Chapter Three: Welcome to the Chain

Daniel lit a cigarette using the flames from a still-burning sigil.

It hissed as he exhaled into the early morning fog, the city skyline coughing up smoke and neon like a dying dragon.

Then came the sound—not footsteps—but something heavier. Reality rearranging itself to make room.

They arrived.

First came the scent of holy oil and iron—clean and sharp. A presence like the hum of a blade just before it strikes.

She appeared in a flash of white and gold.

Tall. Ethereal. Wings retracted like they were too proud to show. Skin like pale glass, hair braided tight in a warrior's crown. Her eyes were molten silver.

"Designation: Astrael. Dominion-class Seraphim. I am your liaison to Heaven."

She glanced at the blood still drying on Daniel's shirt. "You're already behind schedule."

"Good to meet you too, Feathers." Daniel took a drag. "Where's your buddy?"

The shadows answered before she did.

A flicker. A growl. Cigarette smoke twisted into something feral.

Then he stepped out—lean, hungry, all swagger and slouch. Horns small but sharp, skin ink-black with ember cracks glowing beneath. Dressed like a club bouncer who moonlighted as a war criminal.

"Name's Malik." His voice was molasses over broken glass. "Lower Noble of the Ninth. They call me the leash-holder."

He grinned, fangs sharp. "You bite too hard, I tug."

Daniel raised an eyebrow. "So I get a babysitting angel and a demon HR rep. Cute."

Astrael flicked her wrist. A glowing sigil unfurled in mid-air—an ethereal calendar filled with names, symbols, and places marked in red.

"Your assignments come from both courts. We filter, we deliver. You don't get to choose. You get a case, you handle it. Fast. Clean. Balanced."

"And if I say no?" Daniel asked.

Malik laughed. "Then we get to kill you. Again. Permanently this time." He winked. "Kidding. Mostly."

Astrael didn't smile.

"Each case is designed to test your control. Your purpose isn't just to fix breaches, Daniel. It's to understand them. Every demon that slips through, every holy bastard that overreaches—you put it down, or put it back in its cage."

"You're the scale now," Malik said. "One foot in the grave, one in the light. The job's fucked. But you're built for it."

---

Daniel crushed the cigarette underfoot.

"Alright. What's first on the board?"

Astrael swiped her fingers across the sigil. An image appeared—a child, eyes white as bone, screaming in an alley. Latin carved into the brick wall behind her in blood.

"Case Zero-One: A ten-year-old girl in Brooklyn who speaks in tongues and makes priests go blind. Local exorcist tried to bind her. She laughed him into a seizure."

Malik licked his teeth. "Your first official gig. Possession… or maybe something worse."

Daniel cracked his knuckles.

"Let's go say hi to the kid."

Daniel wasn't there. Not in the way people understood presence.

In ghost form, he was less than shadow, more than memory. No breath. No sound. Just weight—a ripple in air, a distortion that made dogs whimper and the devout clutch their chest for no reason at all.

The apartment building reeked of incense, fear, and mildew. Fourth floor. Two cops outside the door, neither knowing what the hell was happening inside, just that something wasn't right.

Daniel passed through the drywall like fog.

Inside, the temperature dropped.

---

She sat in the middle of the living room. Little girl. Ten, maybe. White dress stained with something red. Her eyes were wide and pale—like blind fish—but they followed him anyway.

Even in ghost form, she saw him.

That wasn't supposed to happen.

"You're late," she whispered in a voice that didn't belong to her. It echoed like static and splintered glass.

Daniel circled her, careful, silent.

The walls were covered in language—Latin, Aramaic, Enochian, and one that didn't belong to any human mouth. Carved by small fingers into the drywall, the couch, the floorboards.

Symbols bled light when he passed.

From the corner, he heard Malik's voice in his head. "Ghost form's good. Quiet. But if she sees you? You might wanna go corporeal. If she's housing something old, it'll only respect blood."

Astrael added her two cents, calm and cold.

"Her aura is fractured. There are… multiple entities inside her. One doesn't belong to the others."

Daniel materialized.

Human again. Solid. Leather boots echoing off cracked tile. His coat reeked of brimstone and rain. He crouched slowly, pulling a notepad from thin air, the pages blank until he touched them.

"You know who I am?" he asked, voice flat.

The girl smiled with too many teeth.

"The Cop Between Worlds. The Knife With No Holster." She tilted her head. "You smell like both of them. Like a dog who can't pick a master."

Daniel didn't flinch. "I've got questions. If you're just a kid wrapped in something ugly, I'll cut you out. If you're not..."

He let the sentence hang.

The girl giggled—no, it giggled—and for a moment the room got darker, like it was sinking under invisible water.

"Ask, Daniel Cross."

"We've been waiting for you."

---

He clicked his pen.

"First question: Which one of you wants out?"