A few days had passed since I told Autumn the truth and spoken to Alex about what I had seen in my vision. I was at an impasse. Should I move on and let go of the possibility that Patrick may or may not have assisted Peter in some way? Or should I pursue it? I knew in my mind that the power Peter would have used against Autumn, through the hairbrush, would have dispersed, dying alongside him. However, the principle behind what I was feeling was what made me continue to mull it over.

  I know I’m not perfect, and I’ve done a lot of fucked up shit with my own existence, but if Patrick was involved, or even remotely linked to Peter going inside of Autumn’s dorm to do something to her… I just couldn’t let it go. The family… Carter, at least, had to know… even if it was all unwilling from Patrick’s end, and Peter had forced his way into Patrick’s life. I just feared the blowback of that accusation, especially after Patrick had just lost his father.

  Night had fallen across St. Louis, and I was sitting on top of a very tall, very modern building. It was one of the skyscrapers that appeared to be almost entirely made of glass. I’m sure it had a name, but I didn’t give a shit at the moment. I slowly made my way to the top through the inside, actually using the fire escapes and ladder wells. I was kind of wandering around aimlessly as I thought things over, and I just saw an open door and walked in. Then I kind of just moseyed up and found a stairwell that looked like it went on forever, and then I finally made it out to the roof.

  Once I was out there, it had a pretty nice vibe, especially in the late-night hours. I could see across the city in all directions, my sight only blocked out by the other taller buildings in the area. I could see the Arch in the distance, standing tall and looming over the city at the river’s edge. Lights lit up the frame of the landmark with bright, colorful lights from the national park at its base. It was a towering thing, a secret thing too; the inner workings strengthened and repaired by CWT construction, warded and enhanced with their silver alloy. It was a massive ward, producing an effect deep in the heart of the city that I was still unsure of exactly how and what it did.

  I wondered if it weren’t here, or fixed up by the Chasse family, how much worse would the city be? Would there be all sorts of different creatures roaming the night… the day? With the city sitting atop the pits… what else would crawl from the shadows if the massive ward didn’t stand watch above St. Louis?

  As I sat, my mind wandered to all of my friends. I tried to focus, shift my mind partially into the more focused mode I’d go into when I had a name and vision. I wanted to practice something, something that came and went sometimes easier than the others, but it remained slightly out of grasp without the push of Death’s vision.

  Then I thought of Patrick. I focused on him, his name, his face, everything I could remember about him. I tried to manually sense him off in the distance, where he might be, but nothing. I tried to push my mind and expand it across the city, but nothing. I felt something deep in the core of my brain, but I just couldn’t place my finger on what it was or what I needed to do.

  I tried to calm my mind, quiet the things from the city that made their way up to my ears on the top of the skyscraper. Once everything fell away and my mind was quiet, I felt the thrum from across dimensions. The steady, unrelenting pulse of the Primeval of Annihilation. Myordrakien’s undying heart beat through every cell in my body; slowly at first, the beats barely tapping my awareness until they surged louder with each pulse, and the thunderous crashes rushed in my ears and through my veins.

  Then, it was like second nature. I thought of Patrick, and I felt a pulse surge outward from my mind. It tore across the city, spreading out in all directions, blanketing a massive area with my senses. My awareness took it all in, in a way that was not exact and detailed but just overwhelming in its breadth. I could sense vague things everywhere the pulse passed over, but just shadows… silhouettes, as it was not what my mind was searching for.

  The pulse continued spreading and spreading until it finally hit something that vibrated in resonance with my mind. A white-hot spike appeared in the distance in my mind. The moment the impact registered in my brain, the pulse stopped and went no further. A second pulse surged out from within me, this time not going in all directions but straight out to where the ear-piercing hum originated from. It was Patrick’s location.

  Like a follow-up verification, the second ping that came to my mind was the point of resonance. Details emerged. A black and white image appeared in my head of Patrick sitting in a wooden chair in front of a desk. He had papers spread out everywhere, a pen in his hand as he went through documents, signing his name to things. I couldn’t make out any details about what exactly the papers were or any other details aside from Patrick’s appearance and his physical location in the world.

