The observation deck looked out into nothing.

There were no windows, no trace of the outside world; only a wall of black crystal carved with spiralling runes, its surface alive with faint flickers of light. They shimmered like stars against a false night sky, but Max knew better. They weren't constellations. They were fragments — soul-points captured and suspended, memories of lives that had burned and gone out.

He stood with his back to the void, forcing himself to face the four people gathered in front of him. Alyssa, arms folded tight across her chest, her glare sharp enough to cut stone. Chloe, silent and watchful, her outline flickering faintly at the edges as though her body hadn't fully committed to staying in one world. Dan, posture steady, his hands loose at his sides, waiting for the right moment to ease the storm. And Victor — leaning back as if trying for nonchalance, though Max could see the tension running through his frame.

They had come without being asked. That was loyalty, maybe. Or curiosity. Or the simple need to hear the truth out loud.

Max's voice was low, roughened by the weight he'd carried since Grimm's words in the Truth Room.

"You need to know what I've done."

No one moved. The silence hung heavy, like the deck itself was holding its breath.

Max looked down at his hand — the hand that had awakened them. It trembled. Not from fire, but from the memory of choice. He closed it into a fist.

"I thought I was helping. I thought giving you power would make you safer, stronger. But I didn't understand what it would cost. Demons don't just sense power — they hunt it. And awakened souls?" His eyes lifted to the flickering points of false starlight behind him. "We're neon signs in a graveyard. Bright enough to call every monster in the dark."

He exhaled, raw. "I made you targets. Turned you from people into bait. And I never asked if you wanted that."

Alyssa's arms tightened across her chest, her scowl unflinching. "Would it have mattered?" she asked. "Would you have stopped?"

Max opened his mouth, then stopped. The truth was too plain.

"Exactly," she muttered, dropping into a seated sprawl against the wall. "So don't insult us by pretending this was noble."

Dan stepped forward, voice calm but carrying weight. "He's not pretending," he said. "He's apologizing."

Chloe tilted her head slightly, her tone steady, precise. "Then let him."

The words weren't cruel, but they left no room for comfort either.

Max swallowed hard. "You didn't get to choose. I chose for all of you."

Victor let out a low whistle, shaking his head. "Hell of a pep talk, Max. 'Hey guys, I may have turned you into demon bait, but on the bright side, you glow real pretty in the dark.'" He grinned lopsidedly, though it didn't reach his eyes. "Next time, at least buy us dinner first."

The corner of Max's mouth twitched despite himself, but he didn't laugh. "I'm serious."

"I know," Victor said, the humour fading but the loyalty beneath it plain. "And I'm still here. Just… don't drown us in guilt while you're at it. We need you breathing, not sinking."

Dan nodded, steady as a counterweight. "He's right. We can hate the fire and still need the warmth. Don't carry it so deep you burn yourself out before the fight even starts."

Silence stretched, heavier than words, until Chloe finally broke it. She lowered herself beside Alyssa, her flickering form stabilizing for just a moment. "They'll come for us now," she said quietly.

Max's chest tightened. "They already are."

Victor straightened, his grin turning sharp. "Then let 'em come. Been a while since I had a proper fight."

Alyssa shot him a look but didn't rise. "You're insane."

"Yeah," Victor said. "But I'm on your side."

For the first time that night, something in the air eased. Not forgiveness. Not peace. But the beginning of something that might hold.

Max turned back toward the false stars, the soul-lights flickering like teeth in the dark. His fists tightened. "I'll carry the weight," he said. "I lit the match."

Chloe's eyes were steady on him. "Then be the light that guides us, not burns us."

A beat of silence followed. Then Alyssa shrugged. "…though it is cool to have superpowers."

The words caught them all off guard. Dan chuckled softly. Victor snorted. Even Chloe's lips curved faintly.

Max didn't smile, but the tension in his shoulders eased. Something behind his eyes steadied, like fire finding its rhythm instead of burning out of control.

Five souls stood in the dark.

One stood taller. Still shaking. Still sorry.

But standing.

***

The Grimm Institute didn't breathe.

Not the way cities did, not the way even forests at night carried a pulse. It just… existed. Silent, polished, immaculate. A museum of walls, every corridor curated to carry nothing but its own cold weight.

Victor padded along barefoot, hands stuffed into his pockets. The stone floor was slick with chill, but he preferred it this way. Boots made noise. Bare feet kept him grounded, gave him a chance to feel the tremors nobody else noticed.

