Beware What Sleeps

The truck bucked like a spooked stallion, its axles screaming as it chewed through the ruined terrain. Tobias choked on the thick cocktail of burning oil and swamp rot—the stench so visceral it coated his teeth. Through the dust choked air, the carcass of the old world lurched past: a church steeple impaling the muck like a rusted lance, street signs eaten down to skeletal letters.

Beyond the broken road, the swamp stretched its dark fingers. Somewhere in the muck, a gator's eyes reflected the headlights—two coins paid to cross into hell. Tobias caught a flash of movement through a skeletal window frame—waterbirds nesting in the corpse of a living room, their wings fluttering against floral wallpaper now green with mold. Further out, fireflies winked between the cypress trees. Too rhythmic. Too organized. His knuckles whitened around the rifle stock. Those weren't insects. Nothing out here was ever just what it seemed. 

The truck bed vibrated beneath him as he scanned for fallback positions—defensible high ground, choke points, submerged escape routes. His mother's voice hissed in his memory: "Bad don't creep up on you, baby. It kicks down the door." His thumb found the rifle's safety. Click. Click. The sigils purred their hungry approval.

The truck hit a pothole, jolting Brooks sideways so his elbow slammed into Tobias's ribs. His knee followed, ramming into the boot-shaped bruise on Tobias's thigh. 

"Whoops," Brooks grinned, his yellowed teeth glinting like old piano keys. 

That same smirk had split his face when his blade "accidentally" raked down Tobias's nose two winters ago. Tobias could still taste the copper on his lips, the squad's laughter ringing in his ears as he blinked tears from his eyes at sixteen years old.

Now Brooks leaned in, his sweat and tobacco stink thick as the swamp air. "Christ, Junior," he crowed loud enough for the whole truck to hear, "You're clutchin' that rifle like it's your dick at your first whorehouse." His finger—the one that always "accidentally" jabbed Tobias's healing wounds—tapped the scar on Tobias's nose. "Don't go slicin' your own face off this time. Ain't got enough pretty left to lose."

The squad erupted. Nash's wheezing laugh. Kline's snort. Heat flooded Tobias's face, his ears burning so hot the scar tissue throbbed. His fingers twitched toward his blade before forcing them still. His throat locked around a dozen retorts, but the words turned to ash. Because Pops was watching. And Jonathan Frey's son didn't make excuses.

Brooks's eyes lit up like a hound spotting wounded prey. "Aww, baby Frey thinks he's—"

The cab window slammed open. "Save your fuckin' breath for Crane," Jonathan snarled, his reflection in the rearview showing eyes as cold as the steel that had cut his son's face.

Silence fell. Tobias stared at his boots—the oldest pair in the squad, the laces still stained rust-brown from that day. 

The truck's engine growled as Jonathan downshifted, his knuckles whitening around the steering wheel. Without taking his eyes off the ruined road, his voice cut through the cab like a sawbone's bone saw: "Listen up. Cathedral's where we lost Sarah's patrol."

A chill crawled up Tobias's spine despite the swamp heat. Thirty-seven days ago, Sarah had kissed his forehead before leading her team down this same road—same trucks, same weapons, same dawn light. They'd vanished without so much as a spent shell casing to mark their passing.

"Scouts found tracks circling the cathedral-like vultures," Jonathan muttered, wrenching the wheel to avoid a fissure. His jaw worked as the truck lurched. "No blood. No gear. Just..." A beat of silence filled the cab, louder than the engine's growl. "Like God himself reached down and plucked 'em clean off the earth."

Tobias's sigils ignited as his fingers clenched. Against his chest, the compass beneath his shirt grew suddenly heavy—the glass still clouded with Sarah's last thumbprint. Her voice echoed in his memory, rough with laughter: "Ain't charity, Tob. Just savin' myself the trouble of fishin' your big ass out the bayou again." Now the needle quivered like a trapped thing, spinning uselessly toward the crumbling spires ahead—as if the cathedral had become the only true north left in this ruined world.

A low murmur spread through the squad like swamp gas igniting. Old Nash—his face a roadmap of scars and sun damage—dragged a calloused thumb across his rifle's sigils. "Ain't your granddaddy's hocus-pocus no more," he drawled, the words syrup-slow and bitter. "Pre-Fall? Magic was card tricks and birthday clowns. Now?" He spat. "It's the goddamn lion that ate the tamer."

Kline's rasp cut through the dark like a rusted blade: "Lake Charles." The name alone tightened every shoulder in the truck. Tobias didn't need the rest—he'd seen the footage when he was young. Too young. Miriam had dragged him out, but not before he'd seen the quarantine team's flamethrowers reflected in dead, veined eyes. The bodies curled like burnt paper, their grins too wide, too many teeth. Eyeballs rolling behind lids crusted black with veins. Worst of all, the way the camera had glitched when the singing started—like the air itself was warping—

"Whole town humming while their kids—" Kline began, but Jonathan's snarl cut him off.

"Enough." Jonathan's voice cracked like a whip. He slammed his palm against the dashboard, making the sigils along his rifle flare gold. "That's why we carry these. Not for show. For survival."

The truck groaned to a halt as vines thicker than a man's wrist choked the path ahead. Tobias was the last out, his boots sinking into the muck with a wet gasp of earth. The cathedral loomed, its walls veined with pulsating black growths. His own sigils burned hotter with each step, the pain radiating up his arms like reverse blood flow. This wasn't the fading echo of magic. This was something alive and watching.

