CHAPTER 1: THE SILENT WARD

The silence of Iron Creek Penitentiary was a lie. People think prisons are loud—full of shouting, clanging bars, and fights—but the maternity ward at 2:00 AM is a different kind of beast. It’s a heavy, suffocating quiet. The kind that presses against your eardrums and makes you hear your own heartbeat a little too loudly.

I’m Helena. I’ve been a midwife for this state facility for the better part of two decades. You see a lot of things in a place like this. You see young girls who made one bad mistake, terrified and crying for their mothers while they become mothers themselves. You see hardened lifers who look at their newborns with a heartbreaking mix of love and tragedy, knowing they’ll be handing that baby over to a social worker in twenty-four hours.

But tonight was different. The air felt charged, electric, like the atmosphere right before a tornado touches down.

Outside, a storm was hammering the West Virginia coast. Rain lashed against the high, reinforced windows like gravel being thrown by an angry god. Thunder shook the floor beneath my feet, vibrating up through the soles of my sensible nursing shoes.

“Prisoner 1462,” Claudia said. She was the night shift CO (Correctional Officer) assigned to the medical wing. She was sitting at the metal desk, the blue light of the monitor reflecting off her glasses. She sounded bored, but I could see her knee bouncing up and down nervously under the desk.

I looked up from my chart. “Does she have a name, Claudia?”

“Jane Doe,” Claudia replied, finally looking at me. Her face was pale. “Transferred from the Eastern Supermax unit three weeks ago. They kept her in solitary until her water broke an hour ago. No family. No visitation logs. No medical history except a blood type.”

“That’s impossible,” I said, frowning. “You can’t transfer a pregnant inmate without a prenatal file. Liability alone would bury the warden.”

Claudia shrugged, a stiff, uncomfortable motion. “Tell that to the suits who dropped her off in a black van in the middle of the night. Look, Helena, just go check her. She’s in Cell 4. She’s… weird.”

“Weird how?”

“She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t cry. She just sits there. It creeps me out.”

I sighed, grabbing my medical bag. I’d dealt with “weird” before. Drugs, psychosis, trauma—prison was a warehouse for all of it. I walked down the short hallway, my shoes squeaking on the linoleum. The heavy steel door to Cell 4 was cracked open, just enough for me to slip through.

The cell had been converted into a temporary birthing room. It was still a cell, though. Cinderblock walls painted a depressing shade of institutional cream. A bed bolted to the floor. A stainless steel toilet in the corner.

The woman sat on the edge of the bed.

She was young, maybe late twenties, with dark hair matted against her forehead. Her hospital gown hung loosely on her frame, except for the massive, swollen curve of her belly. She sat with her back perfectly straight, hands folded in her lap. She didn’t look like she was in labor. She looked like she was waiting for a bus.

“Hello,” I said, putting on my best ‘calm midwife’ voice. “I’m Helena. I’m going to be taking care of you tonight.”

She didn’t blink. She didn’t turn her head. She just stared at the blank wall opposite her.

I stepped closer, instinctively checking the monitors. Her blood pressure was steady—too steady for someone about to push a human being out of their body. The fetal heart rate was strong, rhythmic, almost hypnotic.

“I need to check you, honey,” I said gently. “I need to see how far along we are and check for any swelling in your legs. Is that okay?”

No response.

I took her silence as a reluctant assent. I knelt at the foot of the bed. Her feet were bare, pale against the gray wool blanket. I pressed my thumb into her ankle, checking for edema.

That’s when I saw it.

On the arch of her left foot, hidden just beneath the ankle bone, was a mark. It wasn’t a prison tattoo made with pen ink and a guitar string. It was a brand. A precise, cauterized burn that had healed into a silvery, raised keloid scar.

It was a circle, bisected by three jagged, lightning-bolt lines.

My breath hitched in my throat. The room suddenly felt very, very cold.

I knew that symbol. My mind flashed back twenty years. I was a volunteer nurse in upstate New York. There had been a raid on a compound—a place the locals called the “Sanctuary of Ash.” The building had burned down during the standoff. We treated the survivors. They all had this mark. They all whispered about the “Child of the Ember.”

“What is this?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. I reached out, my finger brushing the scar.

The reaction was instant. The woman’s leg snapped back, her foot tucking under her body. I looked up.

She was looking at me now. Her eyes were a startling shade of amber, almost yellow in the dim light. There was no fear in them. Only a terrifying, ancient intensity.

“Do not touch the mark,” she said. Her voice was raspy, low, like dry leaves dragging over pavement.

“I… I’ve seen this before,” I stammered. “The Sanctuary. In New York.”

Her expression didn’t change, but the air in the room seemed to thicken. “Then you know better than to ask questions, Midwife. Do your work. The time is close.”

CHAPTER 2: THE BLACKOUT

I stood up, my knees cracking. My heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I needed to get out of that cell. I needed air.

