The east wing corridor stretched ahead of them, narrow and raw, its walls weeping a dark fluid that never quite reached the floor. The Afterglow pulsed gently above, Praise's golden light revealing every crack, every shadow, every place where the building's geometry didn't quite make sense.
They walked in silence. But not their usual silence.
"You're quiet," Jonathan said.
His voice was low and careful, the way he spoke when he was scanning for threats and conversation simultaneously.
"I'm always quiet." Praise replied
"No." He glanced at her. "You're quiet. Different thing."
Praise didn't answer immediately. Her amber eyes were fixed on something in the middle distance—not a threat, just… nothing. The way someone looks when they're seeing something that isn't there.
"Marcus used to fill the silences," she said finally.
Jonathan's stride didn't break, but something in his shoulders shifted. A tightening. A memory.
"Yeah. He did."
They walked.
"I keep waiting for someone to make a joke," Praise continued. "Eloghosa does it, but it's not the same. His jokes are… deflection. Armor. Marcus's were just…"
"Marcus," Jonathan finished.
"Marcus."
The corridor turned left, then right, then straightened into a long hallway that Praise's Afterglow had shown as clear. Except now there was a wall at the end of it.
Solid concrete. Seamless. Breathing.
Praise stopped. "This wasn't here."
Jonathan stepped up beside her, his eyes tracing the wall's surface. "The building changed."
"I know the building changed." Her voice had an edge now—not anger, but frustration at being contradicted. "I'm telling you my scan was clean. Fifty meters in every direction. This hallway was open all the way to the stairwell."
"I'm not saying your scan was wrong." Jonathan's voice was steady. The voice he used to calm frightened Sensitives. "I'm saying the building doesn't care what your scan showed."
He placed his palm against the concrete.
It was warm. And faintly, almost imperceptibly, it pushed back.
Like a lung. Inhaling.
"We should go around," Praise said. "East stairwell."
"That adds fifteen minutes. Ivie wanted recon done in thirty." Jonathan replied while checking a stopwatch
"Then we go through."
She raised her crossbow. Golden light coalesced along the bolt's shaft, bright and ready.
"Praise."
"I can make a door, Jonathan. It won't take much."
"And announce exactly where we are to everything in this building." He turned to face her fully now. "The Phobia. The absorbed workers. Whatever else is hiding in the walls. You fire that bolt, and everything knows we're here."
She held his gaze. The crossbow didn't lower.
"Then what do you suggest?"
Jonathan looked back at the wall. Still breathing. Still warm.
"We wait."
"Wait." She replies shell-shocked
"See if it moves on its own." Jonathan added
Praise stared at him. "You want to wait for a wall to stop being a wall."
"I want to see if it's watching us. If it is, going through tells it we're threats. Right now, we're just… things inside it. Materials. If we wait, maybe it decides we're not interesting."
The crossbow lowered. Slowly.
"That's actually smart."
"I have moments." Jonathan walking ahead of her
She almost smiled. Almost.
They waited.
The wall breathed. The Afterglow pulsed. Somewhere above them, distant but present, the hammering continued—a heartbeat in the bones of the building.
"How long do we…."
"Until one of us feels like we're about to die. Then you shoot it."
Praise turned to look at him. "That's your tactical framework? 'Wait until existential dread, then violence'?"
Jonathan's lips twitched. Not a smile. The idea of a smile.
"It's worked so far."
She shook her head, but the tension in her shoulders had eased. Just slightly.
"You're impossible."
"Marcus used to say that."
The name hung in the air between them.
Praise looked away first. Back at the wall. Still there. Still breathing.
"He saw something in David," she said quietly. "In the courtyard. Before…"
"I know."
"Did he ever tell you what?"
Jonathan was silent for a long moment.
"No. But he called him 'kid' first. Before any of us. 'The kid's spooked, Jon. Can't blame him.'" He paused. "Marcus had a sense for people. Who would break. Who wouldn't."
"And David?"
"I don't think Marcus knew yet. But he wanted to find out." Jonathan's voice softened. "He would have liked watching David carry that duffel bag."
Praise let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "He would have made a joke about it. Something terrible."
"'Kid's got noodle arms. We should feed him more.'"
"'Maybe he can bench press a Phobia.'"
"'Start small. A very small Phobia. A Phobia of… spiders. Tiny spiders.'"
They stood there, in the breathing corridor, and for a moment the hammering seemed farther away.
Then the wall shifted.
Not much. A ripple. Like heat distortion over asphalt. The concrete softened, just slightly, and then hardened again.
Praise's crossbow was up instantly.
"Wait," Jonathan said.
"I'm waiting."
"No. I mean..look."
The wall was changing. Not disappearing. But the center of it—the place where a door should be—was growing thinner. Translucent. The building wasn't opening a path.
It was offering a choice.
"It wants us to go through," Praise whispered.
"Or it wants us to think it wants us to go through."
"Jonathan."
"I know."
They looked at each other. The old understanding passed between them , the one that didn't need words.
Your call.
No, yours.
We both go, or neither goes.
