The feed wavered, pixelated, and then locked into a shaky livestream. A boy about Kieran's age stumbled through the ruins of a city street, phone clutched in his hand. His face was streaked with blood and ash, eyes wide with terror.
"—someone, please—" His voice cracked, jagged with panic. "They're everywhere. I don't—I don't know where to go—"
The phone jerked as he spun, the lens catching wreckage behind him: overturned cars, glass glittering like ice, bodies crumpled in the road. Then came the sound—something heavy dragging across asphalt.
The boy's breath hitched. "Oh God."
A shadow blotted out the streetlights.
The camera caught flashes of it: claws scraping along brick, a torso that bent in ways bone shouldn't. The boy ran. The feed lurched, pavement and firelight flashing past.
He screamed into the phone, voice breaking. "If anyone sees this—tell my mom I—"
The monster hit him mid-sentence. The camera spun across the ground, cracked screen showing nothing but sky as something wet splattered across the lens. His scream cut off like a switch had been thrown.
For a moment, the only sound was static. Then the feed ended.
The dorm was silent. Even the younger kids stopped crying, stunned into stillness by what they'd just witnessed.
Kieran didn't look at them. He couldn't. His eyes stayed locked on the window, on the horizon where the smoke thickened.
And then he saw them.
Moving through the firelight, silhouettes shifted—monsters, dozens, maybe hundreds. Hulking figures dragging claws through the streets, long limbs hooking over rooftops, serpentine shapes weaving between the ruins like shadows come alive.
Every step rattled the earth. Every roar carried through the night air, closer, louder.
A helicopter swept past, its spotlight cutting across the smoke. The beam caught one of the creatures full on: a winged thing with a body like twisted bone. Its head snapped toward the light, jaws splitting open too wide.
Gunfire tore through the sky. For a heartbeat it almost seemed to work—chunks of flesh blown free, the monster staggering back.
Then the pieces twitched, squirmed, and pulled themselves back into place. Whole again.
The creature leapt. Its body slammed into the chopper midair, sending the machine spiraling into a tower. Fire blossomed. Screams cut short.
The monster rose through the flames, wings stretched wide, shrieking in victory.
Kieran's reflection stared back at him in the cracked windowpane. Pale. Wide-eyed. His hand was still gripping the cross at his neck until the edges dug red into his palm.
He didn't whisper. He didn't pray.
He just breathed, steady and shallow, as the rhythm in his chest pounded harder. That second heartbeat. The one that wasn't his.
Then the walls shattered.
The front of the orphanage blew inward as a hulking figure tore through the stone. Children screamed. Staffers tried to herd them back, but it was useless—the monster was already inside.
Its claws swept once. Blood sprayed.
Kieran moved before thinking, throwing himself at the closest kid, dragging him to the ground just as a talon carved the air where his head had been. Dust filled his lungs. The floor shook with every step the monster took closer.
He pulled the child behind a broken table, heart hammering, body trembling. He had nothing—no weapon, no power, nothing but the cross digging into his palm.
Another scream. Another body dropped.
Kieran forced himself to stand. His knees wavered, his vision tunneled, but he refused to stay down.
The monster's eyes found him. Hollow pits glowing faintly red. It stalked forward, each step rattling the ruined dormitory floor.
Kieran didn't blink. He couldn't.
He was going to die.
The creature lunged.
And then the world tore open.
Black feathers cut through the smoke, scattering embers. A figure slammed into the monster mid-strike, wings unfurling wide, each feather edged in shadow. With one fluid motion, it tore the beast apart, spraying gore across the shattered walls.
The fallen angel stood tall in the ruin, eyes gleaming silver, face unreadable.
Kieran's knees buckled. He staggered, his body too bloodied and bruised to hold him. His chest burned. His vision blurred at the edges.
The figure approached, boots crunching over glass and bone. It knelt beside him, voice low, calm, almost soothing.
"Look at them." A hand swept out toward the carnage—the broken beds, the blood-soaked floor, the children who would never rise again. "Look at your home."
Kieran's eyelids fluttered. He tried to focus, but his ears rang, his heartbeat thundering too loud.
"Did the angels come?" the voice asked, smooth as velvet. "No… they never do.
They never protect."
Kieran's lips parted, but no words came. His body swayed.
"But us?" The figure leaned closer, silver eyes locking on him. "We are always here. Watching. Waiting. You will join us, Kieran. You were never theirs to begin with…"
The words faded. Muffled. Like echoes sinking underwater.
The last thing he saw before the darkness swallowed him was a single black feather drifting through the firelight.
And then nothing.
Only the second heartbeat, pounding louder and louder, until even that was gone.