“I’m going to… I need to get the doctor,” I said, backing toward the door.

“He is already coming,” she said. She didn’t look at the door. She looked at her stomach.

I slipped out into the hallway, nearly colliding with Claudia.

“Whoa, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Claudia said, gripping my arm.

“Call Dr. Marino,” I hissed. “Now. And get security down here. I don’t care if they have to wake the Warden.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Just do it, Claudia!”

Claudia ran to the phone. I stood there, leaning against the cold concrete wall, trying to steady my hands. Why was a survivor of a death cult in a maximum-security prison in West Virginia? That cult was supposed to be extinct. The leaders were all dead.

A few minutes later, the heavy security doors at the end of the hall buzzed and clanked open. Dr. Elias Marino hurried in, looking disheveled. He was a good doctor, but nervous. He hated the prison environment; he always said the walls felt like they were closing in on him.

“Helena, what is it?” he asked, adjusting his glasses. “Claudia said it was an emergency. Is the baby in distress?”

“No,” I lowered my voice. “The mother. Elias, she has the Ash Brand on her foot.”

Elias froze. He was older than me; he knew the history. He went pale. “You’re sure?”

“I saw it. And she… she’s different. It’s not normal in there.”

Elias took a deep breath, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his forehead. “Okay. Okay. Let’s just… let’s get this baby delivered and get them transferred out. I don’t want any trouble tonight.”

We walked back into the cell together. The woman hadn’t moved.

“Good evening,” Dr. Marino said, his voice shaking slightly. “I’m Dr. Marino.”

The woman turned her gaze to him. She didn’t speak. She simply nodded, a regal, dismissive gesture.

Suddenly, a contraction hit her. I saw her abdomen tighten, hard as rock. Most women scream, or moan, or grab the bed rails. She didn’t make a sound. She just closed her eyes and inhaled sharply through her nose.

“Okay, breathe through it,” I said, my training taking over despite my fear. I moved to the side of the bed.

“The storm is here,” the woman whispered.

BOOM.

A deafening crack of thunder shook the entire building. At the exact same moment, the overhead fluorescent lights flared white-hot—and then shattered.

Darkness swallowed the room.

“Jesus!” Dr. Marino yelled.

For three seconds, we were in pitch blackness. The only sound was the rain and the woman’s heavy, rhythmic breathing.

Then, the red emergency floods kicked on. The room was bathed in a bloody, crimson glow. The shadows stretched long and distorted against the walls.

“The main grid is down,” Claudia shouted from the doorway, her flashlight beam cutting through the red haze. “We’re on backup power! The electronic locks are frozen shut until the system reboots!”

We were trapped. In a sealed cell. With her.

I looked down at the woman on the bed. In the red light, she looked demonic. Sweat beaded on her forehead.

“It is beginning,” she groaned. This time, there was pain in her voice.

And then I saw it. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me in the weird lighting.

The brand on her foot. The scar tissue. It was glowing. Not reflecting the red light, but emitting its own faint, pulsating amber light from beneath the skin.

I grabbed Dr. Marino’s arm. “Elias. Look at her foot.”

He looked. He gasped, stumbling back and knocking over a tray of instruments. Metal clattered loudly against the floor. “What… what kind of reaction is that?”

“It’s not a reaction,” the woman hissed through gritted teeth. She grabbed the bed rails, her knuckles turning white. “It is a legacy.”

“I’m not delivering this baby,” Marino panicked. “We need to wait for an ambulance. We need—”

“There is no time!” the woman shouted. Her voice changed. It wasn’t raspy anymore. It was booming, commanding, echoing off the concrete walls with a power that shouldn’t have come from a human throat. “The child comes now! You will catch him, or you will burn with the rest of them!”

I didn’t think. I just acted. I moved between her legs.

“She’s crowning,” I yelled over the thunder. “Elias, get your gloves on! She’s pushing!”

The room temperature plummeted. I could see my breath in the red light. Frost began to crawl up the metal bed frame. It was freezing, absolutely freezing, yet the woman’s skin was radiating heat like a furnace.

“Push!” I commanded.

She bore down, her face a mask of concentration.

And then, the head emerged.

I expected a cry. I expected the squall of a newborn shocked by the cold air. But there was silence.

As I guided the shoulders out, the baby slid into my hands. Slippery, warm, and silent.

I quickly clamped and cut the cord, lifting the infant to check his airway. It was a boy.

“Is he breathing?” Marino asked, terror in his eyes.

“He’s… he’s fine,” I said. The baby’s eyes were open. They were wide open. And they were looking right at me.

I turned the baby over to wipe him down, and my heart stopped beating.

On the infant’s left foot, in the exact same spot as the mother, was a mark.

It wasn’t a birthmark. It wasn’t a bruise.

It was a perfect, red brand. A circle with three jagged lines.