  As my mind latched onto his position, my eyes opened. They shifted to black while they were closed, and upon opening them, they slightly adjusted, and I could see something in the distance. It was in the same direction I felt the resonance from the pulse that I had sent out. I knew what I was seeing wasn’t real in the physical world, but a way that my mind was showing me the non-physical things that my power was doing. I could see almost a red glowing ember off in the distance, illuminating the sky where my tracking sense picked up Patrick’s location. It was hard to describe, but I knew exactly what it was… where he was. It didn’t mess up my vision or anything like that; it was just an awareness that I could see along with everything else.

  I shut Patrick from my mind and let go of the latch that linked me to his presence. The amber glow off in the distance faded, and I couldn’t sense his location anymore.

  I shifted gears, thinking about Frank. I wanted to practice. I wanted to be able to command more of these powers that lay dormant inside of me. As I grew stronger in my Primeval power, I’d gain more access to things that I wouldn’t necessarily know how to use. Practice, trial, and error would give me an edge as I battled the curve that was steep as fuck. Trying to understand and use the powers of a being that I wouldn’t be able to comprehend if I stood toe to toe with it was a chore; the more intricate ones, obviously. The raw strength, murder, and mayhem came easily. I had to fight to keep that inside… just as always. Though it was easier… and I had an idea about that and what might be going on. But I wasn’t to that… not yet.

  I did feel another hand guiding me, though, thoughts popping into my mind that weren’t necessarily mine, and I knew it. However, me and Myordrakien were linked together more now than ever. The lines between us had blurred, and now the cat was out of the bag, and I knew that Death was the entity that granted me this power. I felt that he was the glue that held the Primeval-side and human-side together. We became more cohesive. Or maybe I just became less of an inept dumbass and was able to start doing things other bearers of this curse could do much sooner. I was unsure, but grateful that I was seemingly starting to figure it out.

  Just as before, the pulse went out in all directions, surging through streets, houses, buildings, trees, anything in all directions, then impacting a point on a different side of town where Frank lived. The second pulse came just the same, bypassing everything else and latching directly to Frank's image of him sitting inside his truck. He had one hand on the wheel, the other turning his radio to a new station as he drove through the night outward and away from the city. I assumed he was heading toward Jane. I could sense the position where my mind latched onto his location, and I could tell that it was moving. Frank was driving somewhere, and I could feel it, literally seeing the crimson amber far out from where I sat on top of the building, moving away.

  I tried it again and again, switching targets of people I knew, testing and trying my ability to track people using this strange new sense. It was like a strange form of sonar or some other kind of pulse-sensing technology. It was getting to be easy. Less focusing was required as I shifted targets, feeling more natural now.

  I stopped after about an hour, not because I was tired of doing it, but because I had run out of people to look for. I didn’t know a whole shitload of people in St. Louis, and the people I could reach appeared exactly where I thought they’d be. Even Carter and Eleanor appeared in my mind, though I thought I might struggle to see them after I learned more about the warding that layered their property to keep things out. I could sense where they were; however, I will say that their presence was less refined in my mind. I could tell they were on their property and could even sense their exact location; however, there was a haziness to it. Not as clear as anyone else who wasn’t behind some kind of warding. I found it interesting that the warding affected me in any way. If I were a guessing man, I’d say it was probably the oldest and most unique of all of their wards, the underground plant network that was grown in the ground upside down.

  I did try to think about my brother and Vicky, but when I sent out the pulse, I felt it keep running until it dispersed, and a new pulse had to be generated from my mind. The distance I needed to cover was too much for me. I couldn’t manually use this tracking sense, or sonar, or whatever it was, to reach someone that far away. They were states away in Texas, and I just didn’t have that kind of range yet.

