sometimes when talking to the quiet ones. “You wanna throw somethin’ or wait for me to—”

  Liz raised a hand.

  There was a pressure in the room. A crackle in the air. Like someone had just sucked the oxygen out of a vacuum and replaced it with static.

  For a heartbeat, Maroon actually hesitated.

  Then Liz dropped her hand.

  Nothing happened.

  Tobe exhaled. “Was that it?”

  “Shut up, Tobe,” Harper muttered.

  Maroon smiled again, wide and bright. “Tell ya what. That was mighty spooky. But spooky ain’t enough.”

  He stepped forward—

  —and was immediately hurled backward by a wave of invisible force that I’m sure hit like a truck full of anxiety and unfinished therapy. He slammed into a wall that hadn’t been there before and left a cowboy-shaped crater in the stone.

  Silence.

  Even Charcoal’s popcorn paused in midair.

  Maroon peeled himself out of the wall and dusted off his coat like he’d been mildly inconvenienced. “Okay. Now that was a good opener.”

  Liz looked half horrified at herself and half relieved that Maroon was okay. Harper gave her a subtle thumbs-up.

  And then Harper activated her power.

  It was a shift you could feel. The moment her field came online, the air got thinner. Quieter. Like someone had unplugged the room.

  Maroon blinked. Frowned. Tapped the side of his head.

  “Huh,” he said. “Well ain’t that peculiar.”

  Then Harper tossed a flashdrive at his chest.

  It bounced off him with a pathetic thunk.

  He caught it before it hit the ground and turned it over in his hands, frowning. “Was this supposed to explode?”

  “It’s symbolic,” Harper said. “Of your outdated operating system.”

  “Damn,” Charcoal said from the peanut gallery. “That was cold. Still gonna die though.”

  And she did—impressively, even.

  Maroon didn’t hit her. He didn’t need to. He just stepped outside the edge of her null field, twirled once like a ballroom dancer, and flicked a handful of gravel at her head hard enough to drop her like a sack of encrypted potatoes.

  I was impressed. That was actually new.

  One by one, the rookies gave it their best shot.

  Caz kept coming back in like a silent battering ram. Harper tried to adapt, rebooting her strategy like an angry modem. Tobe was incapacitated on the floor the whole time. Liz barely moved, but every time she did, the whole classroom noticed.

  And Maroon?

  Maroon never lost his smile.

  When it was over, the rookies were all panting, bruised, and sprawled in various positions of defeat.

  Maroon dusted off his hands, tossed his shotgun over one shoulder, and grinned. “I give y’all a solid... six outta ten. Room for growth. Tobe drags down the average.”

  “Noted,” Tobe wheezed from the floor.

  Lawson stepped forward again, brushing chalk off his vest. “Combat is not about power. It’s about control. Understanding what you can do—and what you shouldn’t.”

  He glanced toward me. I met his eyes.

  “Any notes, Dagger?”

  I stretched, cracking my spine, then stood. Walked slowly into the room, hands in my pockets, pretending not to notice how the rookies straightened up.

  I stopped next to Tobe and nudged him with my boot. “You almost did something cool. That’s rare.”

  He grinned through a bloody nose. “I aim to impress.”

  “Stop aiming. It’s not working.”

  Then I turned to the rest of them. All sweaty, sore, slightly terrified.

  “You lived,” I said. “Barely. Which is better than most on their first try. But this?”

  I gestured to the destroyed chairs, the scorched floor, the weird ripple in the wall from Liz’s momentary outburst.

  “This is what we do. This is light training. If you think this was hard, you’re not ready. If you think this was easy, you’re lying to yourself.”

  Caz was staring at me like he was trying to solve a puzzle no one else could see.

  Good. He should be confused.

  They all should.

  “Now,” I said, turning toward the door as the hallway slowly began reassembling itself into something vaguely stable. “Let’s see how you handle something real.”

  Lawson blinked. “Already?”

  “Yup,” I said. “We’ve got a visitor. I’ve kept her waiting for five hours, I should probably go see her now.”

  He raised a brow. “Who?”

  “My sister,” I smiled, “The annoying glowing one, to be specific. Not the shy one in the green hoodie.”