And just like the mother’s, it was faintly glowing.

CHAPTER 3: THE ECHO OF ASH

Dr. Marino was hyperventilating. I could hear the wheeze in his chest, a frantic, ragged sound that cut through the eerie silence of the cell.

“That’s… that’s not possible,” he stammered, backing away until his back hit the cold cinderblock wall. He pointed a trembling finger at the infant in my arms. “Helena, look at it. It’s glowing. It’s actually glowing.”

I looked down. The baby boy was silent, strangely alert. He wasn’t crying. He wasn’t squirming. He was staring up at me with eyes that seemed too old for a face so new. And on his foot, the brand—the circle with the jagged lightning bolts—pulsed with a rhythmic, amber light. It beat in time with his heart.

“I see it, Elias,” I whispered, wrapping the towel tighter around the child, trying to cover the mark. My instinct was to hide it, to protect him, even though I didn’t understand what I was protecting him from.

“Give him to me,” the woman said.

It wasn’t a request.

I turned to the bed. Prisoner 1462—Jane Doe—was sitting up. She shouldn’t have been able to sit up. She had just given birth without medication. She should have been exhausted, bleeding, collapsing. But she sat there with the posture of a queen on a throne, her dark hair cascading over her sweat-drenched gown.

I walked over and placed the baby in her arms.

As soon as her skin touched his, the room changed. The bone-deep chill that had frozen the air suddenly evaporated. The frost on the bedrails melted into condensation. The red emergency light overhead seemed to stabilize, growing less flickering, less ominous.

She looked down at the boy. Her expression softened, just for a fraction of a second. A look of profound, terrifying love.

“You are strong,” she whispered to the baby. “Stronger than they feared.”

“Who are ‘they’?” I asked, my voice gaining a little strength. “Who are you running from? And don’t tell me to stop asking questions. We are locked in a cell with you, the power is out, and your baby is… he’s…”

“Marked,” she finished for me. She looked up, her amber eyes locking onto mine. “He is marked by the Ash. Just as I am.”

“The Sanctuary,” Dr. Marino choked out. He pushed his glasses up his nose, his hands shaking violently. “The Sanctuary of Ash. I read the case files. 1998. Upstate New York. A doomsday cult. They believed that fire was the only way to purify the soul. They… they burned their own children.”

The woman’s face hardened. “They didn’t burn us. We walked through the fire. And we survived.”

“That’s impossible,” Marino said. ” Everyone died. The leaders, the followers. The FBI found bodies.”

“They found the ones who weren’t worthy,” she said coldly. “They didn’t find the Keepers. And they didn’t find me.”

Claudia, who had been standing by the door with her hand on her stun gun, finally spoke. “Okay, this is crazy. I don’t care about cults. I care that the lights are out and the radio is dead. I’m going to go check the breaker box in the hallway.”

“Do not open that door,” the woman commanded.

Claudia rolled her eyes, trying to regain her authority. “I’m a correctional officer, lady. You don’t give the orders. Stay here.”

Claudia turned and swiped her keycard, forgetting the electronic lock was dead. She cursed and grabbed the manual override lever.

“No!” I screamed, a sudden wave of dread washing over me.

Claudia cranked the lever. The heavy steel door groaned and slid open a few inches.

The hallway outside wasn’t empty.

It wasn’t dark, either.

Standing in the corridor, illuminated by the flickering red strobes of the prison hallway, were three figures. They weren’t guards. They were dressed in long, dark raincoats that dripped water onto the linoleum. They wore masks—smooth, white porcelain masks with no features, just black painted circles where the eyes should be.

Claudia froze. “Hey! Who the hell are—”

One of the figures moved. It was a blur of motion, unnaturally fast. A gloved hand shot out and grabbed Claudia by the throat.

She didn’t even have time to scream. The figure threw her—literally threw her—across the hallway like a ragdoll. She hit the opposite wall with a sickening crunch and slid down, motionless.

Dr. Marino shrieked.

I slammed my body weight against the door, jamming the manual lever back down. The lock engaged with a heavy thud just as a body slammed against the other side.

“They’re here,” the woman said calmly, rocking her baby. “The cleansing has begun.”

CHAPTER 4: THE SIEGE

“What was that?” Dr. Marino was on the floor now, curled into a ball near the sink. “They killed her. Oh my God, they killed Claudia.”

“They won’t stop with her,” the woman said. She was wrapping the baby in the coarse prison blanket, her movements precise and efficient. “They want the boy.”

I backed away from the door, my heart hammering so hard I thought my ribs would crack. The metal of the door vibrated as something heavy slammed against it from the outside. Once. Twice.

“Who are they?” I demanded. “The police? The FBI?”

“The Purifiers,” she said. “The remnants of the Sanctuary. They have been hunting me for nine months. They knew the moment he was born. The Mark… it acts like a beacon to them.”

