**Chapter 14: The Gathering Storm**
The wasteland stretched before Marverick like a rotting carcass, its cracked earth veined with rivers of ash. Ruined cities clawed at the horizon, skeletal remains of skyscrapers blackened by hellfire. The air reeked of decay and ozone, the sky a sickly bruise of purples and grays. But Marverick walked with purpose, his boots crunching over glass and bone. The Elysium Stone's shard hung heavy around his neck, its faint pulse a reminder: *You are not done yet.*
He found the survivors in the belly of a derelict oil tanker, its rusted hull groaning in the wind. Their leader, **Cain**, stood silhouetted against a fire barrel, his face a patchwork of scars and his eyes twin shards of flint. A jagged greatsword leaned against his thigh, its edge serrated from cleaving demon hide. When he turned, Marverick saw the brand on his neck—a crude *R* burned into flesh. Riggs' mark.
"Heard you pissed off the Voidborn," Cain rasped, tossing Marverick a canteen of murky water. "Got style, I'll give you that."
Marverick drank, the liquid bitter. "You're hunting Riggs."
Cain's smile was a knife wound. "Hunting? Nah. *Skinning*. They torched my village to test some new toy. Kids, elders—*kindling*." He spat into the fire. "Now I return the favor."
The group was a mosaic of the damned: a sniper with milky eyes and a rifle carved from angel bone, a hulking brute whose arms dripped molten slag, and **Abigail**—a specter from Dave's past. She moved like smoke, her leathers stitched with glyphs that writhed under moonlight. When her gaze met Marverick's, she tapped the hilt of her katana, its blade etched with Riggs' kill count. "Heard you let Dave slip," she said, her voice velvet over steel. "Don't make that mistake twice."
But it was **Elijah** who froze the air. He emerged from the shadows, his hybrid form pared down to a gaunt silhouette—one arm still scaled, the other human but trembling. His eyes, one molten gold, one shattered obsidian, locked on Marverick. "You're a glutton for bad company, Daveson."
Ava's dagger was at Elijah's throat before Marverick could blink. "Give me a reason," she hissed.
Elijah didn't flinch. "The Riggs have a new pet—a Voidborn larvae. They're feeding it Nephilim blood. *Your* bloodline, specifically." His hybrid eye pulsed. "I want them dead more than you do."
The alliance was forged in silent snarls and loaded glances. They moved at dusk, a ragged convoy cutting through valleys littered with the wreckage of war. Rogue demons stalked them—twisted, feral things with too many joints and jaws that unhinged like snakes. Cain butchered them with methodical rage, while Abigail danced through the fray, her katana singing hymns of retribution.
At a crossroads of shattered highways, they found the **Crimson Choir**—a cult draped in robes of flayed angel wings, their faces masked by molten gold. They chanted around a pyre where a child thrashed, bound by chains of black iron.
"Sacrifice," Elijah muttered. "To keep the Voidborn docile."
Marverick's wings ignited before the cultists could scream. The fight was swift, brutal. The child—a girl no older than Emily, Marverick's sister—clung to Ava, her eyes hollow. "They ate her voice," Ava whispered, her own trembling with fury. "Cut out her tongue."
That night, Marverick dreamt of fire. *The Voidborn's maw, the Stone's shard melting in his grip, Cain's blade buried in his ribs. A voice, not his own, hissed: **You are the spark. Now burn.***
He woke to Abigail sharpening her blade. "Riggs' stronghold's close," she said, nodding to the horizon where a monolithic spire pierced the clouds. "They're brewing something nasty. And your blood's the key."
Marverick studied the shard at his neck. It pulsed in time with his heartbeat, warmer now. *Too warm.* "What happens if they finish it?"
Abigail's smile was grim. "Then we die. But we'll take half the world with us."
As dawn bled into the sky, the group gathered. Elijah rigged explosives with hands steadier than his gaze. Cain anointed his blade with demon ichor. Ava knelt beside the mute girl, teaching her to shape fire with her hands—a small defiance.
Marverick stood apart, the Stone's shard searing his chest. He felt it then—the storm brewing in his veins, the Nephilim rage waking. *Let them come,* it whispered. *Let them burn.*
The spire loomed. Somewhere inside, the Riggs awaited. And the Voidborn, hungry.
Ava's hand found his. "No martyrs," she said.
"No," Marverick agreed. "Just survivors."
The storm broke.