He muttered under his breath, "Like walking through a morgue that got a budget upgrade."

The corridor bent, shadows catching in the corners. He stopped, scanning. Nothing. He told himself it was nothing — but the hair on his arms still rose. He closed his eyes, listening. For a breath, it felt like the hallway forgot it was being watched. Then the weight passed. He exhaled slowly, shaking his head.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "Definitely haunted."

When he found Max, the man was in the lower commons — an open chamber with benches and a single analogue clock ticking on the far wall. The sound was deliberate, Victor thought. The only honest noise in the whole damned place.

Max didn't look at him. His arms were folded, eyes fixed on the clock's hands like he was waiting for them to betray him.

"You're late," Max said. His voice was rough, tired.

Victor raised an eyebrow. "Didn't know we had a curfew. You been timing me?"

"You always walk barefoot when you're hunting ghosts?"

Victor grinned, dropping onto the bench opposite. "Hey, boots squeak. Besides, ghosts don't like calluses. Throws off the mood."

Max's mouth twitched — not quite a smile. "You think this place has ghosts?"

"I think this place has something worse," Victor replied, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. "Eyes. The kind you don't see unless you stop looking."

Max finally turned his head, fire flickering faintly behind his gaze. "Go on."

Victor lowered his voice. "I've seen them. Twice now. White cloaks. Heavy steps, deliberate. Not Grimm's soldiers. Too quiet. Too precise. Cameras don't catch them. Guards don't notice. But they're there."

"You're sure?"

"Dead sure," Victor said. "Spotted them in the transit hall. Lost them in the reflection of a window, and when I turned back — gone. And you know who was right there every time they disappeared?"

Max rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Kane."

"Bingo. Smiling like he just won a raffle. I don't like it."

Max's voice was low. "Maybe they're just security."

Victor let out a laugh, sharp but not unkind. "Buddy, nothing in this place is just anything. We're inside a fortress that doesn't exist, run by a man whose soul's falling out in pieces. You really think anyone here's just security?"

Max shook his head slightly. "Still the same old Vic."

"And you're still the same Max," Victor shot back. "Trying to play chess when the other guy brought a flamethrower."

That drew half a smile from Max. "Worked before."

"Yeah, and got your leg broken. Remember the landslide? '09? You tried to make a backburn, ended up burying us both in half a mountain. Six hours I carried you out, while you screamed the whole way."

Max winced, then laughed softly. "Saved those hikers, though."

Victor jabbed a finger at him. "And nearly killed us."

For a moment the tension eased. Just two men remembering a time when their worst enemies were fire and bad luck.

But Victor's expression sobered again. "Listen. Jokes aside… I don't trust this place. The walls feel like they're leaning in, waiting for us to screw up. Grimm's a snake in a silk coat. Kane's worse. Something about him makes my skin crawl. And those cloaks? They're measuring us for coffins."

Max's fire pulsed faintly. "So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying, if it comes down to it — if this place turns on us, if Grimm even breathes wrong — you don't argue. You don't try to negotiate. You torch it. Burn the whole thing to ash."

Max studied him. For a long time, neither spoke. Finally, Max nodded once. "Deal."

Victor clapped him on the shoulder. "Good. 'Cause between you and me, I'm way too pretty to be dissected in a basement lab."

That pulled a snort from Max.

Victor stood, stretching. "One more thing, before I go catch a few hours."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Max tilted his head.

"You think you broke us by making us like this," Victor said, quieter now. "But you didn't."

"What did I do, then?"

Victor's grin softened into something steadier. "You gave us something worth breaking for."

He turned for the hall, his bare feet silent against the stone. The shadows swallowed him as he disappeared around the corner.

Max stayed behind, watching the clock tick. And in the glass beside it, faint but unmistakable, two pale cloaked figures stood reflected in the corridor. Watching. Waiting.

Then gone.

***

The room was made of glass.

Not metaphor or flourish, but fact — a suspended cube nested high within the Institute's upper levels. Its walls were smart-crystal, opaque from without, translucent from within. The air here was cold, humming faintly with the pulse of runes woven through the structure, like veins in a living body.

Dr. Grimm stood motionless in the centre, hands clasped loosely behind his back. Before him floated five projections — spectral constructs of light and resonance, each one slow-spinning, their colours shifting in time with invisible rhythms. They looked like stars carved loose from the void, but no chart could have placed them in a sky.