“A beacon?” I stared at the baby. The blanket was thick, but I could still see a faint, pulsing amber glow permeating through the fabric. “How do we turn it off?”

“We don’t,” she said. “We fight.”

The banging on the door stopped.

The silence that followed was worse than the noise. I crept toward the small, reinforced observation window in the door. I stood on my tiptoes and peeked out.

The hallway was empty. Claudia’s body was gone.

“They’re gone,” I whispered, hope flaring in my chest.

“No,” the woman said. “They are not gone. They are finding another way.”

Suddenly, the ventilation grate in the ceiling rattled. Dust drifted down into the red light.

“The vents,” I gasped. “They’re in the vents.”

Dr. Marino scrambled up. “We have to get out. We have to get out of this cell!”

“The window,” the woman said, pointing to the exterior window. It was reinforced glass with heavy iron bars on the outside. Beyond it, the storm was raging. “We go through there.”

“Are you insane?” Marino yelled. “We’re on the third floor! And there are bars!”

The woman stood up. She walked over to the window, the baby cradled in one arm. She placed her free hand—her left hand—against the thick glass.

I watched in disbelief as the veins in her arm turned that same ink-black color I had seen earlier. The brand on her wrist flared with blinding light.

Hiss.

The glass didn’t shatter. It melted.

It melted like wax under a blowtorch, dripping down onto the sill in glowing, molten globs. The rain blew in instantly, soaking us with freezing water.

“The bars,” Marino cried. “What about the bars?”

She reached through the hole in the melted glass and grabbed the iron bars. Smoke rose from her palm. The smell of burning metal filled the small cell. With a grunt of exertion, she pushed.

The solid iron bars bent. They groaned and twisted like pipe cleaners, creating a gap just wide enough for a person to squeeze through.

She turned to us. The wind whipped her hair around her face, making her look like a vengeful spirit.

“Doctor,” she said. “You go first. Drop to the ledge below. It is narrow, but it leads to the roof of the laundry wing.”

Marino looked at the hole, then at the door where the scratching in the ceiling was getting louder. He didn’t hesitate. He scrambled up onto the sink and dove through the melted window, disappearing into the storm.

“Midwife,” she said, looking at me. “You are next.”

“I… I can’t,” I said, trembling. “I can’t jump.”

“You must,” she said. “Because I need you to carry him.”

She held the baby out to me.

“What?” I stared at her.

“I have to hold them back,” she said, glancing at the ceiling vent. The screws were popping out, falling to the floor one by one. “They are fast. Faster than you. If I go with you, they will catch us. I must buy you time.”

“I’m not leaving you!”

“Take him!” she screamed. The sound cracked the air. “Take him and run! Find the river. Water masks the scent of the Ash. Go!”

She thrust the baby into my arms. He was warm, so warm.

The vent cover crashed to the floor. Two dark, spindly legs dropped down, clad in black fabric.

I didn’t look back. I climbed onto the sink, clutched the baby to my chest, and squeezed through the searing hot frame of the window.

I fell out into the night, the rain instantly soaking me to the bone. I landed hard on a concrete ledge five feet below, scraping my knees raw.

Below me was a fifty-foot drop to the prison yard. Above me, the storm raged.

I looked back up at the window.

Inside the cell, in the flickering red light, I saw the woman. She wasn’t running. She was standing in the center of the room, her arms spread wide.

The figure from the vent dropped to the floor—a tall, slender nightmare with a porcelain mask. It lunged at her.

She didn’t flinch. She clapped her hands together.

A shockwave of fire—pure, white-hot fire—exploded outward from her body.

The blast blew out the window I had just climbed through, showering me with glass shards. I shielded the baby with my body, curling into a ball on the wet ledge.

When I looked up, the cell was an inferno.

“Run!” Dr. Marino was screaming from the edge of the roof a few yards away. “Helena, run!”

I scrambled to my feet, holding the miracle baby against my chest, and ran into the darkness of the storm.

CHAPTER 5: THE RIVER OF SHADOWS

The rain was blinding. It felt like ice pellets stinging my face, mixing with the tears I couldn’t stop shedding.

“Elias!” I screamed over the wind. “Where are we going?”

Dr. Marino was ahead of me, navigating the slippery, tar-papered roof of the laundry wing. He looked like a broken man, his lab coat flapping wildly, soaked through and stained with grime.

“There’s a fire escape on the north side!” he yelled back. “It leads to the staff parking lot. My car… if we can get to my car…”

We reached the edge of the roof. The metal fire escape ladder was rusted, rattling in the gale-force wind.

“Go,” I urged him.

He scrambled down. I followed, clutching the baby with one arm, using the other to grip the freezing metal rungs. Every muscle in my body screamed. I was a midwife, not a stuntman. I spent my days charting dilation and soothing mothers, not escaping burning prisons in a hurricane.