  Lawson stopped mid-step.

  “Your sister?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Here. Now.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He turned his head very, very slowly, like maybe if he did it carefully enough, the statement would disappear behind him.

  “She never just visits.”

  “She does,” I said. “Technically. You just have a very pessimistic definition of visit.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose like the phrase doomsday migraine had just physically manifested. “Does this have anything to do with the Sibilant reports from central Virginia?”

  I gave him the finger guns. “Why yes, Professor. How astute.”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  A long sigh from him. A louder groan from Tobe, who had finally peeled himself off the floor and was now trying to look heroic with a bruised cheek and a piece of gravel stuck to his forehead.

  “Wait,” he said. “You have another sister?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I have many, actually. Most of them don’t speak to me. Or anyone. Or anywhere. Possibly any time either.”

  Tobe blinked like he needed a minute to process that. He did not get one.

  Because right then, the hallway bent.

  I mean it physically bent. Like someone had grabbed it by the middle and gently twisted reality into a new direction. Walls rippled. Lamps bloomed like flowers. The classroom door flickered once, twice, and then opened—

  —and in stepped a beam of warm light shaped like a girl.

  Gale.

  She looked like a cozy Pinterest board had come to life. White hair tied in a loose braid, cable-knit sweater in soft cream, boots that had definitely never touched blood, and the kind of smile that made you forget where you were standing. She was sunshine, politely weaponized. And her eyes were glowing just slightly—not enough to alarm, just enough to make everyone uncomfortable.

  “Hi!” she said, waving like this was a family picnic. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything!”

  Sagittarius dropped from the ceiling with a thud. Harper made a noise like a stunned squirrel. Tobe looked like he was about to scream bloody murder.

  Gale’s gaze landed on me. “You look tired.”

  “Thank you,” I said flatly. “It’s my war crime chic phase.”

  “I like it. Really brings out your... unresolved trauma and abandonment issues.”

  She crossed the room in about three steps and pulled me into a hug before I could dodge. Which, for the record, I could have. I just didn’t. Her sweater was soft. I hated that.

  “Gale,” Lawson said warily. “To what do we owe the pleasure-slash-impending sense of doom?”

  “I brought snacks,” she said brightly, then pulled a Tupperware container out of her bag and set it on the nearest stable surface. “Also a mission.”

  “There it is,” I muttered. “There’s the sword in the casserole.”

  Ben slithered a little closer to get a better look at the container, then hissed. “Peanut butter cookies.”

  “Gale,” I said. “You know we have a nightmare snake monstrosity.”

  “I do. He has a charming face.”

  Ben blushed, somehow. It was awful.

  Lawson was already pulling out a notepad. “Let’s hear it.”

  Gale’s smile faded just slightly. She glanced at the rookies, then back to me.

  “You want them here for this?” she asked.

  “They’re going to be there for it,” I said. “Might as well let them suffer in advance.”

  “Okay then.” She leaned against the desk, fingers laced in front of her. “There was a party. Not the fun kind. Suburban. Virginia. Teenagers. The usual combination of hormones and poor decisions.”

  “Summoning ritual?” Harper asked.

  “Social media challenge,” Gale said.

  “Of course.”

  “They thought it was a joke,” Gale continued. “Read some random Latin off the internet and ended up with a Sibilant.”

  Caz made a soft sound in his throat. Gale met his eyes and nodded once, like she understood something from that noise that the rest of us didn’t.

  “How many?” Lawson asked.

  “A lot,” Gale said. “All high schoolers. All altered.”

  Liz’s hands were clenched in her sleeves in pure terror. Harper was typing something into her tablet. Tobe was squinting like he was trying to mentally calculate how punchable a Sibilant-infested teenager might be.

  “What are we talking?” I asked. “Possession? Mutation? Hive-mind prom committee?”

  “They’ve gone... feral,” Gale said. “Not mindless, but twisted. Physically enhanced. One of them peeled the passenger door off a police cruiser with their bare hands. Two were seen crawling across a church ceiling. They’re not people anymore. Not completely.”

  “Where are they now?” I asked.