Dr. Sade Adisa stood at his side, her white coat marked faintly with sigils burned into the fabric by her own instruments. Dark rings clung beneath her eyes, but her posture was sharp, uncompromising. She tapped her tablet, and the projections pulsed brighter in response.

"They're unstable," she said flatly. Her voice carried none of Grimm's theatrical polish. Just fact. "Every one of them."

"All power is, at first," Grimm replied, gaze never leaving the hovering lights.

"No." She gestured, irritation clipping her tone. "Not like this. Their resonance vectors are divergent. Off-pattern. Max didn't just awaken affinity; he rewrote their architecture. Their core frequencies aren't their own anymore. They carry echoes of him in every scan. I've never seen anything like it."

Grimm's mouth curved faintly, unreadable. "Impressive."

Adisa shot him a look. "Dangerous."

Her fingers brushed the first projection, and it swelled into a lattice of golden density, its edges fracturing like tectonic plates under stress. "Alyssa Blackthorn. Affinity: gravitational compression, mineral reinforcement, structural anchoring. Her soul weight is increasing exponentially. If she loses emotional control in a populated zone, we'll be measuring casualties in blocks, not bodies."

Grimm's eyes flicked over the fracturing lattice. "Designation?"

"Titan-class. Level Six. Same category as the Minsk contractor who nearly levelled a city block."

"She's never held a weapon," Grimm murmured.

Adisa's jaw tightened. "She is one."

The projection collapsed, shifting into flickering silhouettes. Another image unfolded — pale, translucent, edged in constant flux. It quivered between presence and absence.

"Chloe Blackthorn," Adisa said, her tone quieter now, more unsettled. "Phase-state modulation. She doesn't exist on a stable spectrum. Her soul weight flickers between negligible and immeasurable. Sometimes dead, sometimes alive, sometimes… neither. I ran a classification scan, and it almost broke the system."

Grimm tilted his head. "So she doesn't fit the chart?"

"She tore it apart," Adisa replied. "She's registering at Spectral-class. We had to create the designation. Only one other human ever touched that tier. She didn't survive the month."

Grimm's eyes lingered on the fragile projection. "Then we'll see if Chloe is more durable."

The projection shimmered into warmth — a soft glow, harmonic waves pulsing outward like a heartbeat.

"Daniel Bailey," Adisa continued. "Affinity: harmonic resonance, regenerative capacity, emotional stabilisation through halo bleed. He regulates the group, tempers them without conscious effort. Remove him, and the others destabilise rapidly."

"Classification?"

"Seraph-class. He's more than a healer. He's cohesion for them. Without him, they spiral."

For the first time, Grimm's gaze softened, almost contemplative. "Then he is their failsafe. I'll assign priority protection."

Adisa nodded once, her eyes narrowing as she tapped again. The next projection surged forward, darker, heavier, a coil of sinew and shifting form — half-human, half-beast, locked in perpetual negotiation.

"Dr. Victor Drake," she said. "Chimera-state mutation. Multi-form partial shifts, anchored to a remarkably stable psyche. His resonance splices human and bestial traits without collapse. That's rare. Most go feral within days."

Grimm's mouth curved faintly. "And Victor does not?"

"No. He… talks to his monster. Understands it. That makes him dangerous — and oddly reliable."

"Behemoth-class, then?" Grimm asked.

"Yes," she said. "A tank. And a conscience, if you can believe it."

The last projection unfolded reluctantly, as if resisting being seen. Fire shimmered at its core, coiling ouroboros-like around fragments of blue and gold — stitched together by void.

"Finally, Max Jaeger," Adisa said, her voice taut with unease. "Our anomaly. We don't have a full scan; he won't allow proximity. But the readings we did capture suggest Aamon's fire fused with residual fragments from other demons. It's not just Hellfire. It's something stitched. Something evolving."

Grimm's eyes gleamed faintly, though his tone remained calm. "Level?"

Adisa shook her head. "Indeterminate. Stable readings suggest Fiend to low Corruptor. Spikes — milliseconds only — rise far higher. Too high. Humans don't survive those levels. And yet…"

"And yet," Grimm echoed.

The projection shivered violently, runes along the glass walls flickering in response. For a heartbeat, even the air in the cube seemed to tighten.

Adisa spoke again, quieter. "And then there's his daughter."

The name didn't have to be spoken. Elizabeth.

Her suspended profile appeared beside the others, faint but steady, glowing with sheer psychic pressure that bent the instruments around it.