But the bundle in my jacket kept me moving. The baby was unnaturally quiet. He wasn’t crying. He was radiating heat, a living hot water bottle against my frozen chest.

We hit the asphalt of the parking lot. It was flooded, ankle-deep water swirling around our shoes.

“My car is over there,” Marino pointed to a sedan near the fence.

We ran.

Suddenly, a spotlight swept across the yard.

“Halt!” a voice boomed from a guard tower. “Stay where you are!”

“Thank God,” Marino gasped, waving his arms. “It’s the guards! We’re saved! Officer! Down here!”

“No, Elias, wait!” I grabbed his arm, pulling him back behind a dumpster.

“What are you doing? They can help us!”

“Look,” I hissed, pointing up at the tower.

The spotlight wasn’t searching for us. It was erratic, jerking back and forth. And the silhouette in the tower glass… it wasn’t wearing a uniform hat.

It was wearing a mask. A smooth, white porcelain mask.

“They’ve taken the towers,” I whispered, horror dawning on me. “They’ve taken the whole prison.”

Marino slumped against the dumpster, sliding down into the muck. “How? How is that possible? This is a state facility.”

“They are the Purifiers,” I said, repeating the woman’s words. “They have resources we don’t understand. We can’t use the main gate. We can’t use the cars.”

“Then we’re trapped,” Marino sobbed.

“The river,” I said, remembering her instructions. “She said water masks the scent. The Iron Creek runs behind the east perimeter fence. There’s a drainage culvert.”

“That’s a mile away. Through the woods.”

“Do you have a better plan?” I asked grimly.

Marino shook his head.

We crept along the fence line, using the shadows. The prison behind us was in chaos. Sirens blared, but they sounded wrong—distorted, like a recording playing too slow. Flames licked out of the window of the maternity ward, casting long, dancing shadows across the wet grass.

We found a breach in the fence—a section that had been cut with precision lasers or plasma, the edges still glowing faintly red. This was how they got in.

We slipped through the gap and into the dense West Virginia forest.

The woods were pitch black. Roots snagged our ankles; branches whipped our faces. But we didn’t stop. We ran until our lungs burned and our legs felt like lead.

Finally, I heard the roar of water. The creek was swollen from the storm, a raging torrent of black water.

“There!” I pointed to an old concrete drainage pipe half-submerged in the bank. “We can hide in there.”

We scrambled down the muddy bank and huddled inside the concrete cylinder. It smelled of rot and wet earth, but it was shelter.

I sat down, leaning back against the cold concrete. My hands were shaking so bad I could barely unbutton my jacket to check the baby.

“Is he…?” Marino asked.

I pulled back the blanket.

The baby was awake. He looked at me, and then he smiled.

It wasn’t a baby’s gummy, gas-induced smile. It was a deliberate expression.

And then, he spoke.

He didn’t coo. He didn’t babble.

A voice, clear as a bell but echoing as if from a great distance, came from the infant’s mouth.

“She is still fighting.”

Marino scrambled back, hitting his head on the pipe. “Did… did he just…”

I stared at the child. “Yes.”

“The Fire Mother holds the gate,” the baby said, his tiny hand reaching up to touch my face. His fingers were incredibly hot. “But the Pale Men are coming. We must go deeper.”

“I’m losing my mind,” Marino whispered, rocking back and forth. “I’m hallucinating. I’m in shock.”

“We aren’t hallucinating, Elias,” I said, feeling a strange calm settle over me. The baby’s touch was grounding. It felt like pure energy flowing into my exhausted veins. “This is real. All of it.”

“How can a newborn speak?”

“He’s not just a newborn,” I said softly. “He’s the Child of the Ember.”

CHAPTER 6: THE HUNTER

We stayed in the pipe for what felt like hours, but was probably only thirty minutes. The storm began to break, the rain slowing to a drizzle.

“We have to keep moving,” I said. “If they have the prison, they’ll have dogs. Or… whatever else they use to track.”

“Track the heat,” Marino muttered. “The mark acts like a beacon. That’s what she said.”

I looked at the baby’s foot. The brand was dull now, a dark red scar, no longer glowing.

“It’s dormant,” I said. “Maybe the water helps.”

We crawled out of the pipe and started trekking south, following the riverbank. My plan was to reach the highway, flag down a trucker, get to a police station in the next county—somewhere far away from Iron Creek.

We had been walking for about a mile when the woods went silent.

The crickets stopped chirping. The wind died down.

“Stop,” I whispered, grabbing Marino’s shoulder.

“What?”

“Listen.”

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Heavy, rhythmic footsteps. Not behind us. Above us.

I looked up. We were walking along the base of a steep ridge. At the top of the ridge, silhouetted against the breaking clouds and the moonlight, was a figure.

It wasn’t one of the men in raincoats.

