He looked around at faces marked by fatigue, resolve, prayer, and in some cases peaceful tears. One older brother moved his lips silently over familiar scriptures. A younger one stared upward as though already listening for something beyond the concrete ceiling.

Then, at first so faintly it could have been mistaken for weather, a new sound passed through the night.

Not sirens.

Not engines.

Something heavier.

Outside, the clouds thickened unnaturally fast. Darkness deepened over the city as if the sky itself were drawing closer. Lightning broke in one place, then another, then another still—not in the scattered rhythm of a storm but in sharp, ordered violence.

At the Morales house, Nathan jumped and clutched Sasha tighter. Jack went still. Brother Morales stepped back from the curtain, face drained of color and wonder.

In the detention room, even the officers began to look at one another.

The building trembled.

Somewhere in the heavens, movement was gathering.

Not imagined.

Not symbolic.

Real.

Samuel rose to his feet without being told.

Around him, other faithful ones were doing the same.

No one in that room fully understood what they were about to see.

But they knew who it meant.