  Something about practicing this skill, using a part of the beast that wasn't just straight rip and tear, but was more honed and intricate, that changed my mood. It gave me a better understanding of certain things. Like how I tracked Allen from a photograph, or how I laser-focused on a target when Death gave me the names and visions. It must have been the subconscious version of what I was doing on the roof above the city. But now… now I was pulling it off all on my own. It gave me an excitement I wasn't prepared to feel.

  I sat in silence, leaning back against the rooftop ledge, my arms angled behind me to brace my weight. The night stretched wide and endless above me, a dark blanket pricked with cold stars that barely shimmered through the haze. The city below murmured softly, distant traffic and humming lights blending into a low, ever-present thrum. But up here, it was quiet… still.

  That stillness didn’t last. I felt something… pressure just beside my left eye. Not on it, not physical, but more like… awareness. A presence that was heavy and cold. It wasn’t a trick of the wind or nerves. It was there.

  The blade. Death’s blade, granted to me when I fully became his monster, his tool. It wasn’t visible, not to the eye, but I could feel it… resting in that strange space just outside this reality, hovering close to my left side like a shadow that wasn’t supposed to be there. And in that moment, it was calling to me. Whispering without sound. Beckoning.

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  It wanted to be drawn.

  I knew the warnings. Death… Jon…. Whoever it was at the time had been clear; don’t pull it around people. The blade didn’t just cut flesh. It consumed life. Unleashed, it could reach out and kill without care, without bias. It didn’t ask questions. It simply ended.

  Still… something in me whispered back. A feeling. Not a thought, not a voice, just a subtle nudge deep in my gut telling me that it was okay. This time, I could pull it without something going horribly wrong.

  I pushed out my pulse sense just to be sure. Energy rippled outward from me like waves in still water. I could feel the layout of the building beneath me in the blur of sensory echoes. I wasn’t looking for anyone in particular, just any living beings. They came as vague smudges in my mind. One, maybe two people far down below on the ground floor; security guards or janitors, probably. But up here on the rooftop, I was alone. Except for what was inside me… begging me to pull the blade.

  Myordrakien stirred. That terrible Primeval… the thing that had embedded itself into my soul like a clawed parasite… it was reaching too. Not physically. But I felt it. A hunger for death… a resonance with its energy. It wanted the blade.

  I swallowed and glanced upward at the sky, my voice barely more than a murmur. “If something bad is about to happen when I do this… please stop me.”

  I knew Death was listening. He always was.

  I’d pulled the blade before… more than I probably should have. Back when I didn’t understand what I was dealing with. When I’d first inherited it, it was like handing a toddler a loaded gun. I hadn’t grasped the danger. I probably twirled it around like a toy, completely unaware I could’ve erased half a city block just by flicking it the wrong way. The warning came after I already had it. Maybe because he saw me doing dumb shit with it. Death had warned me, but I can imagine he was probably facepalming out in the fields as I pulled it a few times. Staring down a loaded gun with the safety off.

  I waited. A minute passed. Nothing. No chill down my spine. No voice in my head. No shadow stepping out from the darkness with a warning.

  So, I said it again, a little louder, a little more dryly. “I’m about to pull your blade, the one you told me not to fuck with too much…”

  Still nothing.

  So I moved with slow purpose. I drew in a breath and reached across myself with my right hand, aiming toward the space by my left shoulder where I could feel it, suspended just out of sight.

  I tried to look at it, but of course, that was pointless. There was nothing there. Not visually. I closed my eyes instead and leaned into the sensation. That pulling current of energy that felt like it was slicing through reality just by existing.

  My fingers passed through something… unseen. Like slipping into icy mist. My skin tingled. My fingertips brushed the smooth hilt, solid and somehow ancient. I gripped it. The moment I did, its presence surged into me like a jolt of electricity; cold, immense, and hungry.

  And then, with one clean motion, I pulled. The blade slipped free from whatever non-space it lived in, and the air around me shifted. A subtle, suffocating heaviness pressed in. Light bent. Shadows crept where they hadn’t been. And before me, piece by piece, the weapon came into view.

