By the time the sun began lowering behind the rooftops, the lower district had stopped pretending the attacks were random.
People still moved through the streets and markets still opened their stalls, but the rhythm of the city had changed in small, noticeable ways. Conversations ended sooner than usual, merchants packed their goods faster, and more eyes drifted toward alleyways and cellar doors whenever something scraped or shifted nearby.
The rumors had spread too far for anyone to dismiss them now.
Something was moving beneath the district.
Frankie and the others had spent most of the afternoon responding to those rumors.
The attacks were not constant, but they were frequent enough that the group barely had time to rest between them. Each time a scavenger appeared it emerged somewhere people gathered—near wells, near markets, or near the stairways that connected the lower district to the higher terraces of the city.
Callista had noticed the pattern earlier that morning, and as the day unfolded it became increasingly clear that she had been right. The creatures were not simply wandering into the district by accident. Someone was guiding where they surfaced, testing how the city reacted to each disturbance.
The angels were studying the place.
Frankie kept that thought to herself as she turned into another narrow street with Luca beside her.
The shouting reached them before the creature did.
A group of merchants unloading dyed cloth from a wagon had scattered across a small courtyard while a scavenger scrambled out from a broken cellar door behind them. The creature was still clumsy from its transformation, but it moved with the same desperate speed all of them had learned to fear.
Frankie crossed the courtyard before the nearest merchant could even raise his hands.
Her strike landed across the creature's shoulder and drove it sideways into a stack of wooden crates, scattering splintered boards across the cobblestones. The scavenger twisted violently and tried to regain its footing, its claws scraping across the stone as it lunged toward the closest moving target.
Luca was already there.
Red Oath flashed once in the fading light as he drove the spear's haft into the creature's ribs, knocking it off balance just long enough for Marco to step forward.
The scavenger slammed into Marco with all its weight.
The impact should have knocked him backward.
Instead Marco shifted half a step and absorbed the momentum as if the force had nowhere to go. His cane came down in a controlled arc that crushed the creature's spine and dropped it instantly to the ground.
The fight ended as quickly as it had begun.
Frankie stepped away and wiped her blade clean while the merchants slowly returned to the courtyard, their voices low and uncertain as they stared at the body lying in the street.
That was the third scavenger they had killed in less than two hours.
Luca rested Red Oath across his shoulder and scanned the surrounding rooftops.
"This is getting worse," he said quietly.
Frankie nodded, because the same conclusion had been forming in her mind for most of the afternoon. The attacks were spreading farther through the district with every hour, and the pattern behind them felt too deliberate to ignore.
Before she could respond, another shout echoed from the direction of the dye warehouses.
This one sounded different.
It carried the sharp edge of real panic.
Frankie moved immediately, running toward the sound while the others followed close behind.
By the time they reached the warehouse district the fight was already over.
A small crowd had gathered in the street between the old brick buildings, forming a loose circle around something on the ground. The people standing there looked shaken rather than curious, which meant they had seen exactly what had happened.
Frankie pushed through the crowd and stopped.
Yara was kneeling on the cobblestones.
The scavenger that had attacked them lay several steps away with its skull crushed inward, but no one was looking at the creature anymore.
Tomas lay on his back in the middle of the street.
His sword was still in his hand.
Frankie felt the world narrow as she stepped closer.
Yara looked up when she saw her approach. There was blood on her hands, and the tightness in her expression told Frankie everything she needed to know before she even spoke.
"He didn't see it come out of the cellar," Yara said quietly. "It came up behind him."
Frankie knelt beside Tomas.
The wound in his side was deep enough that even someone without training could see the damage it had done. The scavenger's claws had torn through muscle and bone before Marco crushed it, and the blood pooling beneath him had already begun spreading across the uneven stones.
Tomas's eyes shifted toward her.
For a moment his expression looked almost embarrassed.
"Well," he said weakly, "that didn't go how I planned."
Frankie pressed one hand against the wound even though she already understood it would not help. The movement was instinctive, the same useless gesture people always made when they wanted time to slow down.
Luca stood nearby with Red Oath lowered, his knuckles white around the shaft of the spear.
Rafe stared at the dead scavenger with a quiet fury that made his shoulders tremble.
Callista arrived seconds later and stopped when she saw what had happened.
The courtyard fell silent.
Tomas's breathing grew shallow.
"Did we stop it?" he asked after a moment.
Frankie met his gaze.
"Yes," she said.
That part was true.
The creature that had attacked him was dead.
The street was safe again.
None of that changed the way his breathing slowed.
Tomas exhaled softly and let his head rest back against the stone.
"Good," he murmured.
His fingers loosened around the sword.
Frankie felt the moment his body went still.
For several seconds no one spoke.
Yara finally stood and wiped her hands slowly against her coat.
"It came out of nowhere," she said. "He was watching the street and it came up behind him."
Wrong place.
Wrong second.
That was all it took.
Frankie rose slowly and looked around the warehouse district.
The buildings still looked exactly the same as they had that morning. The same stained brick walls, the same boarded windows, the same empty courtyards where businesses used to operate before the flooding ruined the foundations.
Nothing about the district had changed.
Except that one of the people who walked its streets yesterday was gone.
Callista stepped closer to Frankie and followed her gaze across the rooftops.
"They are pushing harder now," she said quietly. "This was not an accident."
Frankie nodded.
"No," she replied. "It wasn't."
She could almost feel it now—the way the attacks had spread through the district like probing fingers, testing where resistance appeared and how quickly the city responded to each disturbance.
The angels were not angry.
They were not afraid.
They were removing obstacles the way someone might clear insects from a pantry.
Frankie felt something settle in her chest as she looked back at Tomas lying in the street.
The anger that rose inside her was not loud or reckless.
It was steady.
The kind that stayed.
Luca planted the butt of Red Oath against the cobblestones.
"We bury him tonight," he said quietly.
Frankie nodded once.
Then she turned her eyes toward the deeper streets of the district where the attacks were still spreading.
"And tomorrow," she said, "we make them regret coming here."
The city did not react to the promise.
But somewhere above the rooftops, unseen eyes had already begun watching the group more carefully.
Because cockroaches were not supposed to fight back.
And the ones in this city had started learning how.