The sandwich didn’t go down as well as I hoped, but the babies had to eat.

Rising from the table, I moved to the center of the lounge. Instantly, everyone drew closer, instinctively forming a circle around me.
“Everyone,” I began softly, keeping my voice low so the enemy outside couldn’t hear, “you saw what happened earlier when Seth and I tried to use our powers.”

I turned to him, curiosity edging past caution. “How did you walk through them? The spirits, their wielders.  All of them were ready to attack, and yet they didn’t touch you.”

His gaze flicked toward the window where faint silhouettes still hovered in the mist. “Because they can’t,” he said. “Spirits know my hand. I can bind them, command them, or store them.” He reached up, brushing a finger along one of the plaits in his hair. The beads glimmered faintly, pulsing once in response. “Each one carries a spirit I’ve taken, trapped until I choose otherwise.”

The room went quiet. Even the air seemed to lean back, wary.

Seth stepped beside me, his tone steady but firm. “With Max carrying our twins, she can’t fight alongside you this time. We need fighters, skilled ones.”

Fifteen of our warriors stepped forward without hesitation. Alec and Eric joined them.

Eric slapped a hand on Seth’s shoulder. “You fight just fine without your powers. You joining us, or are you planning on giving orders from behind the curtains?”

Elizabeth took a seat at the table, her movements careful but composed. I walked over, lifted Israel from her arms, and settled beside her. His small weight pressed against my chest, his warmth cutting through the unease that thickened the room.

Seth gave Marcus a look that might have melted iron, but before he could answer, Marcus spoke up.
“I’ll protect Max.”

The smirk vanished from Seth’s face. His eyes shifted, silver bleeding into the irises, and the air thickened with his murderous intent.

Adrian unfolded his arms and leaned forward, his tone calm but laced with something sharp beneath it. “While your eyes stay on Max,” he said softly, “mine will stay on you.”

The words carried weight, and that whispering intent of his that made hearts listen before minds did.

Marcus raised both hands in surrender, his voice calm but quick. “Don’t get me wrong. You might not be able to protect her against the spirits without your power if they decide to attack.”

Seth’s aura dimmed slightly, though the tension between them was sharp enough to taste.

“That’s settled then,” I said quietly. “Marcus stays. Seth joins the fight.”

One by one, eighteen of our strongest warriors stepped forward. The air trembled around them, heavy with breath and quiet fury. Beyond the gate, the storm waited.

The fog split as the first warrior moved. No shout, no warning, only motion. Bodies collided with the sound of bone and breath and light cracked through the mist where fists met.

The black stones pulsed again, vomiting waves of nausea.

A few stumbled, but the seasoned ones held their ground, breathing through the vertigo until it broke.

One went down hard.

A sharp cry tore through the field and he hit the ground clutching his head, writhing as if the vibration was tearing through his skull from the inside. His boots dragged trenches in the soil, body fighting something none of us could see.

I lurched upright without meaning to.

Jamey saw, or sensed it. He shot across the field, dragging the man back just as a blade sliced through the space where his throat had been.

Only then did the counterattack become wildfire.

Alec cut through the field like lightning tasting freedom. Each kick tore the air, each punch left white fire clawing the sky. His opponent flew backward, unconscious and smoking like someone had plugged him into judgment itself.

Eric fought like an avalanche learning grace. Every blow rippled through the earth, his sheer mass moving with absurd precision. The air popped around him, qi burning in thin halos of heat.

A spirit lunged from behind its summoner, shrieking. One of our fighters spun, heel slicing through the fog and made clean contact. The summoner folded before the spirit did and both collapsed into ribbons of smoke.

Another warrior grappled his foe, slammed him to the earth, snapped his wrist and wrenched the black stone free before tossing it toward the house.

Jamey caught it mid-air, grinning like a kid returning stolen candy.
I turned it over in my hand. My Scripture recoiled, gold inscriptions tightening under my skin. The stone shivered, harmless now, just like dead glass pretending to matter.

Outside, Seth moved.

No sound. No haste.
Only precision.

