After what might have felt like forever, Elias rose.
It wasn't dramatic. No sudden start, no rush. Just a smooth, deliberate motion, every vertebra aligning, his frame unfolding with unsettling calm. His eyes lifted toward the barricaded door.
Darius noticed first. Their gazes met across the room.
No words. But something passed between them all the same.
The larger man pushed to his feet, blade in hand. His jaw flexed as he rolled his shoulders, as if he'd been waiting for this moment. Elias turned slightly, just enough for his pale profile to catch the dim light.
Aligned. Not in friendship. Not in trust. But in purpose.
"Is it gone?"
Rafe's voice came from behind. He was half-crouched near the wall, eyes darting between Elias and the blocked door. Hope sparked faintly, desperately, in his hollowed face.
Elias didn't answer. His expression; serene, cold, almost pitying, was answer enough.
No.
A breath shuddered out of one of the nameless men. His nerves, strung too tight, finally broke. "Why move now? Wasn't it your idea to stay hidden? You'll get us killed if we step outside!"
The words tumbled out louder than he meant. He froze afterward, horror dawning as his eyes darted towards the big man.
Darius turned his head, slow and lethal. His hand twitched on the hilt of his blade.
But Elias spoke first. His tone was quiet, measured, without heat. "If it wanted us, the barricade wouldn't stop it. It would already be inside."
The truth of it hollowed the air.
Indeed, Elias knew something the others didn't. His gaze shifted upward, past the barricade, toward the roofline. His senses stretched into the ash like invisible talons.
And what he touched there made his skin prickle.
Dozens of crows. Perfectly still. Silent. Every single beak turned toward this building. Not preening, not shifting, not even rustling their wings. They weren't birds anymore. They were eyes.
A hive. Watching. Waiting.
Something was holding them in place.
Something intelligent.
His pulse slowed, dread threading each beat. He understood then, with the certainty of instinct: whatever was outside wasn't just hunting them.
It was like him.
Darius' hand reached for the first plank bracing the door. His knuckles brushed the wood—
—and then—
Knock knock.
The sound was so soft, so plain, it made the world tilt.
Not claws. Not a crash.
Just a knock.
Gentle. Measured. Patient.
Every head turned toward the barricade, throats locked, lungs refusing to draw in air.
It wasn't supposed to sound human.
And yet, it did.
Elias moved before thought.
His shoulders rolled back, breath hitching, and then his hands split. Flesh peeled as bone cracked outward, sprouting into hooked talons that glinted black in the ashlight. His posture shifted too, body curling slightly, like a crow hunched over carrion. His eyes burned faintly in the dark; old, alien light spilling where human pupils had been.
The transformation wasn't loud. It wasn't violent.
It was worse.
Quiet. Natural. Like Elias had only peeled away a mask.
Mara's arms cinched tight around Hana, who whimpered and buried her face against her chest. Kaelen's fingers twitched, halfway to her blade before she froze, wide-eyed.
Rafe pressed himself flat against the wall, sweat crawling down his temple, his lips trembling with words that refused to form.
Even Darius—stone, unflinching Darius, hesitated. His grip on his sword tightened, muscles in his jaw straining as his eyes flicked between Elias and the barricade.
Elias didn't look at them. His talons dug into the wood by the window frame, gouging deep grooves with barely any pressure. The glow of his eyes fixed on the door, unblinking, patient.
The knock had been simple. Ordinary.
But Elias' instincts, the thing inside him that was no longer human, knew better.
Then his voice broke the silence.
"Look for a backdoor."
His words carried an unnatural weight, heavy enough to leave no gaps for protest. He didn't even turn from the barricade as he added, lower, colder:
"I'll handle this."
The command had barely left Elias' lips before Rafe lurched into motion.
He grabbed the nearest of his own; a gaunt shadow of a man whose eyes barely seemed to focus, and hissed, "Come on! Back, the back, there's always a way out!"
The words tumbled over themselves, half to his companion, half to himself. Like a prayer. Like if he said it fast enough, hard enough, it would make the truth bend to him.
"We're saved," he muttered, clawing at the air as though the door might manifest faster if he believed it. "We're saved, we're saved—"
Kaelen followed, slower, her arm steadying Nora's fragile weight. Her eyes flicked to Elias, to the talons, to the trembling barricade, then back to Rafe. Something in her expression was taut with unease, not disbelief, but a terrible suspicion that any hope left to them was already poisoned.
Mara hesitated the longest, her heart hammered in her throat. The instinct to keep her daughter far from Elias' monstrous shadow warred against the gnawing dread of the door that kept knocking.
In the end, she moved. She had to.
But Darius…
Darius didn't move.
His sword was already drawn, the edge angled toward the door. His head turned fractionally toward Elias, eyes narrowing. The glow reflecting in those pupils made Elias look less like an ally and more like another predator, coiled beside him.
For a moment, the two men stood there, side by side, yet miles apart, both predators, both refusing to yield an inch of ground.
Finally, Darius' voice ground out, rough:
"You think I'll leave you here to face that thing alone?"
He shifted his stance, planting himself solidly at Elias' flank. The blade gleamed faintly in the dim light, steady as his glare.
"Don't mistake me," he muttered, low, almost for Elias alone. "I don't take orders from you. But if something's knocking on my door…" His teeth clenched. "I'll be here to meet it."
Rafe fell on what seemed like a backdoor, looking like a starving dog. His fingers scrabbled at splintered wood, nails tearing. "Help me! It's here, I told you it's here!"
Kaelen set Nora against the wall, then pressed her shoulder to the frame. Mara added her strength, teeth gritted, ash stinging her eyes.
The back of the ruin was a throat of shadows, collapsed plaster piled like the ribs of some great beast. And there, half-buried, wedged crooked under broken beams, was a door.
The wood groaned.
Something shifted.
For one breathless moment, hope lived.
The door creaked open.
And beyond—
Crows.
Lined across the alley in perfect rows, black feathers dusted gray by ash, every head turned toward them. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. They did not move, did not blink, did not rustle their wings.
Every beak pointed at the door.
Rafe's muttering died on his tongue. His throat worked soundlessly, lips trembling as though he might try to keep the prayer alive.
Mara saw it first; their stillness wasn't stillness at all. It was listening.
Her hand shot out, slamming the door shut with a crack that echoed through the ruin.
"Don't," she hissed, voice sharp with terror. "Don't look at them."
The silence on the other side deepened, heavy with a weight that felt almost… amused.
Knock knock— for the second time.
The barricade shuddered. The brittle furniture stacked against the door creaked and shifted, as though the blow hadn't been meant to break through, only to remind them it could.
Sweat slipped down Darius' temple. His blade hovered ready, arm rigid, veins standing out against taut skin. Before the Carrion attack, he had killed beasts, fought men, many of whom were nightmares themselves. But nothing about this was natural.
The dim glow in Elias' eyes caught the faintest edge of firelight, and in that light his face looked wrong; sharp, patient, ready.
"It wants in," he said, voice low, certain. His gaze never left the trembling door. "But only when it chooses."
The backdoor wasn't salvation. The front door promised annihilation.
They were caged, and the thing outside was rattling the bars.
Rafe lingered near the wall, trembling hands still smeared with splinters from the false backdoor. His lips moved soundlessly, whispering the same words again and again. There has to be a way. There has to be a way.
No one answered him.
Because they all knew.