  “Scattered,” she said. “The town’s evacuated. Local authorities wrote it off as some kind of coordinated drug outbreak. The Sibilant is still there, nesting in a condemned factory.”

  I looked around at the rookies.

  They were all staring at me like I’d just announced we were going on a field trip to the sun.

  “So,” I said, clapping my hands once. “Who wants their first real mission?”

  Tobe raised his hand instantly.

  Harper buried her face in her hands.

  Caz just stood up.

  Liz looked at Gale. And then at me. And then she stood, too.

  “That’s four,” I said. “Lawson, you’re in. Maroon, Charcoal, nightmare twins—saddle up.”

  “Yeehaw,” Maroon said.

  “I hate everything,” Charcoal added.

  “Delightful,” said Ben, fangs showing.

  Sagittarius just skittered silently down the hall.

  Lawson groaned. “At least let me brief them.”

  “You can brief them in the van,” I said.

  “We don’t have a van.”

  “We will in five minutes.”

  “How?”

  “Reality warping,” I said. “Obviously.”

  “Dagger,” he said, “you can’t just conjure a—”

  The hallway groaned.

  A moment later, a van skidded into view just outside the classroom door. Except “van” was a generous word. It had a vague vehicular shape, sure. Four wheels. At least I think so. The windshield wipers looked like katanas. And it was painted the exact shade of regret you feel after eating gas station sushi. The side bore the hand-scrawled slogan:

  “DEATH’S LITTLE LEARNERS: MOBILE TUTORING FOR THE END TIMES”

  Lawson stared at it like it had personally insulted his childhood.

  “What in the unholy name of metaphysical aesthetics is that?”

  “Our ride,” I said, already walking toward it. “It’s educational. See? Has a slogan and everything.”

  Harper squinted at it. “Why does it have thirteen rearview mirrors?”

  “For visibility,” I said. “Of consequences.”

  Tobe pressed a hand reverently to the side of the van. “Can I drive?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Can I sit on the roof while it moves?”

  “No.”

  “Can I—”

  “Tobe,” Lawson snapped.

  Tobe grinned and opened the door with the kind of flair that suggested he’d already adopted the van as his new personality.

  Inside, the van was somehow larger. Perfect, I love non-euclidean vehicles. The seats were red velvet theater chairs arranged amphitheater-style. The ceiling projected clouds. There was a mini-fridge. Sagittarius was already perched on the back wall like an eldritch spider-gargoyle.

  Ben slithered in next, coiling around the base of a rotating snack carousel that had appeared in the center.

  “I call dibs on the cheese sticks,” he said.

  “There are no cheese sticks,” Charcoal said, eyeing the fridge.

  “There will be,” Ben replied ominously.

  The rookies piled in next. Liz stayed near the back, next to Gale, who had taken up residence in the corner with the grace of a painting come to life.

  She wouldn’t be coming. Couldn't. Disadvantages to being a Guardian. She’d disappear once we made it to Earth.

  “You’ll be fine,” she said as Liz passed.

  Liz didn’t answer, but I saw the way her fingers tightened in her sleeves.

  Lawson climbed in last, muttering about insurance liability and existential negligence.

  I dropped into the driver’s seat—which looked like a diner booth from 1963—and slammed the door. The ignition was a crystal skull. I turned it. The engine growled like a demon with asthma.

  “You all buckled in?” I asked, twisting around.

  Charcoal flipped me off. Maroon was trying to sync his hat to the stereo via Bluetooth. Harper looked like she was calculating the angle most likely to kill her on impact.

  “Great,” I said, slamming the gearshift into “GO.”

  The van moved sideways. Of course it did.

  The Estate blurred past in streaks of color and memory. We weren’t driving so much as unraveling the distance between us and our destination. The pocket dimension folded like origami, and then reality hiccupped—

  —and we were on Earth.

  Virginia. Middle of nowhere. It smelled like rain and rot and old gas stations. Trees leaned too close to the road. The town was visible in the distance—flat-roofed stores, silent homes, one water tower that looked like it had seen better years and possibly a cult.

