CHAPTER 1056: HYPOTHESIS.

The rain had not stopped since midnight. City Z’s streets were a mire of runoff, sewage, and the faint metallic tang of blood that never seemed to wash away. Cain walked at the front of the group, his cloak sodden, boots sinking into the blackened muck of the lower quarter. Every step echoed in the hollow silence that comes only after violence—too quiet, too deliberate, as though the city itself was holding its breath.

Susan trailed two paces behind, eyes half-lidded, her hand never straying far from the dagger at her hip. The storm had not dulled her senses. She saw everything: faces peeking from broken shutters, shadows that lingered a fraction too long before retreating. Fear had spread, thin and sharp as glass dust, across the streets.

Steve’s voice was a contrast—nervous, biting, pressed into every syllable. "Grid’s not just sniffing anymore. They’re triangulating. Last fight bought us ten minutes, maybe less. Someone’s going to ask why City Z’s underbelly looks like it’s eating itself alive."

Cain didn’t look back. "Let them ask." His voice was quieter than the rain, but it cut through the air all the same. "Questions keep them blind. Truth would kill them quicker."

Hunter moved along the rooftops parallel to them, little more than a silhouette darting between chimneys and broken spires. He was the shadow to Cain’s pace, the knife unseen. A quick sign from his hand told Cain what Cain already knew—three watchers, keeping distance, moving with the rain.

"They’re patient," Susan murmured.

"They’re desperate," Cain corrected. He slowed just enough to make sure the words reached her. "Patience is control. Desperation is teeth. They’ll bite wrong."

A sudden flicker of light broke the street ahead. A lantern swinging too deliberately. Not a drunkard’s stumble. A signal. Cain’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t speed up, didn’t slow down. His hand found the hilt of his blade, not to draw, but to remind the steel of its purpose.

Steve cursed under his breath, dragging a wet sleeve across the device strapped to his wrist. "They’re closing in gridlock patterns. Somebody’s feeding them angles."

Susan’s gaze hardened. "A traitor?"

Cain gave no answer. Only silence. Sometimes silence was sharper than suspicion.

Hunter’s shadow dropped from above, landing beside them without sound. His voice was low, meant for Cain alone. "Two squads. One herding, one waiting. The phantom’s threads are tighter this time."

Cain finally stopped walking. Rain sluiced off his cloak in sheets. He turned his face up toward the pale, fractured towers of City Z looming overhead, their spires like knives aimed at the sky. "Good," he whispered. "If they think they have me caged, it means they’ve already stepped where I want them."

He knelt, drawing a crude mark into the mud with the tip of his blade—an intersecting circle and line, jagged, uneven, but deliberate. Susan stiffened. She had seen Cain carve marks before, but this one felt different, older, wrong.

"What is that?" she asked.

Cain’s eyes didn’t rise. "A reminder. Even ash remembers the fire."

The ground seemed to hum beneath them, faint and pulsing, as if the city itself acknowledged the mark. Steve took an involuntary step back. "That’s not tech. That’s... something else."

Cain rose, and in that moment, he looked less like a man and more like a figure dragged out of the city’s nightmares. His voice carried across the rain.

"They want war? Then let the ash decide who burns."

The lantern light ahead wavered. The figures holding it realized too late what they had walked into. From the alleys on both sides, shadows peeled themselves free and surged toward Cain’s group—silent, efficient, armed not with hesitation but with purpose.

Hunter was gone before the first footfall hit water. A streak of black across the rain. A strangled cry broke out as one pursuer collapsed, throat severed. Susan moved next, a silver arc of her dagger slashing through the storm, carving space between them and the attackers.

Steve activated his device, red lights blinking across the walls, painting false signals into the storm. The enemy hesitated, seeing ghosts where none stood, targets where no blade could touch.

Cain didn’t rush. He stepped into the tide like a man walking into the sea. His blade rose only when necessary, carving through limbs, breaking the rhythm of every strike aimed at him. His movements weren’t frantic—they were absolute, each step a declaration, each slash a verdict.

The mud thickened with bodies. Rain washed the ichor into black rivers.

When it was over, only silence remained. The lantern lay shattered in the gutter, its flame drowned in the downpour.

Hunter emerged from the rooftops, his mask slick with rain. "Not the real squads. Decoys. Testing response."

Cain wiped his blade on the cloak of the fallen. "Testing reveals more than they think. They’ll believe we’re strained. They’ll press harder. That’s when they’ll break."

Susan watched him with a frown, voice low. "And if they don’t break?"

Cain finally looked at her, and in the reflection of his eyes was the rain-smeared city, vast and blind. "Then we do."

No one answered. Even the storm seemed to fall quieter around that truth.

They moved on, the mark Cain had carved slowly fading beneath the rain, sinking back into the filth of the street. But though the lines blurred, the weight of it lingered, carried with them.

Above, City Z remained unknowing. But in its veins, a new fire stirred—one born not of rebellion or hunger, but of ash that refused to stay dead.

But Cain knew the rain would not last. Storms never did. What came after was always worse—the stench of soaked corpses, the silence of a city pretending not to notice its own rot. He adjusted his blade at his side and kept walking, every step forward an oath: not to save City Z, but to drag its truths into the open, no matter the cost.

Cain tightened his cloak, rain whispering off steel, and disappeared into alleys where even rumors refused to follow before dawn.