This figure was massive. At least seven feet tall. It wore armor—matte black plates that looked like ancient samurai gear mixed with modern tactical ballistic vests. On its head was a helmet shaped like a wolf’s skull, but made of chrome.

It held a weapon—a long, curved scythe that glowed with a soft, blue electric hum.

“Oh God,” Marino whimpered.

The figure turned its head. The chrome skull caught the moonlight. It looked directly down at us.

Then, it jumped.

It didn’t slide down the hill. It leaped, clearing fifty feet of vertical drop in a single bound, landing silently in the mud ten yards in front of us.

Marino screamed and turned to run back the way we came.

“Elias, no!” I yelled.

The figure raised a hand. A pulse of blue energy shot from its palm, hitting Dr. Marino in the back.

He didn’t die. He just… stopped. He froze mid-stride, paralyzed, rigid as a statue, teetering on one foot.

The Hunter lowered its hand and turned its attention to me. Or rather, to the bundle in my arms.

“Hand over the vessel,” a voice boomed. It sounded synthesized, mechanical.

I backed away, clutching the baby. The river was at my back. The Hunter was in front. There was nowhere to go.

“Stay back!” I yelled. “I… I have mace!”

It was a stupid thing to say. The Hunter tilted its head, a gesture of mockery.

“Mace,” it repeated. “Quaint.”

It took a step forward.

The baby in my arms shifted.

Suddenly, the blanket grew hot again. searingly hot. I almost dropped him.

The baby didn’t speak this time. He shrieked.

It wasn’t a cry. It was a sonic weapon. A high-pitched, resonating frequency that shattered the air.

The Hunter stumbled back, clutching its helmet. The blue light on its scythe flickered and died.

“Burn,” a voice whispered in my head. Not the baby’s voice. The mother’s voice. Telepathy?

I looked down at the baby. His hand was reaching out toward the Hunter.

A spark leaped from the baby’s fingertip. A tiny, insignificant spark.

It hit the Hunter’s chest plate.

WOOSH.

The black armor didn’t catch fire. It disintegrated. The metal turned to ash in seconds, exposing the gray, necrotic skin underneath.

The Hunter roared—a sound that wasn’t human—and fell to its knees.

“Run, Helena!” the voice in my head screamed.

I didn’t wait to see what happened to the monster. I turned and jumped into the freezing river, clutching the baby tight, letting the current sweep us away into the dark.

Here is Part 3 of the story.

CHAPTER 7: THE CHILD OF FIRE AND WATER

The river was a beast. It didn’t just flow; it thrashed. The black water of Iron Creek, swollen by the hurricane-force storm, grabbed me like a thousand freezing hands, pulling me down, spinning me around, slamming me against submerged rocks.

I should have died. I know that. I’m a middle-aged woman wearing soaking wet scrubs and a heavy coat. I should have been dragged to the bottom in seconds.

But I wasn’t.

Because of the bundle in my arms.

Every time the water threatened to fill my lungs, a burst of heat would pulse from the baby’s chest against mine. It wasn’t just warmth; it was energy. It felt like a shot of adrenaline straight into my heart.

When I went under, a bubble of air seemed to form around us—a shimmering, heat-distorted pocket that kept the water away from the infant’s face.

I tumbled through the dark for what felt like miles. The roar of the water was deafening, drowning out the memory of the Hunter’s synthesized voice and Marino’s screams.

Eventually, the current slowed. The river widened, the violent rapids giving way to a sluggish, muddy drift. My feet scraped against gravel.

I clawed my way up the bank, gasping, coughing up muddy water. I collapsed onto the wet grass, clutching the baby so tight I was afraid I’d hurt him.

I lay there for a long time, staring up at the sky. The storm clouds were breaking apart, revealing a stark, indifferent moon.

I was freezing. My teeth chattered so hard my jaw ached. Hypothermia. It was setting in fast. I needed to get dry, get warm, or we would both die of exposure before the Purifiers even found us.

I sat up, shivering violently. “Are… are you okay?” I stammered, peeling back the wet blanket.

The baby was dry.

I blinked, rubbing my eyes with a numb hand. It was impossible. The blanket was soaked, heavy with river water. But the baby himself? His skin was dry. His fine dark hair was dry. He was radiating a gentle, steady warmth, like a sun-warmed stone.

He looked up at me. His eyes were no longer glowing amber. They were a deep, intelligent brown. He looked… normal.

“You’re something else, aren’t you?” I whispered.

He reached up and touched my cheek.

Flash.

I wasn’t on the riverbank anymore.

For a split second, I was standing in a wooden room. It smelled of sage and burning pine. A woman—Prisoner 1462, but younger, softer—was laughing. She was holding a hand over a candle flame, letting the fire dance between her fingers without burning her. A man was there, too. I couldn’t see his face, only the brand on his arm. He was smiling.

“The fire protects its own,” a voice whispered. It wasn’t the baby’s voice. It was a memory.

