CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR :Rain had softened to a thin, cold mist by the time Billy reached the abandoned checkpoint. The place looked older than it should—rusted barricades, a torn flag half-buried in mud, the metal containers leaning like tired bones. The quiet wasn’t peaceful; it was the kind that waited, listening, judging. And Billy felt every heartbeat inside his throat as he stepped forward.He wasn’t supposed to be here alone. Owen had insisted on a three-man escort, but Billy had waved him off. Lying to Owen was becoming easier than lying to himself. There were some paths a man had to walk without witnesses, especially when the ghosts he was facing weren’t from the ruins… but from his own past.The mist curled around his shoes as he stepped into the checkpoint building. The air smelled of old paper and something burnt—something recent. His eyes adjusted to the dim light leaking through a cracked window, and then he saw it: the message.A single sheet of paper pinned to the dusty wa

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX :The night pressed against the abandoned industrial district like a held breath—thick, watching, waiting to see who broke first. Billy tightened the straps of his vest as Tyla finished checking the charge on her sidearm. Her jaw was locked, eyes sharp, every muscle coiled with purpose. Behind them, the tactical crew Owen arranged fanned out, silent as ghosts in the fog.“This is the last confirmed location,” Owen whispered, pointing to the rust-scarred warehouse looming over the cracked asphalt. “They move often, but we intercepted chatter—something big is supposed to happen tonight.”“Big like what?” Tyla asked.Owen hesitated. “A ritual. Something involving… lineage.”Billy didn’t respond. He didn’t have to. A cold weight settled under his ribs—familiar, unwanted. The cult had been circling his family history like vultures, but this was the first time they were openly talking about it.“Let’s move,” Billy said, his voice low but steady.They approached in a stagge

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT :The rain that had threatened all afternoon finally broke open at dusk, turning the abandoned mill into a cavern of echoes. Water hammered the rusted roof in hard, angry bursts, each drop landing like a warning. Billy moved quietly through the corridor, flashlight slicing across broken machinery, careful not to step on shattered glass. The air smelled of mold, oil, and something older — something that whispered of blood and ritual.Tyla followed behind him, her boots squelching against the wet concrete, her breath quick but steady. She’d been unusually quiet since they left the cult’s burned-out hideout, and he could sense the weight sitting behind her silence. Maybe it was the prophecy. Maybe it was the way the cultists had chanted his name like he was both salvation and destruction. Or maybe it was the way she had looked at him when the fire died — that thin line between trust and fear.“Billy,” she whispered, voice barely rising over the storm, “the readings st

CHAPTER SEVENTY :The vault’s hum still clung to their skin long after they climbed back to the main floor, as if the machinery below had left a faint vibration inside their bones. Outside, the night felt unnaturally quiet, the kind of quiet that arrives only when the world is holding its breath. The hideout sat on the outskirts of a half-abandoned industrial zone, and the streetlights flickered weakly as though they, too, sensed something had shifted.Tyla walked ahead of Billy and Owen, her brows knit tightly, jaw set. She wasn’t talking, which was unusual—Tyla’s silence was never empty. It always meant she was thinking in some accelerated internal language the others couldn’t quite follow.Billy’s mind wasn’t any clearer. The vault map kept replaying in his head: the red markers, the pulsing constellation, the fading nodes swallowed by an unseen hand. And the largest marker—its rhythm, slow and steady, like a heartbeat—felt like an accusation pointed directly at him.He hated that

CHAPTER SEVENTY :The desert didn’t stop shaking.Even after they made it out of the sinking monastery, the tremors kept rolling under their feet like something alive was turning over beneath the sand. The sky had already swallowed half the structure behind them. The last standing arch groaned before sinking into a whirlpool of dust.None of them spoke until the rumbling finally eased.Tyla bent over, palms on her knees, catching her breath. “That was not supposed to happen.”Owen wiped his forehead dramatically. “Oh, really? The collapsing death temple wasn’t part of the brochure?”Billy didn’t hear either of them.He still felt the burn of the relic shard in his hand—the pulse beneath the surface, faint but steady. It wasn’t hurting him now. It was… reacting. Almost as if it were aware.Tyla noticed the way he kept looking at his hand. “Let me see it.”He hesitated before handing it over. The shard’s light dimmed the second it left his skin, like a heartbeat slowing.Tyla studied it