The dorm was too quiet.

Even with the alarms still blaring faintly down the hall, the bunks sat empty, sheets turned down, lockers hanging open like mouths mid-word. A mug of coffee steamed faintly on one bedside table, abandoned between one breath and the next.

Max's hand tightened around the chain at his side. The fire under his skin hadn't stopped humming since the alarms began, but the silence here gnawed worse than noise.

"We're wasting time," Victor muttered. He dragged his claws against the steel frame of a bunk, the sound shrill in the stillness. "If they pulled everyone out, we need to know where they ran. Or what ate them."

"No," Max said, sharper than he meant. "We need to see Liz first. Make sure her pod's stable."

Chloe's sword flickered faintly in her grip. "If the alarms spiked her vitals again—" She bit the words off, but her face was pale.

Dan nodded grimly. "Then Max is right. Liz first."

The others murmured agreement, though Alyssa's fists clicked restlessly in their gauntlets. They gathered what they had — steel, chain, blade, staff — weapons ready but not steady.

The lights overhead flickered once, twice. Then the sirens cut.

A voice boomed through the dorm's speakers, flat, mechanical, unfazed: "Attention. Containment breach neutralised. All personnel remain in place. Situation under control."

No one moved. The words felt wrong — scrubbed raw of truth, polished until they rang false in the silence.

Omega snorted, the sound like gravel grinding together. "That's a lie."

Alpha's head turned slightly toward him, but she didn't contradict.

Victor narrowed his eyes. "You sound certain."

Omega's dark gaze swept across them all, heavy as stone. "Containment doesn't reset. Not once it breaks. If it's breached, it's only a matter of time."

Dan's throat worked. "Then why the announcement?"

"Because panic kills faster than what's in the Forge," Omega said flatly. "The Institute doesn't admit failure."

A cold silence followed. The words clung heavier than the sirens had.

Alpha broke it with her own. "It isn't your concern." She sheathed her knives with deliberate precision. "Our orders are clear. We return to Dr. Grimm."

Max's head snapped toward her. "You're leaving?"

"Correct," Alpha said. "Our duty is to him."

"And us?" Alyssa snapped, sparks crawling her knuckles.

"You are not my directive."

Kane, pale and half-flickering by the wall, groaned. "Oh, brilliant. You get to run back to Daddy Grimm while I get stuck babysitting the fireworks show."

Alpha didn't blink. "Correct."

Kane's lip curled. "I didn't sign up to play den mother while you two strut back to the throne room."

"You didn't sign up at all," Omega rumbled. He stepped past Max, massive shoulders brushing the doorframe, his presence like a moving wall. "You're unstable. Be useful and hold."

Kane swore, his veil distorting violently before snapping back. "One of these days, I'm going to let the field drop and watch you all choke."

Alpha's gaze cut once more across the group — cataloguing, dissecting. Her eyes lingered on Max half a second too long. Then she turned.

"Stay alive," she said. "Or don't. It makes no difference."

Omega followed her out, each step pounding like a hammerfall. The dorm door sealed behind them with a hiss that sounded too much like finality.

Silence followed, broken only by Kane muttering, "Babysitting. With migraines. Fantastic."

Max turned back to his team, chain sliding through his grip with a whisper of fire.

"Fine," he said. His voice was low, steady, steel under strain. "Then we do this ourselves. First stop — Liz."

***

The vault doors hissed open on triple-sealed hydraulics. A sheet of cold air spilled out, heavy with the hum of layered wards.

Liz's containment chamber was nothing like the dorms. The walls here were lined with obsidian-black soulsteel, etched in runes that pulsed faintly with protective charge. Cameras tracked silently from the corners. A reinforced capsule sat in the centre of the room, glass shield opaque but alive with streams of data.

Max froze in the doorway. For a moment his heart stopped.

Then he saw the vitals. Green lines, steady. Pulse, stable. Breathing, constant.

Liz was secure.

The chain slid slack through his hand as the fire beneath his skin eased for the first time in hours. He let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding, the sound rough with exhaustion.

"She's… alright," Chloe whispered, pressing both palms to the capsule. "She didn't spike. She didn't…"

Max nodded once, sharp, and forced the air through his lungs again.