  A long, dark blade, wickedly sharp and humming with silent threat. Ancient runes flared to life along its edge and spine, names and sigils I couldn’t read but somehow recognized. Each one pulsed faintly with a rhythm that felt alive. The metal caught the harsh LED glow from a roof access door behind me, its reflection twisted and dancing across the surface like the blade was drinking in the light instead of reflecting it.

  It felt… alive… watching. And for a brief second, I wasn’t sure if I had made the right call.

  As it settled in my grip, the blade thrummed; not with noise, but with pressure. Like the air around it was vibrating, warping just slightly out of sync with reality. My right hand turned slowly, lowering the weapon’s point toward the gravel roof beneath me. My left hand rose to meet it, fingers wrapping around the other end of the hilt with reverence and caution. The moment both hands touched it, I felt him.

  Deep inside me, behind layered walls of flesh and soul and spirit, the Primeval stirred in his cage. Myordrakien moved like something confined too long… starving, coiled in silence for eons without light. Now, with Death’s blade held between my hands, he reached up from the depths of the prison of my mind.

  He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. The hunger said everything.

  Before I could even ask how… before the thought could finish forming, something in me answered. Something darker. The change washed over me in a breath. My heart didn’t race, but it thudded deeper, slower, like it belonged to something vast and cold. My vision pulsed, and then my eyes blackened again, swallowing all color and light.

  I didn’t cry out when my fingers split, when the skin peeled and reshaped, letting black talons press free from their beds like razors pulled through flesh. I had felt it before… too many times. The transformation was no longer jarring, just… inevitable. As simple as blinking that a numbness came with it… expected.

  Annihilation met Death again… and the power flowed from the blade. It wasn’t a rush. Not a storm or lightning strike. No drama, no grandeur. It was slow… deliberate. A constant, steady stream, like a colossal river carving through bedrock. Peaceful, even. But the weight of it was undeniable. It pushed against me like gravity, thick and ancient, pressing down and through as the energy moved from the blade into the monster.

  No lights flared. No winds stirred. To anyone looking, it might’ve seemed like I was just sitting there, quietly holding a sword. But beneath the surface… beneath skin and blood and bone, a feeding was happening. A ritual as old as the deal originated between Death and Myordrakien. I was just the newest partner of the same deal.

  The monster within me drank… and in a way… so did I. And Death’s blade gave.

  I didn’t speak. I didn’t dare interrupt whatever was happening. I sat with it. Eyes half-lidded. The hum of the city far below drifted up, faint and irrelevant. A siren in the distance, a car door slamming blocks away. None of it touched me deeper than surface level. The rooftop felt sealed off, like I was sitting in the eye of some great unseen storm.

  But in my silence, my thoughts still moved.

  Is this how it’s supposed to work? Was this the compromise Death had envisioned for me? A way to siphon off the monster’s hunger when there were no enemies left to slaughter… no worlds left to burn? Perhaps when there were no more targets, no more evil psychopaths to punish, no more Primevals to topple, this was the outlet. Feeding the need for destruction safely, through a blade that could give just enough to keep Myordrakien quiet and not a threat to the world he was bound to serve. I didn’t know for sure. But I made a mental note to ask Death.

  The minutes passed slowly. Ten, maybe more. And then I knew, without being told, that it was enough. Myordrakien had drunk his fill… for now.

  The blade was lighter in my hands. Not empty… not by a long shot. It was still pouring out power with no change in potency. Not even a drop in the bucket. But… the blade felt… quieter. Its edges no longer vibrated with the same insistence that felt born between Death and the Primeval. The calling had dimmed.

  Still holding it gently between both hands, I leaned forward. I didn’t force it, didn’t try to command it. I simply offered it back, lifting it outward into the cool air, as if returning a sacred relic to where it belonged, and it understood.

  The blade shimmered, like a mirage on hot pavement, distorting the space around it. Then it vanished, folding silently back into whatever realm Death kept it in, leaving only a faint chill in its place.