  I skidded the van to a dramatic stop at the edge of a cracked asphalt parking lot, just outside a boarded-up diner with the sign “Tina’s Griddle” swinging gently in the wind.

  No preamble. No recon.

  We were here to punch first and ask no questions whatsoever.

  Lawson rubbed his eyes. “I miss mission briefings.”

  “You can brief on the way,” I said, already climbing out.

  “I tried.”

  Maroon hopped down from the van, spinning his shotgun like a carnival trick. “Smells like demon puke out here.”

  “That’s just the high school,” Charcoal said.

  Tobe jumped down and immediately slipped in a puddle, then pointed at it like he’d just uncovered a trap. “The Earth is trying to kill me.”

  “It’s succeeding,” Harper said.

  I stepped forward and turned slowly in place, surveying the town like a bored god with nothing better to do.

  There was no one in sight. No cars. No people. Just that creeping sense that somewhere, something had noticed us arrive.

  Good.

  “Here’s the plan,” I said. “We go loud. We go fast. Lawson takes the left flank with Harper and Tobe. Maroon and Charcoal take point. Caz, you’re with me. Liz... hold back until we need you.”

  She nodded without argument. That was why I trusted her with that order. Because if I told Tobe to hold back, he’d take it as a dare.

  “Ben and Sagittarius?” Lawson asked.

  “Ranged terror and vertical clearance,” I said. “Standard.”

  Sagittarius was already climbing a lamppost like a massive murder-crab. Ben was humming.

  “Any idea what form the Sibilant’s using?” Harper asked.

  “Nope,” I said cheerfully. “But I hope it’s gross. Makes me regret killing them less.”

  And with that, I drew my blade.

  It was long, curved, flickering in and out of shape—sometimes a katana, sometimes a machete, sometimes something not meant for Earth physics. It purred in my hand like it missed violence.

  Maroon spun his shotgun once, cocked it, and said, “Y’all feel that?”

  “Feel what?” Tobe asked.

  “The vibe shift.”

  “You mean the foreboding horror?”

  “No, no. The music vibe.”

  “Oh for f—” Harper muttered.

  Maroon tapped the side of his hat. “I say we go in classic. Highwaymen. Bit of outlaw country to keep the mood gritty.”

  Charcoal, already halfway up a fire escape, stopped cold. “If you play Waylon Jennings during combat, I will drown you in irony and autotune.”

  “That’s… actually an intimidating threat..”

  “I call it artistic violence, Maroon.”

  They were still arguing when the first one jumped out of a second-story window.

  He landed in front of us with the sound of shattering bone—but didn’t flinch. Just stood there, smiling. Pale skin pulled too tight over twitching muscles, teeth grinding against each other like he didn’t remember what a jaw was supposed to do.

  He couldn’t have been older than seventeen. Torn hoodie. School ID still clipped to his collar.

  His eyes were black.

  Not demonic-black. Not smoky or monstrous or glowing. Just flat. Oily. Like a smudge on a painting that used to be human.

  Then he screamed—and the others came with him.

  They poured out of buildings. From behind dumpsters. Crawling up from under porches and manholes and storm drains like roaches trained by a hive mind. Dozens of them. Some with bones poking the wrong direction.

  Tobe took one look and said, “Okay, I see what you meant by real mission.”

  Then they charged.

  Lawson raised both pistols and dropped the lead screamer with a shot between the eyes before the rest had cleared the sidewalk.

  “Go loud!” I shouted.

  Everything exploded.

  Harper dropped her null field like a dome of silence, cutting off half their charge as the Sibilant-enhanced teens stumbled inside her radius and immediately lost their super-strength like someone pulled the plug on their horror settings.

  Tobe ran straight into a wall of three of them, redirected a punch into one’s own nose, and cackled, “I AM THE DAMAGE LOOP NOW!”

  Caz was a shadow. Nothing flashy, just clean motion—rip, snap, crack—three down, barely visible.

  Maroon leapt over a mailbox and unloaded rock salt rounds into a cluster of ferals, shouting something about “real music and real grit.”

  Charcoal launched off the other side, sliding across a car roof and scream-singing lyrics from some random pop-country song as he kicked a zombified teen in the head.