"She's still unconscious, resonance suppressed in Cryo-Vault Six. But even dreaming, her field spikes into Archdemon range. If she wakes uncontrolled, I don't know if this Institute could contain her."

A silence followed. Grimm finally stepped closer, his reflection merging with the child's projection. His voice was almost tender when he spoke.

"She hasn't awakened yet. But she's already a battlefield."

Adisa's hands tightened on her tablet. "We should sedate her further."

"Containment buys time, nothing more. Sooner or later, walls fail. What matters is whether she fails with them — or stands when they do."

Grimm paused, then added. "Let her dream. She is the eye of this storm. If Max falters… she may be the only one strong enough to stand."

The projections dimmed, fading one by one until the glass cube reflected only the two doctors.

Adisa broke the silence first. "I'll continue refining the training protocols. But if they fracture—"

"They won't," Grimm interrupted smoothly. "Alpha and Omega will intervene before they know the danger exists."

"You have them shadowing," she said, almost accusing.

"I'm managing them," Grimm corrected. "Until they learn to manage themselves."

He turned back to the black glass, hands folding behind his back once more. His reflection hung beside the fading projections, fractured by runes, as if even the glass wasn't sure it wanted to remember him.

***

The others had gone. Their footsteps faded down the long corridors until silence reclaimed the deck, the kind of silence that didn't feel empty so much as watchful.

Max remained, staring out at the false heavens beyond the rune-etched crystal. The "stars" shimmered faintly, each one no more than a stored fragment — memory-light, not celestial fire. He tried to read patterns in them, the way he once had traced constellations for Liz when she was little, pointing out shapes in the dark to help her sleep. But here the patterns resisted meaning. Every flicker looked like an eye, half-open, waiting.

He shifted his weight, hands braced on the rail. The crystal surface caught his reflection: fire ghosting faintly under his skin, his shoulders hunched with more weight than muscle could bear. And then, just beyond his own outline, something moved.

Two shapes. Cloaked in white, indistinct, but there. Standing behind him in the reflection, still as statues, watching.

His breath hitched. He spun, fire coiling into his palms. The deck was empty. Nothing but polished stone and the low hum of the rune-lines threading through the walls.

Max turned back toward the glass. His reflection alone stared back. No cloaked figures now. No witnesses. Just him — and the flickering lights that refused to be stars.

And in that silence, his mind dragged up the names of everyone still tethered to him.

Liz was the last of his blood, the piece of April he hadn't lost. Dan steadied him — brother-in-law in name, younger brother in truth. Victor had carried him through fires both real and imagined, loyal even when Max had given him reasons not to be. Ethan had taught him to run toward flames instead of away. And now Alyssa and Chloe — too young, too raw — were bound to him as well, forced to wear power like armour.

Each of them a light. Each of them a target. Each of them his responsibility.

Grimm's voice returned unbidden, that calm, surgical certainty: You are not hiding from Hell, Mr. Jaeger. You are summoning it.

The thought pressed harder in his chest than the fire did. Maybe the cloaks were part of Grimm's game. Maybe paranoia was exactly what the man wanted him to feel. Or maybe the warning wasn't manipulation at all. Maybe demons really were already circling, drawn to his fire the way carrion birds closed on a battlefield.

He stood there until his pulse steadied, jaw locked, fire burning low and tight.

"If they're ghosts," he muttered into the empty chamber, "I'll burn them too."

With that, he turned and left, the deck door sealing behind him with a hiss that sounded almost like a sigh.

***

Sydney, Australia.

The city wore night like a weight — damp air pressed against the streets, neon bleeding into puddles, tower glass glittering above black water. Under the Harbour Bridge, the light thinned and the rot showed through.

In Redfern, tucked between shuttered storefronts and broken fences, a warehouse sat quiet. The paint on the sign had nearly peeled away, but the words were still legible: Jaeger & Campbell Fire Safety Training Services.

Inside, Ethan Campbell leaned back in a battered office chair, his bulk still filling the room the way it had when he'd carried bodies from burning buildings. The walls smelled faintly of smoke and machine oil. Old photos lined the desk — one of his crew, another of a girl in braces holding a dog, and one of Max, years younger, helmet tucked under his arm, smiling like he'd been caught off guard. Tucked behind the frame, almost hidden, was another: April Jaeger. Her white-blonde hair loose, eyes bright, holding a paper cup of coffee on some long-forgotten morning after a fire.