Each step measured the distance between mercy and ruin. His kick hit a man’s ribs, the shockwave folding him backward, but Seth caught him by the hair before the body could fly, plucked the stone from his grasp, and tossed it my way. Then, calm as judgment, he drove a right hook that folded the man like paper and left the wind reeling.

Beside me, Marcus leaned forward, eyes never leaving Seth. “Eric’s right. The man’s a brilliant fighter. I’d hate to face him, especially knowing he carries the Breath.”

“Well, then,” I muttered, “learn to control your testosterone around my husband. Friend or foe, he won’t tolerate anyone testing boundaries.”

I checked if the warning registered, then turned back to the chaos outside, where thunder wore a human face and the fog learned fear.

Everything stilled.

And not with silence or calm, but with something wrong.
Like a pause with teeth.

The remaining summoners, bloodied but wearing hollow smiles, lifted their stones in perfect unison. The surge that followed did not move outward. It pressed inward, squeezing thought, breath and instinct into a single point behind the ribs.

The fog convulsed.

Their spirits jerked backward as though yanked by a hand large enough to grip souls. The forms stretched thin, trembling, half-torn from their bodies. The edges flickered, vibrating violently, caught between dimensions they were never meant to touch.

Cracks split their spectral faces and black light leaked out, threading into their physical bodies like veins made of ink. Flesh and fog fused in pulses, struggling, refusing, submitting, all at once.

Someone gasped near the treeline.

Noise followed immediately.

Not screams, just raw instinct, gasps, startled shouts, the kind of sound people make before fear has a name.

A cluster of warriors staggered, reaching for the space around them with wide, unfocused eyes. Others touched their ears, testing the silence that swallowed everything.

A few collapsed completely, bodies hitting the earth like cut strings. They did not twitch or flinch. They simply fell and stayed there, unmoving, breath shallow or gone. The grass beneath them greyed in seconds, color draining in a slow ripple outward.

Alec cursed, low and sharp.

I exhaled. “Well, if Alec’s swearing, things are officially bad.”

Eric braced himself, muscles tightening. “They are absorbing the senses.”

He glanced at me and Seth, then lowered his voice like the question was half to himself. “So why are we not affected.”

Jamey flattened himself further against the wall beside me, eyes enormous. “Forget the why. I just really hope step two isn’t skin melting. I would like to not experience that today.”

Oh, Jamey. Sweet terrified disaster.

Seth spoke before I could respond, still watching the battlefield as if calculating its heartbeat. “Because you are marked. The stones cannot break what already belongs to the Breath and Flame.”

His tone made the world feel suddenly smaller. Not louder. Just… aware.

The summoners did not stand still.  Their stones vibrated harder, ringing with a frequency no ear could register but every bone understood. The spirits tethered to them convulsed again, snapping forward and backward in violent stutters as if the world was trying to edit them out and failing.

Their bodies shook. Their spirits thrashed. Reality struggled to decide which version belonged.

My knees softened and the Living Scripture along my spine burned with warning.

I clutched my stomach, voice shaking. “Stay calm, little ones. You are safe.”

Marcus rose beside me, slow and deliberate, like a blade being drawn from its sheath one inch at a time. When he stood to his full height, his presence shifted the space around him. Muscles tightened beneath his shirt, rippling with controlled fury, the kind that came from exhaustion and restraint rather than rage.

He took a single step forward.

The world seemed to slow with him.

His braids lifted, suspended in an unseen current, beads brushing together in soft clicks that sounded like warning bells before a reckoning.

He did not posture.
He did not threaten.
He simply carried himself with a certainty that made the battlefield recognize rank.

Steady. Unshaken. A force in human skin.

He looked at the chaos ahead, gaze unblinking, and everything waiting to move seemed to hesitate… as if the world wanted permission.

Then he spoke.

“Enough.”

The air turned solid.

Every spirit stopped mid-motion, bodies suspended like marionettes waiting for the next command. Marcus lifted his hand, palm forward.

The beads in his braids answered first, shifting with a quiet chime. Their colors flickered to life, casting bronze, green, blue and red across his skin in soft, moving reflections. The tattoos along his arms absorbed that light and stirred, the lines gliding across his flesh in slow, deliberate patterns.

A low hum followed.

Not sound exactly. More like pressure. It settled deep inside and everything went still.