  Ben grew to the size of a bus and swallowed three in one gulp. Sagittarius tore across a storefront, dragging one of the ferals up onto a rooftop and out of sight with the kind of squealing scream that ended abruptly and didn’t echo.

  And me?

  I waded in smiling.

  One of them came at me with claws like rebar. I ducked under the swing and sliced through both arms in a single motion. He didn’t scream. Just tilted his head in confusion as if wondering why the sky had moved.

  I stepped forward, blade humming in my grip, and whispered, “Too slow.”

  He dropped.

  Two more leapt from a roof. I turned mid-air, slashed upward, and let gravity finish the job. They hit the pavement in halves.

  Another charged from behind—faster, smarter. A girl this time, track uniform shredded, fingers twitching with a twitchy, feral rhythm.

  She got close.

  I let her.

  She smiled like she thought she’d landed a hit.

  And then my blade changed.

  It shrank mid-swing, turned into a scalpel, and carved a single, perfect line across her throat. She stumbled. Tried to laugh. Then dropped like a marionette with its strings cut.

  I flicked the blood from the blade and turned to find the center of it all.

  Because I could feel it now.

  The Sibilant.

  Not in the streets.

  Not in the homes.

  In the factory.

  Three blocks north.

  I called out without looking, “Lawson! Rookies hold the street! Maroon, Charcoal, with me!”

  Lawson fired two shots through a window and nodded. “Don’t die.”

  “No promises,” I called back, grinning.

  Charcoal landed beside me with a dramatic roll. “What’s the plan, boss?”

  “Stab the concept of evil in the throat.”

  Maroon cocked his gun. “Yeehaw.”

  We ran.

  Through alleys and ruined signs. Past rusted mailboxes and flickering streetlights. Past another cluster of ferals that we cut through like weeds. The old steelworks loomed ahead like a dead god’s spine. Broken windows. Doors ajar. Smoke coiling out like it had secrets.

  Pretty soon, the factory loomed above us, all jagged windows and rusted seams, like someone had tried to build a cathedral out of tetanus and bad dreams. Maroon stopped at the entrance and kicked the door once. It fell off its hinges with a squeal that echoed down the empty corridors like a warning or an apology.

  We stepped inside.

  It was warm. Too warm. The air had that electric hum that meant something was pulling power from somewhere, and the faint scent of hot copper and old insulation made my nose twitch.

  “Lights’re still on,” Maroon muttered.

  “That’s fine,” I said. “We’ll turn them off if we don’t like the décor.”

  We followed the sound.

  It started faint—repetitive music, tinny, distorted. But as we moved deeper into the belly of the place, it got louder. Not ominous. Not even threatening.

  Just...

  Bweh-nyaah, bweh-nyaah, thunk.

  mrrrrrOW—plop.

  brrrrrrt—YEEE!

  Bonnnk.

  Maroon tilted his head. “Is that...?”

  “Yep.”

  Charcoal blinked slowly. “It’s watching cat videos…”

  “Yup,” I said. “That’s the only thing that explains the aura of weaponized distraction.”

  We reached a break room. Or something that used to be one. The lights flickered, casting long shadows across peeling wallpaper and a vending machine that had tried to eat itself. A couch sagged near the center, half-eaten by mold and existential despair.

  And there, sitting cross-legged in a circle of glowing summoning runes, was the Sibilant.

  It looked... normal.

  Too normal.

  Human-shaped. Youthful. Trendy hoodie. It had a phone in its hand and was hunched over it with all the sacred devotion of a seventeen-year-old on a school bus at 3 AM.

  It hadn’t noticed us yet.

  Because the screen was playing a video of a cat trying to jump onto a counter, missing, and knocking over a blender full of soup.

  Again. And again. And again.

  The Sibilant was laughing. Wheezing.

  “Bless her claws,” it gasped. “She really thought she had it.”

  Maroon leaned in and whispered, “Is this like... some kind of trap?”

  “No,” I whispered back. “It’s worse.”

  “What’s worse than a trap?”

  “A deeply annoying personality.”

  Charcoal took a step forward and cleared his throat.