Behind him, Kane leaned against the wall, veil flickering faintly like static. "Told you. Fort Knox. If anything gets out of the Forge, this room's the last to fall. You could drop a Lord right on top of her and she'd still be breathing when the rubble settled."

Max shot him a look, but didn't argue. Relief was relief, even if it came from Kane's mouth.

Victor rolled his shoulders, cleaver across his back. "Then what the hell are we still—"

A sound cut him off.

Not the sirens. Not the alarms.

A ping. Soft. Insistent.

Max looked down. His phone screen had lit up — no signal, no source. Just one blinking message.

PLAY.

The room tightened around him. He swiped his thumb across the glass.

The feed crackled alive.

Ethan's face filled the screen.

Or what was left of it.

His features were wrecked — swollen, purpled, one eye shut, lip split and bleeding. His breath came ragged, wet, every inhale a choke. His voice was a shredded rasp.

"Max… oh God… Max, if you're seeing this—" He broke off, coughing, something dark spilling from his mouth. "He's got me. I don't… I don't know where. Please. Please, you have to—"

The phone shook in Max's hand. Not from him, but from the recording itself — as though the camera were being moved.

A shadow stepped into view.

Tall. Impossibly lean. Black skin gleaming like wet obsidian, crisscrossed with scars that writhed faintly as if alive. His smile was bone-white and endless. His eyes… wrong. Not pupils, not human — rings of pale fire, shifting without warmth.

Kimaris.

"Ah," the demon said softly, voice like silk dragged over razors. "The Jaeger boy."

He crouched beside Ethan, claws dragging lazily through his matted hair. Ethan whimpered, body jerking at the touch.

"I was wondering when you'd answer."

He lifted something into the frame. A severed finger. The ring on it glinted — Ethan's. Kimaris wagged it between two claws like a teacher dangling a lesson in front of a failing student.

"Your friend has been very… educational," Kimaris continued. "Fragile, but resilient in the right places. Screams so beautifully when the knife slips between muscle and memory."

His pale fire eyes glimmered as he leaned closer to the lens, smile never faltering.

"Allow me the courtesy. I am Kimaris. The Surgeon of Silence. The one who peels away the skin of lies until only the marrow of truth remains."

His voice wasn't just sound — it crawled into marrow, threaded through nerves, a vibration that made Max's teeth ache and Chloe's sword shiver faintly in her hand, as though the steel itself had been forced to listen.

His claws traced lightly across Ethan's ruined shoulder, drawing another whimper. "Your world whispers my name like a rumour, a shadow at the edge of every battlefield. But you… you will know me as the hand that unravels what you love, one nerve at a time."

He tilted his head, studying Max through the screen as though tasting the weight of his soul. "You burned one of us. Consumed him. Do you think the Lords would ignore that? No, little fire. We have been waiting for you."

Victor's claws gouged the vault wall with a screech. Dan had gone pale, lips moving as if in prayer but no words came.

Kimaris smiled wider. Behind him, the camera tilted to reveal the stone floor littered with corpses — broken, bloodied, faces Max knew in fragments. A neighbour from Sydney. An old crew member from the fire station. One of Ethan's drinking buddies. All splayed open like discarded dolls.

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"Familiar?" Kimaris asked. "I thought it polite to bring you pieces of home."

He leaned closer to the lens, eyes burning like pale fire.

"Come home, Max. That's where this always leads. Back to the fire. Back to where it started."

The phone's audio distorted as Ethan tried to lift his head. His good eye locked onto the lens, wide with terror.

"Please… Max… before he—"

Kimaris silenced him with a claw across the throat, not cutting, just pressing until Ethan gagged. Then the demon leaned close to the camera.

"Come and find me," he whispered. "Or I'll keep carving. Finger by finger. Until he forgets which hand he used to pray with."

The feed cut to black.

The silence in the vault was absolute. Only Liz's steady pulse beeped softly in the background, the sound obscene against what they'd just seen.

Max's hand clenched so tight around the phone that the glass cracked under his grip. Fire burned up his arms, hot and merciless.

Victor was already growling. "Where?"

