Chapter 28: The Opening

  “Black Halo Lance,” Cole uttered calmly.

  Seraphic dark light lanced out from a dozen shadows, turning the demonic beings into ash.

  It happened fast, clean, and final. The street around them didn’t explode or crack. There was no dramatic roar of power. Just shadows that sharpened into something lethal, and then the monsters were gone, reduced to gray piles that drifted and broke apart in the wind.

  Caleb stabbed forward with a spear, the tip puncturing the side of a demon’s head.

  The creature jerked and made a wet, choking sound, then sagged. Caleb yanked the spear free and stepped back, breathing hard. His grip stayed tight, knuckles pale.

  These looked like zombies. If the corpses were twisted nightmares from the pits of hell.

  Their skin was gray and split in places, stretched too tight over warped bone. Some had chunks missing, bites out of them and left jagged edges left behind. Their eyes were sunken and glossy. Their mouths hung open, and when they moved, their jaws clicked.

  They weren’t just dead things walking.

  They were wrong things walking.

  The monsters had definitely become more numerous as Cole and Caleb had neared the parking structure.

  At first it had been one or two at a time, shambling out from behind abandoned cars or slipping through broken storefronts. Then it became groups. Then it became a steady pressure.

  Cole’s authority stat kept tightening, warning after warning, the pressure never fully releasing. It made the air feel dense. It made his shoulders tense.

  The structure itself looked like a bomb had detonated against it. Chunks of stone were missing, and one layer of it had fallen completely.

  Concrete slabs lay collapsed at awkward angles, rebar exposed. The side of the structure was gouged open, and the inside was dark, layered darkness, the kind that swallowed candlelight. A faded sign still clung to one cracked pillar, its letters half torn away and smeared with soot.

  Even so, there was a small opening leading downward.

  It wasn’t a normal entrance. Broken concrete formed a narrow throat descending into shadow, and the air coming out of it was cold and sour.

  Demonic monsters flooded out of the opening.

  Hands grasped at rubble. Feet scraped stone. Bodies tumbled and caught themselves. They poured out. A river of corpses, and behind them, more pressed forward, drawn by something invisible.

  Caleb shifted beside Cole, spear raised. His stance was good. He’d improved. Cole could see it even in the way the other man’s weight was set, the way he didn’t leave his legs locked, the way he kept the spear point ready to jab.

  But the number of monsters made that preparation feel thin.

  Cole lifted his Crozier.

  His halo flashed over his head, dark, unassuming, drinking in light.

  The ring didn’t glow. It didn’t announce itself. It simply existed, and the world around it seemed a fraction dimmer.

  More dark light flashed out of shadows, killing a score.

  Bodies collapsed into ash mid-step. Some toppled forward and disintegrated as they fell, leaving empty air where they should’ve landed. The street filled with drifting gray, the smell of scorched filth rolling over them in a wave.

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  A few still came.

  More still came.

  “Choir of Verdict,” his spell descended, halting many more monsters as wings of shadow extended from his back, there and gone again.

  The verdict hit.

  Demons stumbled and froze. Their limbs locked. Their heads jerked, but the motion didn’t complete. Some sagged to their knees under the pressure. Others simply hit the pavement and stayed there, twitching.

  The shadow wings unfurled behind Cole in a subtle sweep, then faded, leaving only the memory of them and the feeling that something had judged the street itself.

  Cole wiped out the rest of them before Caleb could even step forward.

  A few heartbeats later, the wave was gone. The opening still breathed cold air, but nothing climbed out of it. Only ash drifted in slow spirals, settling into cracks and pooling along the curb.

  Caleb lowered his spear slowly.

  The other man stared at Cole.

  “How?” Caleb asked.

  His voice was strained.

  He had seen Cole act before, but the ease with which he took out monsters wholesale still astounded him.

  “I have a class, too. None of my skills do that.”

  Cole leaned on his staff for a moment, raising an eyebrow at the notification he had just gotten.

