Broken Bow, Nebraska -- 1997
We reached town as dawn painted the sky. Dean's sword pulsed brighter with the rising sun, while the darkness inside me settled into its daily quiet.
"On our way here, even more people have gone missing. It's now three entire missing families," Dad stated grimly as he spread a map across the Impala's hood. "All vanished from their homes. No signs of struggle."
"Except the omens," Bobby added, having arrived hours before us. "Temperature drops, strange lights, animals fleeing."
I studied the map, noting how the disappearances formed a pattern. Not random attacks - carefully planned removals. The kind that suggested organization. Purpose.
Dean traced the pattern with his finger, his cross gleaming in the early light. "They're forming a circle."
"A ritual circle," Bobby confirmed. "Someone's taking these people for a reason."
What he didn't say - what the darkness in me already sensed - was that we were standing at its center.
This wasn't just another hunt.
It was a trap.
-----------------------------------
The local diner buzzed with morning activity, but something felt wrong. Eyes watched us too carefully. A waitress's smile seemed painted on, her movements too fluid to be human.
"Coffee's cold," Dean muttered, though steam rose from his cup.
Dad and Bobby discussed theories while I observed the other patrons. The old man by the window - his shadow moved wrong, like a Native American Shadow Walker's. The businessman in the corner read a newspaper upside down, his eyes occasionally flashing like a Kitsune's.
They were everywhere. Hiding in plain sight.
A child dropped her spoon near our table. As she bent to retrieve it, I caught ancient eyes in a young face - a Korean Kumiho, poorly disguised. She flinched when she met my gaze, hurrying away.
"Sam?" Dad's voice pulled me back. "You seeing something?"
More than I could tell him. The darkness stirred, recognizing these beings for what they were. Ancient. Patient. Desperate.
Dean's hand rested on his sword, wrapped in cloth but still humming. The businessman's newspaper crackled with sudden frost.
We weren't hunting them.
They were hunting us.
"Just thinking," I answered Dad, forcing my eyes away from the not-quite-human patrons. "The pattern of disappearances... it's too precise."
Bobby nodded, his experienced hunter's instincts clearly sensing something off about our surroundings. "Like someone's following an old ritual. Real old."
The darkness inside me recognized the pattern now - an ancient summoning circle, but twisted, inverted. Not meant to call something up.
Meant to seal something in.
Or someone.
The waitress returned, movements liquid-smooth as she refilled coffee cups that didn't need filling. Her sleeve rode up, revealing markings that could have been tattoos to untrained eyes.
But I knew better. Vedmak runes, Slavic witch-marks meant to bind and contain.
Dean's sword hummed louder through its wrappings, responding to the proximity of old magic. The waitress's hands trembled slightly as she poured his coffee, steam curling unnaturally in the air between them.
"We should check the victims' houses," Dad suggested, dropping cash on the table. "Split up, cover more ground."
"No," Dean and I said simultaneously, the word sharp with shared instinct.
Dad's eyebrows rose, but Bobby spoke first. "They're right, John. Something ain't right here. We stick together."
As we stood to leave, I noticed the businessman's newspaper had changed languages - now covered in flowing Persian script. A Peri's warning, perhaps, or a message to others of their kind.
The bell above the door chimed discordantly as we exited, its sacred tone warping around my presence while strengthening around Dean's.
Outside, the morning had grown colder despite the rising sun. Frost patterns spread across the Impala's windows - not random ice, but deliberate symbols.
"The hell?" Dad muttered, studying the markings.
"Protection runes," Bobby identified some. "But there's more... John, these are old. Real old. Pre-biblical old."
Dean reached to brush away the frost, but I caught his wrist. "Don't."
The darkness in me could read them now: warnings, wards, and beneath those, a message meant for vessels.
This world is ours. The apocalypse must not begin.
"We need to move," I said quietly, feeling more ancient eyes watching from shop windows and alley shadows. "Now."
Dad started to argue, but a sudden wind cut him off - sharp and cold, carrying whispers in languages dead before humanity learned to write.
The businessman emerged from the diner, no longer pretending to be human. His eyes glowed with fox-fire, nine shadowy tails briefly visible behind him.