  Loudly.

  The Sibilant shrieked, dropped the phone, and vanished.

  For a second.

  Then reappeared behind the vending machine, halfway through shapeshifting into something with wings, fangs, and a sock puppet for a left hand. It was clearly a panic form. Unfinished. Lumpy. Possibly a defense mechanism, possibly just poor taste.

  It flailed, screamed, and then tried to smooth its hoodie.

  “OH,” it said. “Hi. Uh. Welcome! Welcome to... doom?”

  “Strong start,” I said. “Lose the inflection, though. Doom should sound confident.”

  The Sibilant blinked rapidly, shifting skin tones like it was cycling through Instagram filters. “I wasn’t expecting visitors!”

  “No one ever expects the Blades,” Charcoal muttered. “We’re like the Spanish Inquisition, but prettier.”

  “I—uh—I wasn’t doing anything!” the Sibilant said quickly. “Just some... content research.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, casually flicking my blade between forms—switchblade, scythe, fork-knife combo. “You the one making all these zombie thingys?”

  “Maybe! Maybe not! Who’s to say!”

  “We are,” Maroon said, leveling his shotgun. “We very much say.”

  The Sibilant backed into the circle of runes, tripped over a toaster (why was there a toaster?), and landed flat on its back.

  “You’re really bad at this,” I said, stepping closer. “How’d you get summoned anyway? Snap filter and a dare?”

  “Hashtag DemonCore,” the Sibilant whispered.

  “Oh, for the love of—”

  The circle flared.

  Ah.

  There it was.

  Power.

  It wasn’t dramatic. Not lightning or screams. Just a slow pressure in the air, like the oxygen was debating whether to stay in our lungs. The Sibilant rose, limbs stretching, shape stabilizing into something tall and angular, with teeth that grinned too wide and arms that bent wrong on purpose.

  “I’ve fed,” it said, voice doubling like two radios fighting for frequency. “I’ve grown. I have children now.”

  “Yeah,” I said, cracking my neck. “We met them. They’re dumb.”

  The Sibilant’s eyes narrowed. “You will regret—”

  “Are you still watching cat videos?” I asked.

  “What—no!”

  “You are. You didn’t even close the app.”

  “I WAS MULTITASKING.”

  Charcoal sighed dramatically and walked to the side, muttering, “If you’re going to monologue, do it with rhythm. Villainy should be a performance.”

  Maroon spun his shotgun lazily. “How we doing this, boss?”

  I stepped forward, blade resting on my shoulder.

  “We make it fun.”

  The Sibilant lunged.

  Its arm morphed mid-swing into a whip of bone and static. I ducked, slid under, carved upward—and watched it twist away just in time to dodge. Fast. Faster than expected.

  It flicked its wrist, and a burst of noise hit my ears—screams, laughter, overlapping phone alerts. It tried to drown me in sound.

  I grinned.

  Then vanished.

  Reappeared behind it and slashed low.

  It yelped, spun, and screamed something about algorithmic domination.

  Charcoal joined the fight with a shriek of autotuned fury and a barrage of thrown knives that whistled like a bad remix. Maroon opened fire with rock salt and yelled, “TASTE FLAVOR AND JUSTICE.”

  The Sibilant staggered back, glitching, wheezing, limbs flailing, muttering code and curses.

  It tried to run.

  I let it.

  For two steps.

  Then I was in front of it again.

  I stabbed.

  Not deep.

  Just enough.

  It collapsed, gasping, warping, trying to reconstruct itself into something that could still win. Something that could still matter.

  I crouched beside it.

  The Sibilant whimpered.

  I smiled.

  Then my blade flickered once more, bright and final.

  And I ended it.

  The Sibilant dissolved like bad sugar in boiling water—its last breath a glitching sound bite of some ancient Vine loop that ended in static and irrelevance.

  I stood.

  Maroon leaned his shotgun against the wall and stretched, spine popping audibly.

  “Not bad,” he said. “Little disappointing on the finish, though.”

  “You wanted a dramatic explosion?” I asked.

  “Would’ve settled for a post-death monologue. Something about how we’ll never understand the nature of entropy. You know. Theatrical.”

