The morning light looked clean. Too clean.

Chloe crouched atop the copper roof of the Museum of Music, her body pressed flat against weather-worn tiles. From here, the Charles Bridge unfolded below like a story being told in reverse – cobblestones worn down by centuries of footsteps, now polished to a soulless gleam.

Refugees moved in single file across its length. Quiet. Orderly. Smiling just enough.

At the Old Town end, enforcers loitered beside scanning gates. Their uniforms were plain. Their weapons holstered. But above each one hovered a soft shimmer of unnatural light – barely there, unless you knew what to look for.

Chloe did.

A faint corona of soul-energy. Suppressed, but not hidden. These weren't mask-children or mutated beasts. These were humans, once. Twisted into weapons. Polished into saints.

Contractors.

She tapped her comm. "Vic. South tower's clear. Patrol rhythm's every three minutes. You in place?"

Static cracked, then Victor's voice rasped through, low and amused.

"Copy that, little ghost. I'm hobbling like an old drunk with a bad hip. These bastards haven't looked twice."

Chloe shifted her gaze down the length of the bridge. Sure enough, Victor limped through the crowd – shoulders hunched, coat ragged, face hidden beneath a scarf. He leaned heavily on a makeshift cane. Nobody stopped him. He looked like every other broken man here.

Chloe smirked. "Brings back memories."

"What, limping through checkpoints pretending not to be monsters?"

"No. Watching over Liz. Kyoto. Sanctum night patrols."

Victor chuckled. "You mean when the demon fox tried to melt our faces off?"

She squinted toward the enforcers. "At least that one didn't pretend to be human."

A digital screen flickered to life above the scanner gates.

ALL HAIL KING TOMAS – PROTECTOR OF PEACE.

A man's face appeared – clean-shaven, bland, too symmetrical. His eyes didn't blink. His smile was just slightly wrong.

Victor's voice cut in. "Who the fuck is this King?"

The screen changed.

THE FLAME FATHER WATCHES OVER US.

Max's face.

A still image. Sunken eyes. Matted beard. A smear of dried blood at his temple. He looked like a corpse that had been forced to pray.

Chloe swallowed hard. Her fingers clenched the tile edge.

"They turned him into a saint," she whispered.

Victor didn't reply right away.

Then: "Or a warning. Damn those fuckers. I will tear them apart."

Chloe watched him pause near the checkpoint, keeping his head bowed. Around him, the crowd moved in patient procession.

A sudden commotion – just left of the scanner.

A man shoved forward – yelling in Czech. He was mid-forties, shirt stained, two children in tow. "My wife is inside! I don't care about the line!"

Chloe tensed. So did the crowd. Smiles faltered. Feet froze.

One Enforcer stepped out.

Not fast. Not aggressive. Just… deliberate. He placed a hand on the man's shoulder. Softly. Like a priest about to bless him.

The man shoved him.

The Enforcer didn't react. He just moved in closer. No shouting. No cuffs. Just two more Contractors flanking him now – their halos humming faintly.

The man was taken.

No struggle. No screams. The children followed, hands shaking.

And then – as if nothing had happened – the line moved on.

People straightened. Smiles reappeared. Conversation resumed.

Victor didn't even flinch. He limped past the scene, eyes averted.

Chloe exhaled slowly. She marked two rooftops with line of sight to the gate, then traced the pattern of the patrol routes in her mind. One alley west had an escape route. A third-floor fire door was unlocked. Good. Then—

"There's a grate by the riverfront," Victor said over comms. "Outflow tunnel. Covered in moss, but it's clear. That's our hole."

She nodded. "Logged."

The sun crested higher, reflecting off the Vltava in glassy ripples.

Below her, the Bridge churned with order. Smiles. Silence. Saints and sinners locked in the same step.

But Chloe saw it now. Felt it in her bones.

This wasn't a city.

It was a stage.

And the Bridge?

Not a gate. A filter.

Only the acceptable passed through.

And the rest? They were already gone.

…………………

The bell above the door didn't ring.

It clicked. Soft and deliberate, like a secret being opened.

Dan stepped inside the shop first, letting the scent hit him. A strange blend – lavender and rubbing alcohol, wilted lilies and iron. The front was dressed like a florist's – stems bound with string, petals carefully dried and folded into fake bouquets. But the labels were all wrong.

No prices. No names.

Just numbers.

Alyssa brushed past him without a word, pulling the hood lower over her eyes. Her boots made no sound on the linoleum floor.

A woman emerged from behind the counter. Thin. Mid-forties. Apron covered in old pollen and something darker. Her hands trembled, but her voice didn't.