The old man followed, his shadow stretching impossibly long in the morning light. The child-who-wasn't-a-child stood in the doorway, ancient eyes watching us with something like regret.
More figures appeared on the street - a woman whose feet didn't quite touch the ground, a vendor whose cart sold dreams instead of hot dogs, a postal worker whose bag contained fates instead of letters.
"John Winchester," the businessman-kitsune spoke, his voice carrying echoes of centuries. "Take your sons and leave. This is your only warning."
Dad's gun appeared in his hand, but against beings this old, modern weapons meant nothing.
"Who are you?" Bobby demanded, though his tone suggested he already knew.
"We are the watchers," the kitsune answered. "The guardians. The ones who remember the first war, and would prevent the last."
Dean's sword sang through its wrappings, responding to the gathering power. Sacred light leaked from its concealment, making several creatures step back.
The child-kumiho spoke next, her voice ancient in her young body. "The vessels must not reach their destiny. The circle will be completed. The cage will remain sealed."
The darkness inside me surged at the mention of the cage, recognition and longing I couldn't entirely suppress. Dean shifted closer to me, instinctively protective, making the watching creatures tense.
"My boys haven't done anything," Dad growled, hunter's instincts warring with parental protection.
"No," the shadow walker agreed, his voice like wind through ancient caves. "Not yet. And they never will."
The temperature dropped further. Ice crackled across the pavement in elaborate patterns - Celtic knots intertwined with Egyptian hieroglyphs, Norse runes merging with Mesopotamian symbols.
"The prophecies are clear," a new voice spoke - the waitress, now openly displaying her Vedmak nature. "If the vessels unite with their intended, all ends."
"We've seen it," the kumiho child added. "In dreams, in visions, in the spaces between moments. Fire and ice. The world torn apart by brothers' war."
Dean's sword was practically screaming now, its sacred energy fighting to break free. My own darkness roiled in response, making shadows twist unnaturally around my feet.
"You don't know what you're talking about," I said carefully, trying to keep my voice steady as ancient power pressed against us from all sides.
The kitsune's eyes flashed. "Don't we, vessel of the Morningstar? We who have watched humanity since its first breath?"
"That's enough," Dad stepped forward, but Bobby caught his arm.
"John," Bobby warned quietly. "These ain't your usual monsters."
"We are not monsters," the shadow walker corrected. "We are the balance. The watchers between light and dark. And we cannot allow what is written to come to pass."
More figures emerged - a woman in traditional Korean hanbok, her nine tails fully visible now. A dark-skinned man wearing bones and feathers, Caribbean obeah power crackling around him.
A pair of elderly women whose Norse völva sightlines pierced through present into future.
They were surrounding us, I realized. Completing their own circle.
"The vessels will be contained," the kitsune declared. "Sealed away where neither Heaven nor Hell can reach them. It is decided."
"Like hell it is," Dean growled, starting to draw his sword.
"Dean, don't-" I warned, but it was too late.
The blessed blade cleared its wrappings, sacred light blazing out like a newborn sun. Several creatures recoiled, their glamours flickering to reveal their true forms.
The darkness in me responded automatically, surging up to counter the sword's holy power. Shadows deepened, temperatures plunged, and for just a moment, I felt that hollow space inside me pulse with borrowed grace.
The watching creatures went absolutely still.
"You see?" the kumiho whispered. "Already it begins. Light and dark. Michael and Lucifer. The eternal dance starting anew."
"We're not them," I insisted, even as my voice carried harmonics that weren't entirely human. "We don't have to be."
"But you are," the Vedmak countered. "With every passing day, you become more what you were meant to be. The sword proves it. The shadows prove it."
"The circle is ready," the obeah man announced. "The bindings are set."
Dad's gun swung between targets, useless but determined. Bobby was muttering under his breath, probably realizing just how outmatched we were.
"Last chance," the kitsune offered. "Surrender to containment. It will be painless, and the world will be spared."
Dean's sword blazed brighter, its holy light making the creatures' true forms more visible - fox spirits and shadow walkers, dream weavers and fate spinners, all united by desperate purpose.
The darkness in me gathered, ready to fight or flee. But there was something else - a distant sound, growing closer.
Wings.