Frankie didn't go looking for proof.
Not at first.
Proof was what people with authority demanded—priests, instructors, temple clerks with clean hands and clean ledgers. People like Frankie didn't get to demand proof. People like Frankie got proof dropped into their lives like a stone through a window, then got blamed for the noise it made.
So she tried to treat the missing names the way the district always treated missing names.
As background.
As weather.
As something you shrugged at because if you didn't, you'd spend your whole life staring at the sky and waiting for it to fall.
But that only worked until the missing turned familiar.
It happened in the afternoon, when the streets were busiest and the lower district was loud enough to pretend it couldn't hear its own fear.
Frankie was carrying a bundle of patched cloth up from a vendor when she heard the name.
"Jalen!"
A woman's voice cracked on the second syllable, sharp with worry and anger. Frankie turned her head just enough to see her—Mira, the locksmith's neighbor, hands on her hips, eyes scanning the street like she could force an answer out of it.
"Jalen! You in there? Open up!"
The shop door behind her was half metal, half wood, reinforced with old hinges. The sign above it was crooked, painted by hand: JALEN—LOCKS, KEYS, REPAIRS. It was the kind of place Frankie had used more than once, back when she'd been desperate enough to pick the wrong lock and lucky enough to escape with only a bruise.
Jalen had never asked questions. He'd just looked at the problem, fixed it, and taken payment like he wasn't curious what people did with new keys.
He was useful.
The district liked useful people.
Which meant it noticed when they vanished.
Frankie slowed without meaning to. Marco slowed with her, cane tapping softly, his gaze already on the door.
Mira rapped again, harder. "I'm not leaving, Jalen!"
A man nearby muttered, "Probably sleeping."
Mira snapped her head around. "With his shop barred from the inside? He sleeps with tools in his hands, not with his doors locked!"
The muttering died. People kept walking, but their eyes flicked toward the shop as they passed, drawn to the shape of a problem they didn't want.
Frankie stepped closer.
The moment she came within three paces of the door, her mark warmed.
Not a burn. Not pain.
A slow, sick heat blooming under her ribs like someone had pressed a hand against the inside of her skin.
Frankie stopped dead.
Marco's head tilted. He felt it too—not the mark, but the change in her posture, the way her breath turned careful.
"What is it?" he asked quietly.
Frankie didn't answer Mira. Didn't answer the staring eyes. She stared at the locksmith's door like it had grown teeth.
The warmth pulsed again.
Recognition.
Like her body remembered something it was never meant to meet.
Angel residue, a thought whispered through her mind, not as a system message—nothing that clean—but as instinct. Like scent. Like taste.
"Move," Frankie said softly.
Marco didn't question. He stepped sideways, placing his body between her and the growing cluster of curious onlookers without drawing attention. He didn't look intimidating. He didn't need to. He simply existed in the right place.
Frankie crouched and looked at the bottom seam of the shop door.
There were scratches.
Not from rats. Not from desperation. Too deep. Too precise. Like claws that had decided wood meant nothing.
Mira noticed her crouch. "You know something?" she demanded.
Frankie stood slowly. "Has anyone been inside?"
Mira scoffed. "It's barred."
"Windows?" Frankie asked.
Mira's mouth tightened. "Back ones. But he boards them at night."
"Show me," Frankie said.
Mira hesitated—then nodded sharply, as if relieved someone else had finally stopped pretending.
She led Frankie and Marco around the side alley, past stacked crates and leaking pipes. The back of the locksmith's shop was darker, quieter, the sound of the street reduced to a distant hum.
The window boards were intact.
But the wall beneath them wasn't.
A section of brick had been peeled away as if something had reached in and decided the building was soft.
Frankie stared.
The mark under her ribs heated again, stronger, and for a second her vision seemed to sharpen around the ragged edges of the hole. The world did that now—responded to threats by becoming clearer.
The hole was just wide enough for a person to be dragged through.
Mira's face went pale. "That wasn't there yesterday."
