Chapter 148

From the air, it was bad. No, it was worse than that.

Fires burned in every direction. Not every building, but enough that there was no clean path through the city - just pockets of flame and collapse waiting to happen. Thick, black smoke smothered the park and the blocks around it, dense enough that it swallowed everything beneath it. I couldn’t see through it. Couldn’t tell what was happening inside.

Gunfire cracked through the night - sporadic and echoing - proof that whatever was happening down there hadn’t settled into anything resembling control.

News helicopters circled low, hovering at the edge of what they were allowed to risk.

I opened myself to my Faith-scape.

Mirri and Lilae were in the center of the park, anchored around Unity. Ashlara, Vel, Nim, Moss were spread through the surrounding buildings. Thae was airborne, cutting back toward the center. Clo was everywhere at once. Flickering like a killer in a haunted house. Tansy was somewhere on Spruce and I didn’t like it.

“Hold your breath!” I shouted. Then I folded my wings. We dropped - straight down through the smoke, like an eagle diving.

The world vanished into black, heat, ash, and **** air. Fifty feet from the ground, we broke through.

Mirri had carved out a refuge. A circular wall of stone rose from the earth, the trees cleared away. Inside, dozens of people huddled together - burned, bleeding, and terrified.

My wings snapped open, catching the air, slowing the fall.

I hit the ground hard, dropped both officers, and moved immediately. My cloak settled back around me as I crossed the distance.

I pulled Lilae into my arms, kissed her cheek, held her tight.

“Thren,” she protested, squirming, “I’m in the middle of something here.”

I let her go, forcing myself to breathe. “Sorry. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“If you call this okay,” Mirri shot back, hands glowing as she knit burned flesh back together on a child’s leg.

“Do you see any Myrddin?” I asked. “No? Then this counts.”

She rolled her eyes.

Thae dropped out of the sky beside us, two children in her arms. She set them down, something a little softer than dropping them - though not by much - and launched back into the air in the same motion.

“What the fuck was that?” Donnelly shouted.

“That’s Thae. My daughter,” I said, already scanning the chaos. “Mirri, what’s going on?”

“Everything’s on fire,” she snapped. “People started shooting at us. There are still people trapped in those buildings. And the tree is fucked.”

I grit my teeth at that and swore silently. “Where’s Serah?”

“Vel says that tower’s about to come down.” She pointed north. “She’s trying to evacuate it.”

I didn’t hesitate. My cloak split again, wings tearing free as I leapt into the air.

Behind me, Lilae’s voice cut sharp through the chaos. “Officer Jenkins, get over here and apply pressure!” She pointed at Donnelly. “And you, go calm those people down before they run into the fire like idiots!”

* * *

Nim and Moss were nearing the top of the building to the north - twelve stories high throwing people out of windows.

No ropes. No nets. No safety lines. Just bodies bursting through glass in glittering showers, silhouettes against firelight.

Thae was there to meet them.

She moved like she was born for this - snatching people out of the air with her hands, her tail, even her feet, then dropping them the last ten feet to the ground where the fall wouldn’t kill them.

Anyone Thae missed wasn’t written off.

Clo zipped around faster than I could track, catching them just before they hit the ground and slamming them down hard but alive. Rough landings. Bruises. Broken bones, maybe. But breathing.

Vel drove them toward Mirri’s shelter - herding, hauling, dragging when she had to - keeping them moving. Keeping them alive.

Another window detonated. A mother and child were thrown into the night.

I banked hard, wings beating twice before I caught them just before they hit the ground. The impact jarred my arms, but I held on, dropping them to the ground a heartbeat later.

“Go!” I pointed toward the shelter. Then I was airborne again.

The building groaned. Low. Deep. Dangerous.

The foundation buckled. Nim and Moss were still inside on the second to last floor.

Then came the roar - two toned, layered, and inhuman.

Serah’s form rippled through the smoke - expanding and distorting - her great serpentine head rising above the smoke. She caught the building as it began to tip, bracing it, holding it - trying to hold it and give the other time to clear it.

I couldn’t see the rest of her through the smoke, but I didn’t need to. The angle kept shifting. The mass was winning. She was sliding.

Three more bodies came crashing out of the upper floors.

I dove. Caught the first. Turned, dove for the second and barely got there in time.

The third was too far.

I hit the ground hard, rolled, came up just in time to see Clo snatch them out of the air at the last possible second.