  “It said ‘hashtag blessed’ right before I stabbed it.”

  “Oh. Never mind. That’s worse.”

  Charcoal wandered over, kicking the remains of the summoning circle. “Should we be worried about the cat video thing?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But mostly in a ‘society is doomed’ kind of way.”

  The room started shifting—walls straightening, grime receding, temperature dropping back to normal. With the Sibilant gone, its influence no longer fed its little pocket of control. Earth began reasserting itself. Badly, but earnestly. Like a kid wiping crayon off the walls and pretending nothing happened.

  “Let’s regroup,” I said, spinning the blade once before sheathing it. “Check on the kids. See who’s crying and/or bleeding.”

  We made our way back through the cracked alley and across the street.

  Sagittarius was perched on a streetlamp, his legs folded like a nightmare origami crane. Ben slithered down a church steeple, casually digesting something.

  The rest of the squad was at the van.

  Liz sat on the hood, sleeves pulled over her hands, eyes blank but focused. Harper was digging through the glove box looking for antiseptic while muttering about bacterial resistance and interdimensional infection rates.

  Caz stood silently, leaning against the van like it might tell him something.

  And Tobe—

  Tobe was face-down in a puddle.

  “Status report?” I called as we approached.

  Harper pointed without looking. “Tobe’s alive. Unconscious. Possibly allergic to success.”

  “I almost had one!” Tobe mumbled into the pavement, evidently not actually unconscious.

  “Sure you did, sweetie,” Harper said.

  Lawson stood by the side door, clipboard in hand. Where he got the clipboard, I didn’t ask.

  “How bad?” I asked.

  “Four bruises. Two sprains. One deeply bruised ego.”

  “Whose?”

  “Tobe’s. And yours by extension, if you had to watch him try to flirt mid-combat.”

  I turned to Tobe. “Did you?”

  He looked up weakly. “She was really strong.”

  “Was she biting you at the time?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know what? I respect the commitment.”

  He gave a watery thumbs-up.

  We loaded back into the van. Sagittarius crawled on top. Ben curled around the side like a grotesque decal. I took the wheel again. Gale’s Tupperware still sat unopened on the console.

  Liz reached forward and handed it to me.

  “You want a cookie?” she asked.

  I stared at her.

  “You just survived your first brush with death-by-internet. And you’re offering me a snack.”

  She shrugged. “They’ve got chocolate chips. And Gale made them.”

  “Fine,” I said, taking one. “But if I die from this, you’re replacing me.”

  “No one can replace you,” she said.

  There was something in the way she said it. Not sadness. Not reverence. Just... fact.

  I didn’t have a good comeback for that.

  So I bit into the cookie.

  Not bad.

  I hit the ignition and the Estate folded open for us like a polite maze, its hallways realigning themselves to make way for the van as we coasted into the main courtyard. Moths flitted overhead. The sun wasn’t out, but the sky tried.

  We disembarked one by one.

  Lawson immediately turned to the rookies and said, “You’ve got one hour to rest. Then I want a full written reflection on what you learned. Five paragraphs. Typed.”

  Tobe moaned.

  “I’ll take emojis,” Lawson added.

  “Heck yeah!” Tobe said, his mood doing a 180.

  Harper and Liz disappeared into the medical wing, Caz ghosted toward his room without a word, and Ben slithered off in pursuit of something that may or may not have been a dream someone had about cheese.

  The courtyard cleared.

  Lawson stayed beside me.

  “So,” he said.

  “So,” I said.

  “Rookies survived.”

  “More or less.”

  “They’ve got potential.”

  I didn’t answer right away.

  We walked in silence for a moment, past the statue of my father.

  Finally, I said, “They’re gonna have to be more than potential. If this keeps up, they’re gonna be all we’ve got.”

  Lawson didn’t argue.

  He never did when I talked about the numbers. About how many Blades left when my father vanished. About how many weren’t coming back.

  “How long,” he said softly, “do you think you can hold it together?”

  I looked up.

  The Estate loomed around us. Living stone. Breathing halls. History written in blood and brass.

  I shrugged.

  “Long enough.”