Frankie didn't need her to say it. She could smell it now, faint and cold, like burned incense and metal. Like the aftertaste of lightning.
Marco leaned closer, eyes narrowed. "This isn't a gang."
"No," Frankie murmured. "It isn't."
She pushed her hand toward the hole—then stopped herself. If she touched it and something reacted… if anyone saw…
Instead, she glanced at Mira. "Go back to the street."
Mira blinked. "What?"
"Now," Frankie said, firm.
Mira's fear flared into anger. "You don't get to tell me—"
Frankie stepped closer until Mira's back hit the wall. Her voice stayed low. "If you want him alive, you go back. You shout for guards. You make noise. You make this look like a normal problem."
Mira stared at Frankie's eyes and seemed to make a decision without understanding why. She swallowed and nodded once, then hurried away, footsteps quick and uneven.
As soon as she was gone, Frankie leaned toward the hole, careful, listening.
Nothing.
No breathing. No movement.
Just stillness.
And that smell.
Marco's voice was barely a whisper. "Angels."
Frankie's mouth went tight. "In the city."
Marco didn't look surprised. He looked grim, like someone who'd been waiting for a storm and finally saw the first drop.
Frankie straightened.
She could walk away. Pretend she'd seen nothing. Let temple guards handle it—if they handled it at all.
But the mark wasn't letting her pretend anymore. It pulsed heat through her ribs like an accusation.
She thought of Sofia.
Of the questions. The wide eyes.
Of how quickly children learned fear here.
Frankie turned and started walking. "We're going home."
Marco followed without hesitation.
When they reached the apartment, Luca was already there, spear resting against the wall like a silent threat. Tomas and Yara sat at the table arguing about whether the market prices had gone up because of the arena panic. Sofia was on the floor, tying scraps of cloth around a wooden spoon like she was making her own spear.
When Frankie entered, all conversation died.
Not because she looked angry.
Because she looked certain.
Luca stepped forward immediately. "What happened?"
Frankie didn't take her cloak off. She didn't sit.
She pointed at Marco. "Bar the door."
Marco did it without a word, pushing the bolt into place and testing it twice.
Tomas's grin faded. "That's… dramatic."
Frankie's eyes cut to him. Tomas shut up.
Luca's voice softened. "Frankie."
Frankie exhaled once, slow. Then: "Jalen's missing."
"Locksmith Jalen?" Tomas asked.
Frankie nodded. "His shop was breached from the back. Not picked. Not broken. Peeled."
Yara's posture shifted. Ready. "Gangs?"
Frankie shook her head. "No."
Luca's jaw tightened. "Angels."
Sofia froze mid-knot. "Angels are in the city?"
Frankie looked at her sister and forced her voice to stay even. "We don't know how many. We don't know where they're hiding. But yes. Something angelic was there."
Tomas stared at Frankie like she'd said the sky was falling. "How can you tell?"
Frankie tapped her chest lightly. She didn't explain the mark. Not fully. Not in front of everyone.
Luca understood anyway. He always did. "You felt it."
"Yes," Frankie said.
Marco spoke quietly from the door. "It wasn't just a feeling. There was… residue."
"Residue," Tomas repeated, like he didn't like the word.
Rafe's voice drifted from the window. "That's because they don't belong here."
Everyone turned.
Rafe sat on the sill like he'd been there the whole time, which meant he probably had. He swung his legs inside, expression unusually sober for once.
"How long?" Frankie asked.
Rafe shrugged. "Long enough to hear you say angels. Long enough to know you're not joking."
Luca didn't ask how Rafe got in. No one ever did. The answer was always the same: he did.
Rafe crossed the room and lowered his voice. "Missing people have been happening for days. Everyone's been shrugging because it's the slums. But angels? That's different."
Yara's eyes narrowed. "Why take slum people?"
"Because no one notices," Rafe replied. "Because no one cares."
Frankie's fingers curled. "I care."
Rafe gave her a look like he'd forgotten, briefly, that Frankie was capable of caring loudly. Then his gaze sharpened again. "Also… because it fits."