“Go!” I shouted, pointing south.

A thunderous crack split the air. The building gave way as it snapped in half.

Serah shoved the top section aside, forcing it away from the neighboring tower just before it could take that one down too.

Nim and Moss burst free from the collapsing structure, leaping clear as the remains slammed into the park.

Concrete exploded. Dust and debris surged outward in a **** wave.

I was already moving - wings snapping open as I leapt back into the air. Following my children. Trying to keep up. Trying to save whoever we could before the whole damn place came down around us.

* * *

I didn’t know what I was doing anymore. Everything had gone to shit.

All I wanted was to help. I saw this world - His world - and it wasn’t some nightmare. It was just… different. Loud. Strange. But not dangerous. And I wanted to show it to Lilae. I knew she’d love it. I knew she’d been curious.

But then that fucking tree threw me out.

I was going to take her through it, show her around, make sure she got home safe - and it just… decided I wasn’t worthy. Like I didn’t belong. Like I wasn’t part of the pack.

Maybe I wasn’t.

But I wasn’t leaving her here. Not alone. Not when she didn’t even know how to open the trees to get back.

When I found Vel, she already knew Lilae was gone. I went with the others to try to get her back - and this time I didn’t let the tree win. I tore through it. Through the vines, the thoughts, the bullshit it tried to shove in my head. I **** my way through.

And when I came out…

They were fine.

Vel, Thae, Clo, Moss, Nim - clean. Untouched. No blood. No thorns buried in their skin. It was like the tree had rolled out a fucking carpet and welcomed them through.

Mirri, Ashie, Serah came out next - looking about as wrecked as I felt.

It took several seconds before He finally came through. Dropped out like a sack of bricks.

For a second, I almost felt bad for him. He was falling apart faster than I was.

I barely recognized him anymore. His Faith was all over the place - spiking, collapsing, self-destructive. Like he had turned inward and started eating himself.

He was lost. Because of me. And I was lost because of him.

He didn’t want me in the pack. And I didn’t want to be in it anymore. And I had no idea what that left either of us with. Who the hell were we without them?

Nothing, maybe. No one.

So when the humans came at us - when they started shouting, pointing, shooting - I did the only thing that numbed the pain.

I just… moved. Turned off everything and let **** take over.

I tore through cars, through people, through those twisted twig-men, and anything else that got in my way. Buildings, metal, flesh - it didn’t matter.

**** without restraint. That’s what I was. Even if I didn’t know who I was.

I could feel the others through the noise. Their Faith steady. Focused. Moving with purpose. Like they knew exactly what they were doing, exactly where they were going.

I wanted that. But I didn’t know where to go. Didn’t know how to move like that anymore.

So I stopped. Right there in the middle of the street, watching one of those white cars with the flashing lights speed away from me.

I just… stopped.

Did I keep going? Keep running, keep killing, keep smashing things until there’s nothing left of me but noise and blood and silence?

Or did I turn around… and face it? Face everything I’d done. Everything I felt. Everything I broke. Knowing it might tear me apart.

Both choices sucked. Both meant losing myself.

So what did it even matter? Why the hell was I even here?

And then, in the back of my head, something quiet and stupid said the most obvious thing in the world.

“You’re here to bring Lilae home.”

I let out a breath. Of course I was.

That’s why I tried to go with her in the first place - to make sure she got home safe. That’s why I came with the others - to bring her home when I failed the first time.

It was the stupidest answer there was. And it was the simplest answer I had.

If I was going to die either way, I might as well finish what I started.

* * *

Detective Marcus Donnelly had seen a lot of weird shit in his twenty-two years on the ****. That came with the badge. That came with working for the Philadelphia Police Department. He wasn’t Homicide - those guys had their own catalog of nightmares. He was Detective Division. The catch-all. The place where everything that didn’t fit into one of the other tidy categories ended up.

And because of that, he’d seen things.

A girl who staged her own **** - then got kidnapped for real. A guy in a Spider-Man suit assaulting tourists near City Hall. A lunatic with a homemade flamethrower who insisted it was for “self-defense.” A woman running a plastic surgery clinic out of her basement. A man stabbing strangers because he thought they were zombies.

Weird, violent, ugly… but still human.

This? He didn’t even know what this was.

No one had ever shoved him out of a window, flown him across the city WITHOUT A FUCKING AIRCRAFT, and dropped him into a burning hellscape while his own officers opened fire in his direction. That was new.