"Follow me."

Dan did.

They moved through a curtain of hanging herbs into the backroom – cramped, low-ceilinged, stacked with half-rotted crates. The air shifted. Cooler. Heavy with silence.

A child sat in the corner – maybe ten. A girl. Legs tucked beneath her, clutching a cracked tablet. She stared down, pretending not to see them.

The florist closed the door behind her. Her voice dropped to a breath.

"They took a teacher yesterday. She frowned during morning prayer."

Dan felt his stomach twist.

Outside, a speaker crackled. The window above them buzzed faintly with audio distortion.

"The Flame Father forgives. But King Tomas never forgets."

The girl flinched.

Dan saw it – just a twitch in her shoulder, a breath caught between ribs.

Alyssa moved to the crates, wordlessly checking contents. Bandages. Ration tokens. A stack of burner IDs with forged biometric codes. She flipped through them with clinical precision.

Dan stepped closer to the girl. Not too close. Just enough to meet her eyes when she looked up.

He offered a small smile. It didn't help.

"This isn't peace," he muttered.

Alyssa didn't turn. "It's order," she said. "There's a difference."

Dan looked at the florist. "Who is he? King Tomas?"

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

The woman hesitated. Her fingers tugged at the hem of her apron, then stopped.

"Not much is known from before. Some say he was just a politician. Others… something older." She glanced toward the sealed door. "But he came here a few years back. After the first waves. When everyone thought Prague would fall next."

Dan nodded once. He remembered. Demons had swept through Vienna like wildfire. Leipzig had cracked. But Prague?

Prague stayed safe.

"They say when Tomas arrived," the woman continued, "the monsters… retreated. Just vanished. No assault. No demons in the sky. No crawlers in the tunnels." She exhaled, voice shaking now. "Then the Enforcers appeared. Glowing like saints. And Tomas told us if we pleased him, he could make the chosen strong. The rest of us would be safe."

Dan's jaw clenched.

"And the ones who didn't please him?" Alyssa asked, her tone too casual.

The woman didn't answer at first. She looked at her daughter. Then back at them.

"They started taking people in the night," she said. "First the dissidents. Then… the pretty ones. The quiet ones. Families who asked questions." Her lips pressed thin. "I can't say more. Someone might be listening. Please. Just take what you need. And leave."

Alyssa zipped the bag shut and nodded.

Dan touched the girl's shoulder as they passed. Just a light squeeze. She didn't react.

They stepped back into the front shop. The hum of the speaker was louder now.

Outside, the street was still quiet. Trams clattered past like normal. A man walked his dog. A pair of tourists snapped selfies by the bridge gate, laughing a little too hard.

The shop door closed behind them with another soft click.

They walked in silence for a full block before Dan stopped in front of a government wall poster. It was plastered clean and fresh, edges crisp like it had been hung just this morning. But the image made his chest tighten.

Max.

Kneeling in the centre. Head bowed. Flames rising behind him like a crown. Arms stretched upward – in prayer, or surrender. The face was gaunt. Beard patchy. Eyes sunken and lifeless. He looked nothing like the man Dan remembered.

But it was him.

"He lit the path. Now walk it."

Dan didn't move.

Didn't blink.

A slow pressure built behind his eyes – not grief. Not yet. Just something rawer. Hotter.

"They made him a symbol," he muttered.

Alyssa turned. Saw his face. Didn't speak.

Dan reached out and touched the poster.

The paper was smooth. Still damp from glue. The surface buckled slightly beneath his fingers.

His hand curled.

And for a moment – just one – light shimmered along his knuckles. The barest trace of gold.

Then he dropped it. Fist clenched at his side. Breathing low.

"They hollowed him out," he said quietly. "And turned what was left into… this."

He turned from the poster like it was poison.

And walked on.

…………………

Suppressing her halo was like trying to hold her breath with her lungs already full.

Liz sat cross-legged on the hotel floor, palms flat against the cracked tile. Sweat clung to her spine. Her eyes were closed, but behind them, light pulsed – red, coiled, wanting out. Her halo fought against her will, twitching just beneath the surface of her skull like a third eye made of flame.

She forced it down again.

Not now. Not in this city.

A breath. Then another. Hollow. Thin. She felt… less.

Like scraping too close to death.

"You good?" Ying's voice was a whisper from across the room.

Liz opened her eyes.

Ying stood by the door, already dressed to vanish – hood drawn, weapons hidden, void-slice aura completely sealed. She didn't look like a soldier. She looked like no one at all.

Liz nodded and rose to her feet. "I'm ready."