Praise lowered the crossbow. Not putting it away. Just… lowering it.
"Marcus would have gone through," she said.
"Marcus would have kicked the wall down and made a joke about it."
"He would have said …"
"'What's the worst that could happen?'"
They said it together. The exact same intonation. The exact same stupid grin implicit in the words.
And then, for the first time since the courtyard, Praise actually smiled.
"He was an idiot," she said.
"The biggest idiot."
"I miss him."
Jonathan didn't say anything. He didn't have to.
He just stepped toward the thinning wall, his blue mauls flickering to life around his fists.
"Together?" he asked.
Praise notched a bolt, the golden light warm and steady.
"Together."
They walked into the dark.
The floor vanished.
Not crumbled. Not collapsed. Vanished. Like someone had erased the ground beneath their feet and replaced it with nothing.
Jonathan fell first, his mauls flaring as he tried to grab something—anything—but the walls were slick, wet, alive. Praise reached for him, her fingers brushing his sleeve, and then she was falling too, the golden light of her Afterglow spinning in wild arcs above them.
The building rearranged.
Floors became walls. Walls became ceilings. Ceilings became floors. They tumbled through spaces that couldn't exist, past rooms that had no doors, through hallways that folded into themselves like origami.
And above it all, a sound.
A laugh.
Wet. Grinding. The sound of stones chewing each other to dust.
They landed—Jonathan first, then Praise beside him—in a chamber that had no right to exist. It was round, like the inside of a silo, its walls made of everything a construction site could offer: concrete, rebar, copper wire, PVC pipe, crushed gravel, shattered brick, all of it fused together into a single, screaming mosaic.
The laugh came again.
Closer this time.
"Honestly."
The voice was slow. Amused. Like someone who had been listening to a boring conversation at a party and had finally decided to interrupt.
"I've been listening to you guys chit-chat. And boy, can I say ..it annoys me."
From the wall, the materials pushed outward. Concrete bulged. Rebar twisted. Pipes groaned. And from the mass, a figure emerged.
It was humanoid. Sort of.
Half-cured concrete dripped from its shoulders like wet clay. Rusted rebar grew from its spine, its shoulders, its knuckles—each bar a different length, a different angle, none of them matching. Its skin was a patchwork of construction debris: a shard of glass here, a length of copper wire there, a crushed brick embedded in its chest like a third lung.
Its face was a blank slab. Smooth. Featureless. Except for a single crack running from its crown to its chin, weeping dark fluid that never quite fell.
"You're already putting Marcus in your past," it continued, tilting its head. The crack widened, as if it was smiling. "I'm sure he'd love to be fresh in your memories. Or dare I say… incomplete."
Jonathan moved.
He didn't think. He didn't plan. His body simply acted, the way it had been trained to, the way it had for years.
The Tremor Maul manifested in his grip—cobalt-blue, massive, humming with contained destruction. He swung.
"SHATTERING—"
He didn't finish.
A rebar tentacle—thicker than his arm, twisted into a corkscrew of rusted steel—shot from the wall and caught him in the chest.
The impact was obscene. Jonathan's body folded around the strike, his ribs cracking audibly, his maul dissolving as his concentration shattered. He flew across the chamber, hit the far wall, and stuck—pressed against the concrete by a dozen smaller rebar strands that pinned his arms, his legs, his throat.
Praise drew.
The Solar Crossbow materialized in her hands, golden and terrible. She didn't aim. She intended.
The bolt left the bow—straight for the crack in the creature's face.
And then the floor beneath her folded.
Not collapsed. Folded. Like paper. Like fabric. She was standing on one surface, and then she was somewhere else entirely, the bolt firing into empty air, her body tumbling through darkness until she landed hard on concrete.
Jonathan was there.
Pinned. Bleeding. His jaw clenched against the pain.
And in front of them, stepping through the wall as if it were water, the creature manifested again.
"My bad," it said, placing a hand on its concrete chest in mock apology. "Where are my manners?"
It bowed. A slow, exaggerated gesture, its rebar spines scraping against the ceiling.
"I'm Rebar. The Phobia of Incompleteness. Atelophobia, if you want to be fancy about it."
It straightened. The crack in its face widened into something that might have been a grin.
"I'm sure you already knew that, though. You seem like the type who reads mission briefings."
It took a step toward them. The floor beneath its foot softened, then hardened again, leaving a footprint that steamed.
"But I'd like to know your names."
Another step.
"Before you join the list of people I've eaten."
Praise raised her crossbow again—her hands shaking, but her grip steady.
"Praise," she said.
Not giving him her name. Praying.
The golden bolt glowed brighter.
Rebar laughed—that same grinding, stone-chewing sound.
"Pretty name. For a pretty thing." It turned its cracked face toward Jonathan. "And you, big guy? What do they call the man who's about to become a pillar?"
Jonathan didn't answer. He just pulled.
His right arm tore free from the rebar pins, skin shredding, blood spraying. The blue aura around his fist reignited—weak, flickering, but there.
"Jonathan," he said.
And then he swung again.
This time, he connected.