And he hated every second of it.

He’d shouted into his radio. Tried to get control. Tried to make sense of the noise.

Nothing. Dispatch came back fractured, strained. Radio traffic compromised. Units switching channels. Commands repeating, contradicting. Priority traffic only. Supervisors confirming by phone. It was chaos wearing the shape of procedure.

So Donnelly did what he could.

He stabilized what was in front of him. He calmed people as they stumbled in. Tried to impose order on something that refused to be ordered. Directed the wounded toward Mirri and Lilae.

The two of them were… strange.

Efficient in a way that didn’t feel trained - it felt instinctive. Faster than most paramedics he’d worked alongside.

Both barely over four feet tall. Gray-skinned. Dark-haired. But that’s where the similarities ended.

Mirri moved with quiet certainty. Small frame, sharp eyes, every motion deliberate. She looked young - but her gaze didn’t. There was weight in it. Experience that didn’t belong in someone that age. And even here, in the middle of fire and screaming, she carried a strange calm that settled people without effort.

Lilae was different. Younger - fourteen, if the reports were right. Her braid was coming apart, strands clinging to her face. Her body had outpaced her age - curves that made her look older at a glance - but her reactions gave her away. Quick to frustration. Still learning how to handle people who didn’t cooperate. Still finding her footing.

But she was focused, did the job she was given with what little she had.

The flying lizard woman - Thae - dropped from the sky again, dumping another pair of civilians onto the ground before launching back into the smoke without a word.

Another woman they called Vel came and went like a shadow, dragging people in, driving them forward.

Once, her eyes met Donnelly’s. Garnet red. She smiled - slow and deliberate - showing him two rows of teeth that didn’t belong in anything human.

Then she was gone.

The ground shuddered with a series of cracks and pops - concrete breaking, something massive giving way.

Then came another sound. A roar - layered - like woman screaming and a lion roaring at the same time, cranked to eleven until it rattled his bones.

Donnelly dropped with the others, back hitting the stone wall, instincts taking over as fear punched straight through his chest.

The smoke parted.

Wings - massive and leathery - beat against the air. Something rose up out of the fire and smoke. It looked like a crocodile the size of a city block. Red. Armored. Winged. Muscled.

A dragon. Seth had said the word. Donnelly hadn’t believed it. Now he didn’t have a choice. The thing caught a falling skyscraper.

Caught it.

Held it - if only for a moment. Before he could shit himself properly the smoke swallowed it again.

Another series of cracks split the air. An explosion. The blast knocked him off his feet, debris and dust rolling over everything like a tidal wave.

He couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe.

Then the wind came.

It wasn’t natural. Mirri stood at the center of it, arms raised, a cyclone twisting between her hands. Smoke, ash, dust - everything was pulled upward, ripped away, cleared in seconds.

And just like that, she went back to work. Like she hadn’t just conjured a **** of nature.

Something slammed over the wall. A writhing mass of vines crashed into Lilae, knocking her away from her patient. It wrapped around her instantly - tight, thorned, alive - forming a cocoon that pulsed with movement.

Flashes of light burst from inside as she fought.

Mirri reacted instantly - short bursts of frost, controlled, precise - trying to freeze the thing without hurting the girl inside.

Jenkins and Donnelly both drew their weapons.

Neither fired. No shot was clean. Not with Lilae inside it.

Then something else vaulted the wall. It hit the bramble mass like a predator - snarling, tearing, ripping through it with brutal efficiency. Thorns shredded. Vines snapped.

It was gone in seconds.

Mirri rushed to Lilae.

The thing straightened.

It looked like a woman. Almost. Wild hair, held back by a simple, wooden butterfly clip. Skin flushed, smeared with soot. Four arms flexed, wounds knitting shut before Donnelly’s eyes. Four eyes. Two where they should be. Two more at her temples. Her mouth opened and her lips drew back revealing two rows of teeth.

Jenkins lowered his gun, slow and cautious.

Donnelly didn’t.

The creature stepped forward, placing itself between them and the goblins.

“Tansy?” Jenkins breathed.

The missing five-year-old? Donnelly couldn’t even process that sentence.

“Thank you,” Mirri said calmly. “The others need your help. We’ll be fine.”

No panic. No hesitation. Just certainty.

Tansy’s gaze lingered on the two men - cold, assessing - then she turned and vaulted the wall again, vanishing into the fire and smoke like a spider scurrying across the floor.