They left the Aria Hotel through a side stairwell, emerged into the soft hum of the morning crowd, and blended.

No halos. No fire. Just two more faces.

The central tram station swelled around them – a quiet chaos of people moving in orchestrated silence. No shouting. No laughing. Footsteps paced in rhythm with the announcements. Even the birds on the wire didn't sing.

Liz let her senses stretch.

Gently. Just the surface.

A swirl of thoughts floated past her like paper on water.

"Keep smiling. Don't draw attention. The guards are watching." "He's watching us. Always watching." "Don't think about her. Don't say her name. She's gone." "Smile. Smile. Smile."

The station was filled with fear so deeply internalised it no longer screamed. It whispered.

Then—

A void.

Not silence. Not absence.

A blank.

Liz staggered slightly.

Someone near the edge of the platform. An old man, sitting alone with a half-eaten sandwich. His mind… wasn't there. Not asleep. Not shielded. Scrubbed clean. But his hand twitched, again and again – folding the same napkin corner until the paper frayed. A loop with no purpose. A soul with no weight.

Psychic lobotomy.

Liz drew back like she'd touched an open wire.

Ying caught her elbow, held her steady. "What did you see?"

"Nothing," Liz murmured. "That's the problem."

Before Ying could respond, a tram screeched to a halt beside them.

And there he was again.

Max.

On the side of the tram, the screens flickered to life. Not a still image this time. A video loop.

He knelt in a circle of ash. Shirtless. Arms outstretched. Blood soaked his hands, dripping onto cracked stone. His mouth moved in silent prayer.

A voiceover filled the station.

"The Flame Father gave all. Will you?"

Liz stopped walking.

Her jaw clenched.

"Flame Father?" she spat. The words cracked the air with heat, burning with disbelief and something uglier beneath it.

Ying's voice was low. Urgent. "We need to move fast. They're already sanctifying him."

Liz's eyes burned. Not red this time. Her halo flared pale and blinding – heat that felt wrong, like fire stolen from something sacred.

"No," she hissed. "They're feeding on him."

Every fibre of her body screamed to act. To burn this place down. To tear the lie apart and dig through the ashes until she found him. Her fingers curled. The floor beneath her feet began to groan, heat warping the tile. Somewhere, a child turned to look.

Ying stepped in front of her.

"Liz," she said, steady. "You could burn this city to the ground. And all you'd kill are the innocent."

Liz trembled.

Ying pressed a hand to her chest. "Control. Or we lose him."

The fire receded – slowly. Painfully. But it did.

Liz inhaled through her teeth.

"We need to find him," she growled. "Now."

Ying nodded once.

And they disappeared into the crowd again, just two more faces. Just more ghosts.

…………………

Liz was a grenade with the pin half-pulled.

That was the thought Ying kept circling back to as they walked back from the tram station, silent except for the distant crackle of loudspeakers and the clip of their boots on stone. Liz said nothing. Her halo was buried again but not gone – just forced deeper. She moved like a live wire wrapped in skin.

They returned to the Aria Hotel without incident. No patrols stopped them. No cameras tracked too long. But Ying felt it.

This city was watching.

The moment they reached the penthouse, Liz dropped into a corner, legs pulled to her chest. She didn't take off her boots. Didn't speak. Just stared at the floor like it might erupt.

Ying didn't press her.

She shut the blackout curtains, killed the main lights, and switched on a single red tactical lamp. The room sank into darkness, cut only by the flicker of screens and the glow of Ying's tablet as she unfolded it across the table.

She began to work.

Finger to glass. Lines etched themselves in clean vectors – streets, checkpoints, sewer lines. Suppression zones blinked in amber, where halo detection fields were most active. Enforcer patrols in crimson, moving with clockwork precision.

And then – her real interest.

The dead zones.

Places where emotion didn't echo. Where the minds nearby registered nothing at all.

She'd marked three already.

The Cathedral of San Vitus – a sprawling, sacred silhouette now silent at its core. The Old Royal Palace – beneath it, something worse. And a third pocket beneath the river – unreachable, yet pulsing like an infected wound.

She stared at it for a moment longer.

Then the door clicked open behind her.

Chloe stepped in without ceremony, a small grin tugging at her lip as she flicked a chip toward the table. "Souvenir." Chloe tossed the chip. "He won't be needing it anymore." Her smile didn't reach her eyes. "Guess it's safer not to know what happened to him."

Ying caught it midair. An ID chip – warm from skin, still faintly pulsing with biometric trace. She scanned it. Civilian class. Logged to a street vendor.

"Good timing," Ying murmured. "We've got a path."

Chloe raised an eyebrow.