Nash kicked a shattered stained-glass fragment, its crimson pane glinting like a fresh wound in the dim light. "Heard Crane turns men into—"

"Save the ghost stories," Jonathan snapped, checking his ammunition with practiced efficiency. But Tobias saw how his father's fingers lingered on an extra magazine—the one Sarah had carved her initials into. 

The vines shivered above them—not from any wind Tobias could feel but from something stirring deep within the cathedral's jagged doorway. His breath caught as the sigils on his rifle escalated from a burn to a shriek, the sound vibrating up his bones like a dental drill whine.

While the others wrestled with gear, Tobias froze at the sight of a partial footprint in the mud. Too small for any soldier. Too deep for anything light. And barefoot—Christ Almighty—as if its owner had danced through this muck without fear of broken glass or venomous snakes. His gaze darted to the team. Nash cursed at a stuck ammo crate. Kline lit a cigarette with trembling hands. No one else saw the trail leading toward the cathedral's broken ribs.

"We split up." Jonathan's voice sliced through the humidity. "Cross, Kline, Nash, and Tobias—on me. Rest, hold the perimeter."

Brooks made a show of adjusting his sling, the buckle's clank obscenely loud. "Try not to slow 'em down, Junior." His wink was a blade twist. "Hope Mama packed your courage along with them rations." He smirked at the others. "Wouldn't want Daddy carryin' your—"

Tobias's knife hand flexed. One strike. Just one. But Pops' gaze was already on him—a silent verdict. Again? He let the anger rot in his gut instead.

"Enough." Jonathan didn't even look at Brooks. Just leveled that glacier stare until the man paled.

Tobias clenched his jaw so hard his molars groaned. Not defense. Never defense. Just damage control.

The gates shrieked as they gave way, exhaling air so thick with rot it coated Tobias's tongue. The Weeping District stretched before them—a necropolis of melted steel and fractured concrete, every surface glistening with malignant dew. Somewhere in that skeletal skyline, the footprint's owner waited.

And now they were walking right into its mouth.

Jonathan moved through the ruins like a blade parting smoke—every step deliberate, every exhale measured. Tobias had spent eighteen years learning to read the language of his father's silence: the way his rifle strap sat half an inch too tight when danger neared, how his left boot always hit the ground a fraction harder before an ambush. Right now, the old man was wound tighter than a landmine's spring, though only someone who'd studied him for a lifetime would notice the signs.

The cathedral rose before them, its once-proud spire bent like a broken neck. The very air seemed to vibrate here, thick with the scent of wet stone and something older—something metallic that coated Tobias's tongue like blood. His rifle's sigils pulsed in time with his heartbeat, the etched lines drinking greedily from the charged atmosphere. He remembered Harris—the way the man's weapon had erupted last month when its sigils overdrew, how his screams had echoed through the compound long after his hands had blackened into twisted claws. Jonathan's warning slithered through his memory: Magic ain't some tame beast you leash with scratches on metal. These marks just give you enough rope to hang yourself.

Tobias's boots crunched on shattered stained glass as he approached the lectern. Its surface was unnaturally preserved amidst the decay, the dark wood gleaming as if freshly oiled. He brushed away centuries of dust with his sleeve, revealing symbols that coiled beneath like sleeping serpents. His breath caught. He'd seen these before—not just in the reports, but carved into the flesh of that thrall they'd found wandering near Lake Charles.

"Not just some ruins," Jonathan growled. The words weren't a warning but an executioner's axe falling. "Check your corners."

Tobias traced a particular spiral—identical to the one they'd found inside Sarah's abandoned pack. The leather had been torn open as if from within, the symbol burned into the interior lining. "These are Crane's marks," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Same as—"

For three agonizing heartbeats, Jonathan said nothing. The vein at his temple throbbed visibly in the sickly light filtering through the broken dome above. When he finally spoke, the words came out rough, as if dragged over gravel: "Yeah."

Something unfamiliar flickered across his father's face. Not fear—Tobias had never seen Jonathan Frey afraid—but something dangerously close to reverence. It was the look miners gave when tapping into a vein of something ancient and terrible, equal parts terror and awe at forces beyond human comprehension. Behind them, Cross muttered a prayer while Nash nervously checked his ammunition for the third time. The squad's footsteps kicked up dust that swirled wrong—counterclockwise, against the draft.

Tobias's breath fogged in the suddenly frigid air. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees in as many seconds, his sweat turning to ice against his skin. "Sarah's down there," he murmured, more to himself than anyone.

Jonathan didn't respond at first. His gaze remained fixed on the yawning stairwell, where the darkness seemed to shift and coil like living smoke. When he finally spoke, his voice was so low that Tobias felt it more than he heard it: "Yeah." His knuckles cracked as they tightened around his rifle. 

The stairway descended into oblivion, its steps slick with something thicker than water. Tobias caught the coppery tang of blood beneath the mildew as Nash shoved past him.

"Y'alright back there, Frey Junior?" Nash's drawl stretched the words into a lazy taunt. He grinned, revealing teeth stained black by chew. "Need Daddy to carry you down?"

Laughter ricocheted off the stone walls, but it rang hollow—the forced bravado of men trying not to imagine what waited below. Tobias ignored them, focusing instead on the way his pulse pounded in his temples. His boot slipped on the fourth step, and when his palm slapped the wall for balance, the stone itself seemed to shudder beneath his touch. A heartbeat. Two. Then his fingers found the carvings—words worn nearly smooth by time, yet still legible where his touch had stirred them awake:

B E W A R E

W H A T

S L E E P S

The final word stretched downward as if the stone itself had bled the warning. Tobias's sigils flared white-hot in response, their light reflecting off something glistening on the steps below. He squinted, making out the faint outline of footprints—small, bare, and leading deeper into the dark.