Frankie stared. "Fits what?"
Rafe hesitated. "The scavengers."
The room went still in a new way.
Luca's voice lowered. "What about them?"
Rafe rubbed the back of his neck. "You've been outside the walls. You've seen how many Rat-class and Hunter-class crawl around in sectors that should be picked clean. Too many. Always too many. Like they spawn."
"Don't say spawn," Tomas muttered automatically, as if the word itself was bad luck.
Rafe ignored him. "I always thought it was the Death Zone making them. The world rotting and… producing vermin."
Frankie felt her mark warm again, faintly, as if it already knew where this was going.
Rafe swallowed, then said it anyway. "What if the angels make them?"
Sofia whispered, "Out of people?"
No one answered her immediately.
Because if you answered that question, you had to accept what it meant.
Frankie stepped toward the window and stared out at the street below.
People walked. People argued. People sold food. People laughed too loudly.
Vermin, the angel would call them.
Not because they were monsters.
Because the angel didn't see the difference.
Luca's voice was tight. "Angels don't—"
"Don't what?" Frankie cut in, turning. "Don't desecrate? Don't build? Don't craft? Luca, we've been told what angels do by people who've never seen them up close."
Marco spoke softly. "And by people who want us to believe they're simple."
Frankie looked at him.
Marco met her gaze, calm. "Predators aren't simple."
A silence settled.
Then Tomas asked the question everyone was avoiding. "If they can turn people into scavengers… then Jalen…"
Sofia made a small sound. Not a cry. A sharp inhale, like the idea stabbed.
Frankie's voice went cold. "We're going to find out."
Rafe blinked. "We?"
Frankie turned to him. "Yes. We. Because if angels are inside the city, it's not just Jalen. It's going to be more. And you can either help me stop it or you can keep counting coin until one of them takes your throat."
Rafe's grin tried to appear and failed. "You know how to sell a cause."
Luca stepped closer, spear in hand. "We search. Quietly. We don't go running to priests."
"No," Frankie agreed. "Priests will turn it into doctrine and speeches. We need bodies."
Yara stood, slipping her blade into her belt. "Where do we start?"
Frankie closed her eyes for one heartbeat and let the heat in her mark guide her memory.
The smell. The cold metal-incense aftertaste. The direction it had seemed to cling to.
She opened her eyes. "Jalen's shop first. Then the back alleys around it. If they're moving people, they're using routes no one watches."
Sofia clutched the wooden spoon spear tighter. "Can I come?"
"No," Frankie said instantly.
Sofia's face crumpled into anger. "You always say—"
Frankie knelt and took Sofia's hands gently. "Listen to me. If I'm right, then the thing doing this sees people as tools. If it sees you, it won't hesitate. You stay here. You stay inside. You do not open the door for anyone."
Sofia swallowed hard, eyes glossy. "Even if it's you?"
Frankie's heart pinched.
She forced herself to nod. "Even if it's me."
Luca's gaze sharpened at that—at the implication Frankie didn't say out loud.
Rafe whistled softly. "That bad."
Frankie stood. "Yes. That bad."
Marco shifted closer, cane in hand, posture small for the world and steady for Frankie. "If we find him…"
Frankie held his eyes. "If we find him alive, we bring him out. If we find him changed…"
The mark warmed again, like a heartbeat.
Frankie's voice dropped. "Then we learn what angels can do. And we make them regret doing it in my district."
Luca tightened his grip on the spear Ares had given him, the metal seeming to drink the room's tension.
Tomas exhaled slowly. "Alright," he said, like a man stepping onto a bridge he didn't trust. "Let's go find a missing locksmith."
Frankie reached for her cloak.
Outside, the lower district kept pretending absence was normal.
But now Frankie had a direction.
And the first time her mark had heated like that, it hadn't been warning her about the Death Zone.
It had been warning her about home.
And somewhere in Novara Prime, something angelic was moving through human streets, building monsters out of people no one important would miss.
Frankie intended to make sure it noticed her.