Then, snap. I was back on the cold mud in West Virginia.

The baby had shared a memory with me. He was showing me… safety? Comfort?

I forced myself to stand. My legs felt like jelly. “Okay,” I said, my voice raspy. “Fire protects its own. Let’s hope it protects wet midwives too.”

I scanned the area. We had washed up near an old logging road. About a hundred yards into the tree line, I saw a shape. A structure.

I limped toward it, my wet shoes squelching loudly.

It was a deer stand—but a deluxe one. An elevated hunting blind, basically a small wooden cabin on stilts.

I climbed the ladder, praying the door wasn’t locked. It wasn’t.

Inside, it smelled of stale tobacco and mildew, but it was dry. There was a cot, a small propane heater (which I didn’t dare light for fear of the light being seen), and a pile of moth-eaten wool blankets.

I stripped off my wet scrubs. I know, it sounds horrifying, but in survival situations, wet clothes kill you faster than the cold air. I wrapped myself in the dry wool blankets and curled up on the cot, pulling the baby against my skin.

“We need a plan,” I whispered into the dark. “Dr. Marino is gone. The prison is compromised. The police… if the Purifiers can take over a maximum-security prison, they probably have the police in their pocket too.”

I was a fugitive. I had kidnapped a baby—technically. I was an accessory to a prison break. My life, my comfortable, boring life of charting contractions and complaining about cafeteria food, was incinerated.

I looked at the baby. He was asleep now, his breathing soft and rhythmic.

“Who are you?” I asked the silence.

The answer didn’t come from the baby. It came from the wind outside.

A low, mechanical hum began to rise in the distance.

Drones.

I froze. The sound was getting louder. It wasn’t the buzz of a hobby drone. It was the heavy, throbbing thrum of military-grade surveillance.

They were scanning the forest.

I scrambled off the cot and peered through the dirty plexiglass window.

In the distance, sweeping over the treetops, were three beams of blue light. They were moving in a grid pattern, methodically combing the riverbank where we had just been.

They were hunting. And they were getting closer.

I looked at the baby. If he glowed again, if he made a sound, the thermal sensors on those drones would pick us up in a heartbeat.

“Please,” I begged him, tears leaking from my eyes. “Stay small. Stay cold. Just for a little while.”

The baby opened his eyes. He looked at the window, then at me.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

The warmth radiating from him vanished. His body temperature dropped. He felt cool to the touch—not dead, but like he was mimicking the ambient temperature of the room.

He was camouflaging us.

The drone hum grew deafening. A blue light swept across the hunting blind. It lingered for a terrifying second, illuminating the dust motes in the air. I held my breath until my lungs burned.

Then, the light moved on. The hum faded to the south.

I exhaled, collapsing back onto the cot.

We were safe. For now. But I knew, with a chilling certainty, that when the sun came up, the real hunt would begin.

CHAPTER 8: THE DAWN OF ASH

I didn’t sleep. I lay there, listening to the forest, my hand resting on the baby’s chest to make sure he was still breathing. He stayed in that cool, dormant state all night.

When the first gray light of dawn filtered through the trees, the storm had passed completely. The birds began to sing, oblivious to the horrors of the night before.

I got up and dressed. My scrubs were still damp, but bearable. I found a flannel shirt left by the hunter who owned the blind and put it on over my tunic. It smelled like old sweat, but it was warm.

I found a stash of bottled water and protein bars in a metal tin. I drank greedily and ate a bar, the taste of chocolate and sawdust the best thing I’d ever had.

I crumbled a piece of the bar and mixed it with water in a bottle cap, trying to offer it to the baby. I didn’t have formula. I didn’t have milk.

The baby refused it. He looked at me with those deep, brown eyes and shook his head.

Actually shook his head.

“You’re not hungry?” I asked.

He pointed at the window. At the sun rising over the ridge.

He reached out his hands toward the light. As the sunbeams hit his skin, he took a deep breath. I watched, stunned, as the color returned to his cheeks. He seemed to absorb the sunlight, feeding on it like a plant.

“Okay,” I muttered. “Photosynthesis. Sure. Why not?”

We had to move. The drones would be back, or worse, the ground teams.

I wrapped the baby in the dry wool blanket, fashioning a sling so I could carry him against my chest while keeping my hands free.

“We need to get to a city,” I told him. “Charleston is two hours north. If we can get to a federal building, maybe the FBI… assuming the FBI isn’t part of this.”

I climbed down from the blind. The forest floor was steaming as the sun hit the wet ground.

I walked for an hour, sticking to the tree line, avoiding the open road. My goal was a highway overpass I could see in the distance.

As we neared the road, I heard a car. Not a siren. A regular engine.

I crouched behind a thick oak tree.

An old, rusted pickup truck was rattling down the logging road. It was moving slow. The driver was an old man in a baseball cap.