  200 EXPERIENCE GAINED. LEVEL UP: 5-6

  After weeks and more than a hundred monsters killed, he finally achieved a level.

  The timing almost made him laugh. Almost. If he let himself laugh, it would come out sharp.

  He almost found himself hoping there were a couple of elites in the structure.

  He hated that thought the moment it formed, but it was there anyway. He needed power. The kids needed time. The demons weren’t going to be merciful just because Cole didn’t like wanting more blood.

  He assigned his spell point to Black Halo Lance.

  Black Halo Lance: Rank 1 to Rank 2

  He felt the shift. Something in his chest clicked into a slightly different alignment. The spell belonged to him.

  He dismissed the notifications.

  His goal was to get Black Halo Lance to tier 2, which would take him two more points. He had a feeling the spell would become far more potent if he did.

  All of them likely would, but some instinct was pushing him toward Black Halo Lance.

  It wasn’t just logic. It was a pull. A quiet certainty that the lance was the tool he would need when the world finally put something in front of him that didn’t die in a single judgment.

  He flicked his gaze to Caleb, then rubbed his face.

  “A lot of this is just as strange and new to me as it is to you. All I know is that, I tried to help save some kids from a monster. I succeeded, barely, and with a fair amount of luck, and next thing I know, I have a powerful title that allows me to do stuff like this.”

  Cole’s voice stayed even, but his eyes drifted to the opening again.

  “My class has barely affected me at all. Maybe it will later. I don’t know.”

  Caleb grunted.

  “Fair enough. I’ll count it as a blessing.”

  He squinted at the hole.

  “Guess we should get a move on toward it.”

  Cole nodded. The hesitation was still there, buried beneath duty. The warnings in his authority hadn’t stopped. They pulsed.

  But there wasn’t another choice.

  They strode toward the entrance, ducking their heads, they walked through.

  The path stretched downward, it was tight due to the collapsed concrete.

  Jagged slabs angled overhead. Rebar stuck out in random directions. The rubble formed a narrow corridor that forced them to move single file, shoulders brushing stone. Dust clung to their clothes. The air grew colder the deeper they went, damp and heavy, the smell of earth mixing with that faint burnt stench that always seemed to follow demons.

  Surprisingly, no monsters attacked them as they descended into the bowels of the earth.

  That silence was worse than fighting.

  Cole listened for scraping feet, for snarling, for the wet click of jaws. He heard only their own breathing, their boots crunching on grit, and the occasional creak of shifting concrete.

  Caleb kept his spear up, eyes scanning the darkness ahead. He didn’t speak. Cole didn’t either.

  Before long, the path opened up and the pair stepped out to a ledge.

  The space beyond was wider than Cole expected, a hollowed-out interior where an entire level had collapsed. The ledge they stood on overlooked a drop into deeper shadow. Dust floated in slow sheets through the air, catching faint light from above.

  Stairs to the right wound down, cracked and some missing in places.

  Concrete steps descended in a broken line, sections sheared away, handrail twisted and hanging. It was still usable if they were careful, but careful meant slow, and slow was dangerous.

  Further down, they could see it.

  This rift was different.

  It wasn’t a clean tear like the one Cole had come through.

  It looked like reality had been ripped open and never stitched back up. The edges of it pulsed subtly. The air around it warped, bending in and out in slow, nauseating waves. It made Cole’s eyes water if he stared too long.

  Cole could see flashes of what lay beyond, a nightmare hellscape he could hardly comprehend.

  A sky the color of bruises. Jagged silhouettes. A landscape that shifted when he blinked. Heat shimmer and darkness.

  Demons tore out of it.

  They burst forward with intent, claws scraping the ground, bodies twisting as they forced themselves into this world.

  Cole tightened his grip on the Crozier.

  Caleb’s spear point dipped toward the stairs.

  They’d found the source.

  And whatever was waiting down there wasn’t going to let them take the kids back without a fight.