They thought the worst was over.
The screams had quieted. The ash had settled. Scribble's twitching body lay shattered in the alleyway behind the breathing walls of the shop, his ink leaking like spilled memories. Missy stood over him, covered in cuts and bruises, hands trembling from the fight.
"Is it over?" Natasha asked, her voice cracking.
Kevin grunted, lifting a piece of debris from Dina's shoulder. "He's dead. They're all dead."
But he wasn't. Led moved. It wasn't a twitch. It wasn't a leftover nerve spasm. It was purposeful. The twisted body of the entity unfolded from beneath the wreckage of the alley, its unjointed fingers scratching against concrete, dragging itself up with the sound of teeth gnashing.
"Get back!" Missy screamed.
The survivors turned just as Led let out a sickening, grinding cry—its hair spiraling like demon horns, eyes hollow and hot with something primal. With every step, its limbs cracked. The nails, sharp and bending the wrong way, clawed the air around it.
It wanted blood.
Led launched forward, smashing Kevin into the side of the dump with a sickening crack. Dina tackled him away before a second swipe could land, rolling them both into the dirt as Missy fired the last few bullets from Jiro's old pistol. The shots hit, but Led didn't fall—it barely flinched.
Natasha screamed as Led barreled toward her, arms flailing, eyes wide and empty. Just as it reached her, a pipe came down on its back—Missy, striking with everything she had, again and again until the creature let go of Natasha and spun toward her with a shriek.
"I don't care what you are!" Missy yelled. "You don't win!"
Led's body lurched, spasmed—and suddenly it turned to smoke. Inky and fast, it wrapped around them like a serpent, slamming Kevin into the dirt again, clawing at Natasha's legs, trying to squeeze the breath from Dina's chest.
Missy saw the old oil drum behind them. She remembered the lighter Kevin had found earlier.
She dove.
The flame caught the fumes fast. The alley exploded with fire and pressure—Led screamed, flailing as the blaze devoured its form, splattering it in parts across the cracked pavement.
This time, it didn't get back up. But none of them waited to find out. Bloodied, limping, coughing smoke, they piled into the old rusted truck sitting beside the shop—Kevin behind the wheel, Dina beside him, Missy and Natasha in the back.
The shop still stood behind them, glowing faintly under the ash-colored sky, as if watching them leave. Missy stared at it until it vanished behind trees.
None of them noticed the shape that slipped into the open back of the truck. A long hand with broken nails, a figure crawling like a thought that shouldn't exist. None of them saw the second door creak open behind the alley, far from the truck. The old door with the symbol scratched into it—the one that had always been part of the shop's foundation.
It opened, and Michael stepped through. He was no longer fleshless. Burnt skin had begun to heal. Veins reformed beneath a pale, translucent layer. His face, half-bone, was smoothing over with stolen muscle. He no longer needed the wires—he was the wire. The machine had changed him.
He walked. Toward the same path as the truck. Toward them.
The trip to Ishama, Greenland, took days.
They passed the border in silence. Slept in shifts. Ate only what they had in the truck—cans of beans, dry crackers, and old water bottles. The snow thickened the further north they went, until the trees turned to spires of frost and the sky dimmed to permanent dusk.
They didn't talk about what they'd seen. What they'd done.
Natasha leaned on Missy in the back, her arms wrapped tight around herself. Kevin's knuckles were white on the wheel. Dina stared through the window with empty eyes, her reflection almost ghostly.
"Almost there," Missy whispered, the words like a spell she didn't quite believe.
Ishama was a strange little town—icy, quiet, built around an old lighthouse. Missy's friend Anika lived there, a biologist who had moved north to escape her demons. They hadn't spoken in years, but Missy hoped memory would be enough to buy shelter.
Anika welcomed them in silence, no questions asked. Her house was large and warm, tucked at the edge of the cliffside. The waves below howled, echoing through the walls at night.
They stayed quiet. They bathed. They stitched their wounds. Dina took a long walk every morning along the edge of the cliff. Kevin fixed a broken lamp in the hallway like it mattered. Natasha spent most of her time in the kitchen, cleaning the same counter over and over. Missy sat by the window and watched the snow.
She didn't sleep much. Something didn't feel right. A few nights in, the door to the supply shed creaked.
Anika said it was the wind.
But Missy saw footprints. Something's here, she thought. Inside the back of the truck, beneath a torn blanket and empty crates, something moved. A finger, long and disjointed, dragged across the floor. Eyes blinked open. Not glowing—no. These were eyes black like swallowed ink, like absence.
Led was not dead. Not fully. What they had burned was only the vessel—not the memory. He had slipped into the truck before it left. In pieces. In thoughts. In the gaps between things. And now he stirred.
In the dark, he listened. He remembered. Every scream. Every betrayal. Every death. He stretched his limbs beneath the crates, slowly, silently, and beneath the house, buried in the snow not far from the basement, something else approached.
Michael. He had followed them. Not a man. Not quite a monster anymore.
He stood in the woods, eyes dull with frost, watching the light from Nora's window. And he smiled. Missy stared into the fire that night, hearing it crackle like distant bone. She glanced at the others. At Natasha, curled on the couch. Kevin and Dina are sitting with blankets wrapped tight. They had made it. They were safe.
But still… her chest felt tight. As if something had followed. As if something still watched.
The end of Volume 6: What the Fire Forged.
Characters:
Missy Kirk
Kevin Mason
Dina Montana
Natasha Howard
Officer Jiro Hero
Officer Thompson Madrid
Officer Lance Federick
Officer Daniel Reddick
Markie de Vega
Anika Richards
Entities:
Michael Harrington/Death A. Death
Scribble
Hush-Mama
Led the Claws