Ying shifted the map's perspective, tapping twice on the sewer overlay. A red line blinked to life, leading from the river's southern edge beneath the Palace compound. It was old infrastructure—pre-modern, pre-archive. Not on the official grids.

"No soulfield detection here," Ying said. "You phase through tomorrow night. I'll run psychic interference from the hotel. If the feedback starts spiking, you abort."

Chloe studied the route. Then nodded once. "What's the end target?"

Ying zoomed in. Beneath the Palace was a cluster of reinforced sublevels – no public records, no cameras. But it was near the deepest blank zone.

"If Max is anywhere," Ying said, "it's here."

Chloe's expression didn't shift. But she reached for her belt.

Ying stopped her—and instead handed her a small blade. Thin. Unmarked. Psychic-reactive.

Chloe took it, turning it once in her palm. Then looked up.

"In case it's him," Ying said quietly. "And he's not… him."

For a moment, the room stilled. No sound but Liz's breath in the corner. Slow. Strained.

Chloe nodded. "If I find Max…" She looked toward the window, where the lights of Prague shimmered just beyond the curtains. "I'll bring back what's left."

They didn't speak again.

Outside, a screen flickered on a distant rooftop billboard. Another propaganda reel, same loop.

But for one frame—just one—

Max turned his head.

And blinked.

…………………

The suite at the Aria Hotel had once been luxurious. Now it was a war room.

Curtains drawn. Lights low. The marble floor cluttered with folded maps, comm gear, energy bars, and the quiet thrum of tension. The screen against the far wall flickered with distorted footage from the drone Grimm had launched earlier – rooftop heatmaps, sewer routes, tram schedules, and a pulsing web of movement overlaid in cold red.

Victor stood near the window, arms crossed over his chest. His eyes flicked toward the display, then to the others.

"So," he said, voice rough. "What do we actually know?"

Ying stepped forward. Liz stood beside her, silent but steady.

Ying tapped the tablet in her hand. The main display shifted – bird's-eye views of Old Town, glowing pathways threading between rooftops and alley shadows. Sewer grates pulsed faint green. Dotted red lines marked Contractor patrol loops.

"We've charted main access points," Ying said. "Subsurface tunnels, low-visibility trams, roof access corridors. Surveillance is present but beatable. And we've logged zero confirmed demon signatures so far."

She paused.

"But that doesn't mean they're not here."

Dan stood near the kitchenette, arms leaning against the counter. He glanced at the screen, then spoke without looking at it.

"They don't need to be," he said. "The Contractors are enough. Everyone's already falling in line."

"Still," Chloe said, from her seat cross-legged on the table, blade in hand. "Are they really strong enough to keep Prague safe from Demon Lords? Zagan alone burned half of Kyoto. You telling me a few fancy halos kept her away?"

Liz's voice was even, but laced with certainty. "Unlikely."

All eyes turned to her.

"From what I saw today, most Contractors here are Category 2. Maybe lower. There was one Category 3 – supervisor at the Charles Bridge checkpoint. Stronger than the rest, but still not on par with even a Fiend, let alone a Corrupter."

She let the silence stretch a beat.

"If an Archdemon had stepped foot in this city, there wouldn't be a single civilian left."

Victor grunted. "So, what's keeping them out?"

Chloe leaned forward. "Exactly. What makes 'King Tomas' so special that the Lords haven't swallowed this place whole?"

Alyssa didn't bother sitting. She leaned over the map instead, gloved fingers stabbing a point on the screen – Old Town's administrative quarter, just behind the palace walls.

"This 'King Tomas' – he's the centre of things. The pillar. Everything in this city revolves around him. The propaganda, the enforcers, the lies."

She looked up.

"We find out who he really is… and we find Max."

The room went still for a moment.

Then Liz stepped forward, her voice cutting through the quiet like heat through frost.

"They turned him into a symbol," she said. "A martyr. Something for people to worship or fear. But he's still alive."

Her jaw clenched.

"I can feel it."

Chloe met her eyes, unflinching.

"Then we steal him back."

No one spoke after that.

Outside the suite, Prague continued as if nothing had changed. Trams clanged in the distance. The air buzzed with invisible surveillance. A screen across the river lit up – giant, radiant, unavoidable.

The image of King Tomas loomed above the city – blank-eyed, glowing with synthetic divinity.

The footage stuttered – just a frame. Enough for Chloe to notice. Tomas's smile had changed. Wider now. Like it had been waiting.

Below it, a Contractor stood at the riverbank.

He stared at the drone camera. Not surprised. Not confused.

He just smiled – slow, knowing. Like he'd been expecting them.

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