The tattoos moved with it, reshaping themselves in rhythm, as though his body remembered a language older than breath.

The spirits reacted.

Their fused forms trembled, not with fear but acknowledgment. Even bound to corruption, they bowed from the inside, flickering in reluctant reverence.

Heat rolled beneath my skin. The Flame reacted before I did, pulsing once in recognition. Beside me, silver shimmered from Seth’s breath, responding the same way. We did not resist. We could not. Something in Marcus’s power felt ancient, rightful, and inevitable.

The hum deepened once.

Then Marcus lowered his hand.

Silence followed, clean and absolute, the kind that feels earned rather than forced.

For a heartbeat, the battlefield simply breathed.

Then, without command and without warning, the Flame and Breath struck.

Golden fire and silver light erupted forward in perfect unison, swift and merciless. They did not hesitate. They did not seek permission. They moved with the certainty of something ancient, something that recognized a debt owed.

The frozen summoners twitched, locked in place by Marcus’s hold, unable to lift their stones or flee. Their spirits vibrated violently, half torn from their bodies, flickering with a panic that came far too late.

The Flame reached them first.

It did not burn like earthly fire. It purified. Gold seared through corruption, peeling it away like rot under sunlight. Their skin split under the glow, revealing the darkness beneath before consuming it entirely.

The Breath followed.

Cold silver threaded through their souls, unraveling them strand by strand. Their mouths opened in screams the body tried to give voice to, but Marcus’s stillness muted every sound. Their agony remained silent, trapped behind an invisible veil.

Burning and freezing at once, they trembled, arching as light tore through them from the inside out. Then, one by one, their bodies collapsed into ash, soft and weightless.

The Flame and Breath swept over what remained, scattering the dust into the night, leaving no trace, no echo, no memory strong enough to haunt.

The quiet that followed was not relief.
It was judgment completed.

No one moved.

Alec stared at the drifting ash, jaw tight. “They… did that on their own.”

Jamey swallowed, voice thin. “So… the Flame and Breath have opinions now.”

No one spoke again.

Because the world was already changing.

Color drained from the night in a single breath, until everything became black and white, sharp and endless. The stars did not sparkle. They burned, fierce and silver, as though someone had wiped the sky clean and lit every one by hand.

Something above us shifted.

Constellations broke apart and rebuilt themselves, lines of white fire threading between them like living veins. The sky felt deliberate, aware, watching.

Then one constellation flared.

Brighter.
Cleaner.
Ancient.

Its light poured downward in a quiet cascade, not harsh, not blinding, but purposeful. It washed over us, over the clearing, over the wounded earth. When it reached me, it paused, hovering like a question.

Warmth spread through my body.

Not heat.
Recognition.

The light slipped beneath my skin and settled deep inside, where the twin heartbeats fluttered with faint, curious rhythm. They answered the light with a tremor that was not fear.

Joy.
Or something holy.

The glow wrapped around them, soft as breath, certain as law. A promise. A warning. A blessing. I could not tell which.

Slowly, the constellation dimmed. The sky exhaled. Stars softened back into their ordinary brilliance, though nothing felt ordinary anymore.

Marcus watched the heavens, jaw set, voice low enough to feel rather than hear.

“Another has awakened.”

The world echoed the sentence like it agreed.

Seth’s gaze shifted to me. His irises caught the fading starlight and turned molten silver. He looked at my belly, not with fear, or shock, but something quiet and reverent.

“And so have they,” he murmured.

For a heartbeat, everything held.

Then the night returned to itself.
Color seeped back into the world.
Grass lifted with the breeze.
Leaves rustled like nothing had happened at all.

But warmth lingered.

A silence followed that was not emptiness.

It was a promise waiting for its fulfilment.

If you reached the end of this chapter and need a moment to stare at the wall in silence, you are not alone. I had the same reaction when I wrote it.

From the spirits, to Marcus, to what happened at the end, everything from this point forward begins to change. Nothing stays small, simple, or quiet anymore.

If you are enjoying the story so far, consider following or supporting it on your platform. It helps more than you realize and tells the algorithms you want this world to grow.

The next chapter continues the fallout and the questions that will not wait.