Dan's face shifted at the sound of Ethan's name, his jaw tightening as though against words he refused to say. He lowered his eyes, staff tapping once against the floor, and let the silence swallow whatever was on his mind.

Max frowned, but the fire left no room for questions. His voice came out low, like broken stone. "Sydney."

A thought cut through the fire in his chest: if the breach really was the Mirror, then this wasn't just a rescue. It was a war on two fronts — Liz locked behind one, Ethan bleeding on the other.

***

The silence after the message was heavier than the alarms had been. Max still felt the heat of his phone in his hand, though the screen had long since gone black. Ethan's broken voice echoed in his skull — the plea, the pain, the promise of Kimaris.

Victor broke it first, his voice a low growl. "We go."

His voice was rawer than usual, stripped of its usual bravado. "That bastard dragged me and Max through fires we never should've walked out of. First one to spit in my face and still call me worth saving. I won't stand here while he screams in the dark."

Dan stepped forward, staff angled across his chest. His face was pale, lips tight, but his voice was steady. "It is a trap. Max, you know it. Demons don't make threats — they set snares. You walk into this and you're playing his game."

Max looked at him, fire trembling under his skin. "You think I don't know? You think I can hear Ethan begging and just… stay?" His jaw worked, grinding the words down to steel.

"I have no choice."

Max's breath came ragged, fire shivering under his skin. "Liz needs me here. Ethan needs me there. Tell me how I choose between them." His voice cracked, low and rough, the words spilling like embers before he clenched his jaw shut again.

Dan's eyes searched his. Then he nodded once, slow and grim. "Then I'll stay here. Someone has to guard Liz."

"I'm staying too," Alyssa said immediately, fists tightening inside her gauntlets. "If that thing really is loose, I'll smash it back into the pit myself."

Chloe stood beside Liz's pod, her hand pressed to the glass. She hadn't spoken since the message. Now she looked up, her voice quiet but resolute. "I'll stay too. I don't care what comes through those walls. Liz isn't alone. Not ever."

Max's throat tightened. He looked at each of them — Dan, Alyssa, Chloe — and for once the fire under his skin dimmed. He lowered his chain and nodded. "Thank you. Protect her. No matter what."

Kane, leaning against the wall, let out a thin laugh. His face was ghost-white with strain, but his smirk stayed sharp. "Oh, Grimm's going to love this. Real field data, just like he wanted. Every scream, every flare of fire — logged and measured. He'll finally see if you're worth the chains he sunk into you, or if you're just a walking temper tantrum with fire tricks."

Victor's lip curled, but Kane raised a hand. "Relax, puppy. I'll do my part. I'll get Hawthorn to scrape together some troops and spin up the VTOL. Half a day, maybe less, and you'll be in Sydney."

Max didn't look at him. His eyes stayed on Liz's pod, on the faint green flicker of her vitals. His voice was iron. "Then set it up."

Dan gripped Max's shoulder, hard. "Go. Liz will be safe. If there really is something loose here, I can handle it."

"You're sure?" Max asked.

Dan managed a thin smile. "I've fought worse than shadows. You just worry about Ethan."

Alyssa cracked her knuckles, smirking without humour. "And if a demon wants to knock, I'll be waiting to punch its teeth out."

Chloe finally tore her hand from the pod, standing straighter than she felt. "She's my best friend," she said softly, but with a sharp edge. "No matter what happens, Liz will be safe. I promise."

Max drew in a long breath. His hand hovered over the pod's glass, just for a second, before he turned away. The chain at his side whispered against the floor, fire licking but held tight.

"Then it's decided," he said. "Victor and I go. The rest of you — guard her with your lives."

The words felt like a vow, and everyone in the room understood it.

***

The pod chamber was quiet except for the steady hum of the machinery keeping Liz alive. The alarms outside had dulled to a distant, nagging pulse, like a headache that refused to fade, but inside the vault the silence was heavier. Max stood with one hand pressed against the glass of Liz's containment pod, watching the green heartbeat pulse across the monitor. Stable. Safe. For now.

He wanted to stay there. Every part of him screamed to remain by her side, to guard her with his own body, to keep the fire inside him burning as a shield around the only thing that still mattered. Walking away from that glass felt like peeling skin from bone.