It was a risk. A massive risk. But I couldn’t walk to Charleston.

I stepped out onto the road, waving my arms.

The truck slowed and crunched to a stop. The window rolled down.

“You look like hell, lady,” the old man said. He had a kindly, wrinkled face. “You get caught in the storm?”

“Yes,” I lied, my heart pounding. “My car… it went off the road. Into the creek. I have a baby. Please, we need to get to a hospital.”

The old man’s eyes widened. “Hop in. I’m headed to the diner up on Route 60. They got a phone.”

I climbed into the passenger seat. The truck smelled of wet dog and peppermint. It was the safest place I’d been in twelve hours.

“I’m Earl,” he said, putting the truck in gear.

“Helena,” I said. “Thank you, Earl.”

We drove in silence for a few miles. I watched the rearview mirror like a hawk.

“So,” Earl said, glancing at the bundle. “Baby okay? Didn’t hear him cry.”

“He’s… he’s in shock, I think,” I said.

“Shame about the prison,” Earl said casually.

My blood froze. “What?”

” The prison. Iron Creek. Heard it on the scanner this morning. Said there was a massive gas explosion. Whole maternity wing went up. No survivors.”

“No survivors?” I whispered.

“That’s what they said. Tragically, the prisoners and the staff… all gone.”

They covered it up. In less than six hours, they had erased everything. Claudia. Dr. Marino. The mother. Me.

I was legally dead.

“Earl,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “Can you just drop us at the diner? I have family meeting me there.”

“Sure thing,” he said.

We rounded a bend.

“Roadblock,” Earl grunted, slowing down.

My stomach dropped.

Ahead of us, two black SUVs were blocking the road. Men in dark raincoats stood by the doors. No police markings. No badges.

And standing in the middle of the road, holding a device that looked like a Geiger counter, was a woman. She had stark white hair and wore a pristine gray suit.

“Earl, don’t stop,” I said.

“What? Why? It’s just the cops.”

“They aren’t cops, Earl! Turn around!”

“Now hold on, lady—”

The woman in the gray suit looked up. She pointed the device at the truck. It began to shrill—a high-pitched beep.

She smiled.

She raised her hand.

The truck’s engine died instantly. The power steering locked. We coasted to a halt thirty feet from the blockade.

“What in the tarnation…” Earl cranked the key. Nothing.

The woman in gray walked toward us. Her movements were smooth, predatory.

“Helena Vance,” she said. Her voice was amplified, coming from the SUVs. “Please exit the vehicle. Hand over the Asset, and the old man lives.”

I looked at Earl. He was confused, scared.

“Who are these people?” he asked.

“Run, Earl,” I said. “Get out and run.”

“I ain’t leaving you with—”

The windshield shattered.

Earl slumped forward, a small red hole in his temple.

“NO!” I screamed.

I shoved the door open and fell onto the asphalt, scrambling backward.

The woman in gray stood over me. She didn’t have a gun. She just held out her hand.

“Give him to me,” she said. “He belongs to the Ash.”

I clutched the baby. I looked around. Forest on both sides. Nowhere to go.

“He belongs to his mother!” I yelled.

“His mother is dust,” the woman said coldly. “She burned so you could run. A waste of a good vessel.”

She reached down.

Suddenly, the baby woke up.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t scream.

He laughed.

It was a terrifying sound. A bubbling, joyful, echoing laugh.

The baby threw the blanket off.

He wasn’t glowing amber anymore.

He was white. Blinding, star-fire white.

The woman in gray’s eyes widened. “Impossible. He hasn’t ascended yet. He’s an infant!”

The baby clapped his hands.

BOOM.

It wasn’t an explosion of fire. It was an explosion of light. A pure, concussive wave of photons and heat.

I squeezed my eyes shut. I felt the heat pass over me, warm and comforting, like a summer breeze.

But I heard the screams.

When I opened my eyes, the SUVs were melting. Literally melting into slag on the road. The men in raincoats were gone—just piles of smoking clothes left on the pavement.

The woman in gray was on her knees. Her suit was singed, her hair smoking. She looked terrified.

She looked at the baby.

“The Phoenix,” she whispered.

Then she collapsed, unconscious.

I stood up. The road was silent again, save for the hissing of molten metal.

The baby looked at me. The white glow faded. He yawned, snuggled into my chest, and closed his eyes.

I looked at Earl’s truck. It was dead. I looked at the woman in gray.

I reached into her pocket and took her keys.

Behind the melting SUVs sat a sleek, black sports car that had been shielded from the blast.

I walked over to it, buckled the baby into the passenger seat, and started the engine.

I was a midwife. I delivered babies.

But as I shifted into gear and drove past the wreckage, heading toward the rising sun, I knew my job description had changed.

I wasn’t just a midwife anymore. I was a Guardian.

And we had a war to win.