  The rooftop was quiet again. The moment passed. And through all of it, from the instant I first touched the blade to the moment it disappeared, I never once feared for the lives around me. No one died. No energy leaked into the world unchecked. Not a single thread of power escaped. Because Myordrakien had caught it all. Every last drop of Death’s essence that the blade shed, he devoured it like a black hole feeding in total silence, letting nothing return. And now he slept again, nestled back in its domain within my mind… soul… wherever. For now.

  I exhaled slowly, letting the breath flow out of me like smoke from an old fire. My muscles eased, and with it, the presence of the monster sank back into the dark places within me. Not gone… just waiting.

  But it felt closer now. More familiar. The distance between what I was and what I had become had shortened; blurred at the edges, but somehow, I didn’t mind.

  I stood up, brushing the pale, gravel-like grit off my jeans, the roof’s chalky residue clinging to the fabric like ash. The wind moved quietly across the rooftop, bristling my hair back, the cold air almost welcome against my skin. I turned toward the city, gazing out over the vast, glowing web of streetlights and towers. A quiet pulse of life beneath me, blind to what stood above them in the dark. Something ancient… terrifying.

  Something had shifted inside me. Not violently, not all at once, but unmistakably. I had taken another step, undeniably forward. The path wasn’t clear, but I was on it, and for the first time in what felt like forever… I wasn’t afraid of it. I knew what I was now. I knew what I’d been made into. The Primeval, the blade, Death’s chosen hand in the world. None of it felt abstract anymore. No longer pieces I had to find and fit together. The picture had taken shape, and I was in it, carved into the frame alongside entities whose existences spanned time so great that my human mind couldn’t comprehend. There was no running from that now. No denying it. But strangely, there was no dread either.

  Death would come for everyone eventually. Even me. But that truth no longer weighed on me like it used to. It didn’t chill me or haunt me. If anything, it felt… distant. Like a final chapter in a book I hadn’t finished reading, but knew the ending. A given. An endpoint I didn’t need to obsess over.

  There was something like apathy in it… but not the hollow kind. More like clarity. A calm acceptance of inevitability.

  Still, if anything tried to touch the people I cared about: friends, family, even those caught in the orbit of my strange half-life… I knew exactly what I would do. There would be no hesitation. No mercy. I’d tear them apart with my own hands… my talons and not lose sleep over it. That wasn’t a threat or a warning. That was just true.

  But for the things outside of my control… the ones woven into the thread of fate itself… I didn’t feel the same pressure to push back. I understood now that fate was a wheel, and Death kept it balanced. I wasn’t here to stop it. I was here to keep it clean and spinning. And in that understanding, my burden felt lighter. Not because it had less weight… because I’d grown stronger under it. I knew I’d live long, and there might be things that happen outside of my control. I’d do what I could… but why worry? The wheel would spin… even for me, and the ones I cared for.

  I still had things to do. Conversations that couldn’t wait forever. Patrick and his cryptic involvement with Peter. Autumn, and how she reacted once the truth sank in. The pits beneath the city, those ancient, wrong places that still whispered in the back of my mind like something half-awake and watching. The Elders would find me again if I lingered in St. Louis… and I had no plans to leave my friends. Then there was Abel, his voice still ringing in the corners of my mind, asking me… no, expecting me… to destroy the pits. To burn them out like an infection. The way he said it, too… it was like he knew I’d go down there and do it. He was just trying to push me there sooner. He was an odd one, and I suspected he was a much larger player in this secret world that I was still newly acquainted with. Was he a friend… an enemy… or something else? Only time would tell.

  So yeah, I had work to do. A lot of it. But after everything I’d seen, everything I’d learned, it didn’t feel like a question anymore. None of it did. There was no if. Only when. And when was coming.

  I allowed myself a small, quiet smile. Not on my lips, just inside, where the Primeval lived, and where Death watched. A shared understanding passed between us all.

  Then I stepped forward to the edge of the rooftop, letting the city breathe beneath my boots. And without hesitation, I dropped from the skyscraper, vanishing into the wind and darkness of the night below.