Behind him, the others were already preparing. Alyssa flexed her gauntlets, the plates clicking with quiet menace. Chloe kept her sword drawn but lowered, her eyes fixed on the glow of Liz's vitals like she was silently daring them to falter. Dan was calm, staff resting lightly in his hand, but Max could see the set of his jaw and the weight in his eyes.

"You're not going to leave her unguarded," Dan said finally. His voice wasn't a question; it was an anchor, steady and immovable. "If you go, I'll be here. She'll be safe."

Max turned toward him slowly, his thoughts pulling in opposite directions. "Dan…" His throat was tight. "If I leave, and something happens—"

"Then it's on me," Dan said, firm enough to cut through the hesitation. "I swore to heal. To protect. That doesn't end with Liz just because you're gone."

Victor shifted by the door, arms folded, silent but bristling. He had already decided, Max knew. Ethan was his friend too, and he would go where the trail led.

Alyssa stepped forward, her usual sarcasm gone. "We'll stay. Me and Chloe. You don't even need to ask. Liz is family. She doesn't get left behind, not by us."

Chloe swallowed hard and pressed a hand to the pod. Her voice was quiet, almost reverent. "I'll keep her safe, Max. I swear it."

A sharp, derisive sound came from the back of the room. Kane, half-transparent in his flickering veil, leaned against the wall with eyes bloodshot and voice dry. "Noble. But you should understand something." His gaze flicked to the pod, to the faint light glowing within. "If the Mirror is bleeding into her chamber, it won't care about promises. If she stirs, if the thing inside her wakes with it… no one in this room will walk out alive."

The words cut deeper than any blade. For a heartbeat, Max's breath caught. His fire wanted to flare, to burn away the image Kane's warning conjured, but he forced it down.

Dan stepped forward before Max could answer, planting his staff like a stake. "Then it will go through me first."

Kane smirked faintly. "That's what I'm afraid of."

For a long moment, Max didn't move. His gaze swept over them all — Dan's steady conviction, Alyssa's iron resolve, Chloe's trembling courage. He knew they weren't invincible. He knew Kane was probably right: if the Mirror broke loose fully, their blades and fists might mean nothing. But he also knew the truth: there was no one else in the world he trusted more with Liz's life.

Finally, he exhaled, a slow breath that carried the weight of his choice. "Alright," he said softly, though it felt like tearing the word out of his chest. "I'll go. But if anything happens—"

"Nothing will happen," Dan interrupted. His eyes locked with Max's. "I've got her. You can trust that."

Max looked back at the pod one last time. He placed his hand flat against the glass, as though she might feel it through the cold barrier. His daughter. His reason. He whispered something too low for the others to catch, then turned back toward Victor, who was already waiting.

"You'd better bring him back," Alyssa said, folding her arms.

Max managed a thin, humourless smile. "That's the plan."

Victor pushed off from the wall, claws flexing once before retracting. "Then let's move."

The silence that followed was thick, but not hopeless. Max carried it with him as he stepped away from the pod. It pressed down on him, but so did the strange comfort of knowing that Dan, Alyssa, and Chloe were still behind him, standing guard. For the first time since this nightmare began, he wasn't carrying Liz's life alone.

And that was the only reason he could force himself to walk out of the room.

***

The hangar was a cavern of steel and echo, its ceiling lost in shadow and its walls lined with the Institute's arsenal. A row of VTOLs waited under the strobing hazard lights, wings folded like great mechanical birds at roost. The air was heavy with the scent of fuel and hot metal, the low thrum of engines warming vibrating in Max's chest.

Around them, soldiers barked clipped orders over the hydraulic hiss of loading cranes. Boots hammered against the steel deck in a rhythm that matched the pounding in Max's ribs, every sound sharpening the sense that this wasn't just a deployment — it was a march into a tomb.

Victor walked at his side, his long coat trailing behind him like the shadow of a storm. He hadn't spoken much since the message. His silence was thick, not the brooding kind Max was used to, but sharper, more focused — like the moments before a fight when all the noise in the world narrows to one point.