Ethan pulled the photo free and set it in front of him. For a moment the weight in his chest eased. April had always been like that — steady without trying, the kind of presence that made a room feel less sharp. Looking at her face calmed the storm, even now.

He exhaled slowly, the axe still resting on the wall, and let his eyes linger on her smile. He reached for the old axe — not because he expected to need it, but because instinct told him to.

The second hand on the wall clock stuttered once, then kept going. The hum of the refrigerator in the corner cut out mid-cycle. No traffic outside. No sound at all. The silence pressed in so thick it felt like he was underwater. Ethan's chest tightened. Something was standing in the quiet with him, even before it showed itself.

The air shifted.

Not colder. Not louder. Just wrong.

Ethan's skin prickled, the back of his neck damp with a sweat that hadn't been there a moment ago. His gaze flicked to the axe on the wall. He didn't reach for it yet — not while the silence itself felt alive.

When Ethan looked toward the doorway, it was already occupied. He hadn't heard steps. Hadn't heard the hinges move. The man was simply there, as if he had been waiting all along and Ethan had only now noticed.

Tall. Black suit pressed so sharply it could have been carved, not sewn. His face was smooth, almost ordinary, but in a way that left no handhold for the memory. The eyes spoiled it — too dark, too steady, as if they had been painted onto something that wasn't truly human.

Ethan straightened, jaw tight. "Can I help you?"

The man smiled, thin and polite. "You already have."

His shadow bled across the walls like ink in water, curling at the edges of old photographs on the desk. Kimaris glanced at them idly — Ethan's old crew, the girl with braces and her dog, Max in his academy days, caught grinning mid-laugh. Fingers lingered over the frames, not touching, just near enough to sour the air.

Ethan stepped forward. "Those aren't yours."

"No," Kimaris said softly. "But I know the weight of them. Photographs are a kind of truth. What we choose to remember. What we choose to keep." He looked up, eyes glinting. "And what we choose to burn."

Ethan's stomach turned. His hand brushed the axe handle, but he didn't lift it. "What do you want?"

Kimaris tilted his head, as though the question amused him. "A name. A location. A man you once called brother. Max Jaeger."

Ethan's chest tightened. He forced his face blank. "Haven't seen him in years."

"Ah." Kimaris drifted closer, not walking so much as appearing a breath nearer, like a film spliced to skip the middle frames. "Lies taste bitter in your mouth. Even now."

Ethan swallowed hard. His throat was desert-dry.

Kimaris circled the desk once, voice low, almost coaxing. "You've kept many things buried, Captain Campbell. Not just your friend. Not just his daughter. Some truths press heavier than ash."

The words slid under Ethan's ribs like hooks. His knuckles whitened on the axe. "Get to your point."

Kimaris studied him like a specimen. "You've carried it well, I'll grant you that. But steel bends, Captain. It always does. And I do so love to see where it breaks."

"I've heard worse from drunks at the firehouse," Ethan muttered, but his grip on the axe betrayed him.

Ethan bared his teeth in something that was supposed to be a grin. It wavered, never reaching his eyes. "You're full of shit."

The thing in the suit leaned closer, the smile never touching its eyes. "And yet you flinched before I finished the question."

Kimaris leaned close enough that Ethan felt the chill of his breath. "Tell me… when the fire took her, did you scream her name? Or did you stay silent, the way men do when they want the flames to finish what they started?"

Ethan froze, blood turning to ice. His lips parted, but no sound came.

"Ah." Kimaris inhaled like a sommelier catching the first notes of a vintage. His smile deepened, savouring the name before he spoke it. "April."

The name slid between them like a knife. Ethan's chest locked. For a heartbeat he couldn't breathe. Her face in the photo blurred, and all at once he hated himself for keeping it out in the open, for letting this thing find the one wound he had never managed to cauterize.

Ethan's jaw clenched. His hand trembled on the axe. "You don't know what you're talking about."

Kimaris' smile didn't shift, but his shadow writhed like something amused. "I know she still lingers in you. I've smelled it before. Regret. It leads me to those who crossed his path. Most of them are gone now. You should take care not to join them too quickly."

Ethan's grip tightened on the axe, knuckles bone-white, but he already knew it was theatre — a fireman's tool against something that had never breathed air. The shadows tightened around April's photo, smothering her smile, and in that choking silence Ethan understood: this was no intruder. No man. It was hunger given shape. Old. Patient. Inevitable.

And it had already marked Max.

The Hunt had begun.

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