Max understood it. He felt the same weight pressing against his ribs. Ethan's voice wouldn't stop echoing, shredded and broken in his memory. It had been years since he'd last called Sydney "home," but that single word from Kimaris had dug into him like a hook. Home. Ethan was being torn apart on the same ground where Max had once raised his daughter. Where April had died. Where Liz's life had first been set on fire.

Captain Hawthorne was already waiting by the VTOL. His uniform was immaculate despite the rushing chaos around them, his coat cut with the sharp lines of a man who lived on regulation and discipline. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, watching as his squad finished the final checks on the transport.

"You're late," Hawthorne said, his tone clipped, but there was no real heat in it. Just precision. "The message was clear. Ethan Campbell is in enemy hands. Fire captain. Mentor. It's all in your file. That makes this mission high priority."

Max nodded.

"Understood? Good. Then you'll move with purpose."

Max stopped a few feet short of him, adjusting the duffel slung over his shoulder. "He was my captain. My mentor. When April died, he was the one who showed up — helped me sort through the ashes, pulled me back from the edge. Maybe he did it more for her memory than for me, but it kept me standing. That's reason enough."

Hawthorne's expression didn't flicker. "Then you'll be glad to know I'm giving you more than a skeleton crew. Two full fireteams, fully armed, soulsteel rounds, anti-demon rigging on the bird. We'll land on the edge of the target zone and hold position while you and your… partner" — his eyes flicked briefly to Victor — "retrieve your man."

Victor's lips peeled back in a humorless grin, teeth catching the light. "Call me partner again, and I'll show you how I treat mine."

The soldiers nearby stiffened at his tone, but Hawthorne didn't flinch. He studied Victor with the kind of cold appraisal that reminded Max of Alpha. "You're an unstable element. But the Institute insists you're effective. I'll trust efficiency over etiquette."

Victor chuckled low in his chest and leaned closer. "Smart man."

Max stepped between them before the tension could spark. His voice was steady, though the fire under his skin prickled at Hawthorne's bluntness. "What are our chances? Be honest."

Hawthorne's gaze shifted to him, and for the first time there was the faintest crack in his soldier's façade. "The enemy knows you're coming. That message wasn't a mistake. It was bait."

"I know," Max said.

"You'll still go."

Max's jaw tightened. He didn't answer.

Hawthorne studied him a moment longer, then nodded once, as though confirming something to himself. "Then you're the kind of man I want in front of me. But make no mistake — if your brother's gone too far, if the Lord holding him forces my hand, my men will not die for sentiment. They'll die for mission parameters, if they have to. Not for ghosts."

He paused, eyes hard. "Understood?"

Victor growled. "Ethan's not a ghost."

Max's voice cut through, low but final. "Not yet."

For the first time his gaze softened, almost imperceptibly. "I've seen men bend orders for family before. If you're half as relentless as you look, Jaeger, then maybe this isn't a suicide run."

The soldiers finished their checks, climbing into the VTOL with practiced efficiency. The engines were rising to a full roar now, the heat spilling across the hangar floor in shimmering waves. Hawthorne stepped aside, gesturing to the ramp.

"We launch in five. Once we're airborne, you're mine until wheels down."

Max looked back over his shoulder once, toward the sealed doors of the Institute. Liz was behind those walls. Dan. Alyssa. Chloe. He could almost feel the weight of their promise pulling against him. But when he turned back, the fire was already coiling again, urging him forward.

He climbed the ramp, Victor close behind. Hawthorne followed, barking orders to his squad.

The hatch began to close, sealing the world outside with a hiss.

Heat from the engines bled into the cabin, thick and oily, carrying the stench of fuel that clung to the back of Max's throat. The metal walls rattled with the roar, loose straps and buckles vibrating against the bulkheads like teeth in a clenched jaw. For a moment it felt less like boarding a transport and more like stepping into a coffin built of steel and fire.

Max tightened his grip on the chain coiled at his hip. Every instinct screamed that he was walking into a trap. But there was no hesitation left in him.

If Kimaris wanted him to come home, then he would. Home wasn't the same city Kimaris remembered — it was ashes, memories, and a daughter still fighting for her breath behind Institute glass.

And he'd bring hell with him.

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