Azazel had spent decades planning this.
Every child, every sacrifice, every whisper into the dark—it all built toward the same goal: freeing Lucifer.
And now, something was interfering.
Not stopping him.
Not yet.
But redirecting him. Just enough to delay. Just enough to rattle the rhythm.
And that? That was dangerous.
The cold Montana night pressed against the church windows, darkness gathering in the corners like old sins. Outside, snow fell in lazy spirals, blanketing the abandoned town in silence. The church had been empty for years—the last parishioners had fled when the mine closed, leaving their faith behind like everything else they couldn't carry.
It was the perfect place for a demon to think.
He sat alone in the back pew of an abandoned church outside Butte, Montana. His current vessel—an unassuming trucker with a shaved head and calloused hands—sat motionless, head tilted, as Azazel scanned news reports, EMF spikes, celestial readings. Old demon tracking rituals.
Papers spread across the wooden pew, yellowed clippings and fresh printouts mixed together. Symbols drawn in various substances—some in ink, others in substances best left unidentified. The scent of sulfur mingled with the musty scent of hymnals left to rot.
And nothing added up.
Azazel prided himself on precision. On knowing every variable. Every crossroads demon, every hellhound, every potential vessel had been cataloged, tracked, and prepared. The bloodlines had been cultivated for generations. The traps had been laid with excruciating attention to detail.
The crash didn't happen.
It was supposed to be simple. The Winchesters would be critically injured. John would be desperate. The deal would be made. The first domino in a line that would eventually open the Cage.
The driver had been possessed. Prepped. Slaved to his will.
And yet, before the appointed hour, the possession had been forcibly broken. With light. With markings. With Enochian warding that only a seraph would know how to fake.
No hunter did that.
No human had the knowledge or the guts to pull it off in plain sight.
The demon who'd been exorcised from the truck driver had described it with terror still fresh in its voice: "Like being touched by fire and ice at once. Like something reaching inside and yanking." The lesser demon had trembled, smoke still wisping from wounds that shouldn't have been possible. "There were symbols I'd never seen. And the light—it was..."
"What?" Azazel had demanded. "What was it like?"
"Like... Heaven," the demon had whispered. Then Azazel had destroyed it for its failure.
But the description lingered.
Azazel paced the aisle now, yellow eyes gleaming in the darkness. The floorboards creaked beneath his vessel's boots, the sound echoing in the empty sanctuary.
"Angels don't interfere," he muttered. "Not yet. Not until the first seal."
That was the arrangement. The cosmic bargain. The angels would watch but not act until the Righteous Man shed blood in Hell. Only then would they descend, their righteous fury giving Lucifer the counterweight he needed to rise.
It was all scripted.
So what had changed?
Azazel stared at the photos pinned to the wall—his collection of potential vessels. Children touched by demon blood. Most of them didn't even know what they were yet.
Sam. Jake. Lily. Ava.
He had visited each of them as infants, bled into their mouths, marked them for his purpose. Some had shown early signs of abilities—precognition, telekinesis, mind control. Others were dormant, the power waiting for the right trigger.
But someone was missing.
Someone who wasn't marked. Someone moving outside the narrative.
He conjured a list of every irregular event from the past three years.
• A cleaned-out black dog den in Windom, MN.
• An unnatural burn pattern in Duluth.
• An exorcism in Fargo described by witnesses as "divine fire."
• And most recently—Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Truck driver exorcised. No hunter IDs. No angelic presence confirmed. But sigils left behind suggesting otherwise.
The pattern was subtle but unmistakable once he looked for it. Someone moving in the shadows. Someone who knew how to hide from demonic detection. Someone who had interfered with his plans not once, but multiple times.
At first, he'd dismissed the Windom incident as a standard hunter operation. The Duluth burn could have been coincidence. But after Fargo—after reports of "divine fire" during an exorcism—he should have paid more attention.
Now, with the truck driver, it was too obvious to ignore.
He ran all the data through a demonic scrying mirror—still nothing.
The mirror's surface rippled like black oil, refusing to show a face, a name, an identity. Just distorted echoes and shadow.
Whoever this was, they weren't showing up in the script.
Azazel stood slowly.
"So… we've got ourselves a ghost in the machine."
He smiled—but it didn't reach his eyes.
"Someone out there doesn't want to be found."
His vessel's fingers traced the edge of the scrying mirror, yellow eyes reflecting in its obsidian surface. A ghost. A glitch in the carefully constructed narrative. A wild card that Chuck himself might not have written into the story.
And that made them dangerous.
Or useful.
Possibly both.
________________________________________
Elsewhere — Windom, MN
Adam sat in Professor Reed's office, staring at a printed map.
The mission was done. The crash was prevented. The Winchester family was still breathing.
But he couldn't relax.
Outside, students hurried across the snow-covered campus, bundled against the January chill, blissfully unaware of the supernatural war being waged in the shadows around them. The normalcy of it all—backpacks, coffee cups, laughter—seemed surreal compared to the weight of what Adam carried.
He felt it in his gut—like something had shifted in the dark. Azazel hadn't stopped. He'd just slowed down.
"He's recalibrating," Adam muttered.
Reed glanced up from the ancient text she was translating. "Who?"
"Azazel. The demon. He knows something's wrong. He just doesn't know who."
Reed set down her pen, studying Adam with that penetrating gaze that had become more concerned over the past months. "And how exactly do you know what a high-ranking demon is thinking?"
Adam tapped his temple. "I know how he operates. How he thinks. He's methodical. Patient. But also adaptable."
The truth—that Adam had watched all seasons of a TV show starring his own family in his past life—remained his own impossible secret. Reed knew a lot, but not that. No one could know that.
"Do you think he suspects you?"
Adam shook his head. "Not yet. I've stayed hidden. No trail. No direct contact with Sam or Dean. I even masked the ritual to look like an angelic strike."
"Then what's the problem?"
Adam leaned back, eyes tired.
"The problem is... he's looking now."
The words hung in the air between them. Reed's office, once a sanctuary of academic pursuit, had transformed over the years into a war room of sorts. Bookshelves still held folklore texts and anthropological studies, but now they shared space with weapons disguised as artifacts, hex bags hidden in decorative boxes, and devil's traps painted beneath the vintage rugs.
"And if he's looking," Reed said slowly, "he might eventually find you."
"Maybe." Adam stood, restless energy driving him to pace. "But I've been careful. No credit cards. Burner phones only. Cash transactions. I've been hunting with Roy for three years without leaving any trace that could connect back to me."
Reed's expression remained skeptical. "Demons have resources beyond the normal means. Especially one as powerful as Azazel."
"I know." Adam ran a hand through his hair. "That's why I have to move faster. Be more proactive."
"Adam," Reed's voice took on a warning tone, "what are you planning?"
He didn't answer immediately. His gaze fell on the map again—the Midwest spread out in highways and backroads, red pins marking Winchester sightings, blue pins for demonic omens.
"I need to find out what Azazel's next move will be," he said finally. "Now that the crash plan failed, he'll adapt. Find another way to force John into a corner."
"And how exactly do you plan to do that? Demons aren't exactly forthcoming with their strategies."
Adam's expression hardened. "There are ways to make them talk."
Reed's eyebrows shot up. "You're not suggesting—"
"Capturing one? Yeah, I am." Adam's voice was calm, too calm for a sixteen-year-old discussing demon interrogation. "A low-level scout. Nothing major. Just enough to get intel."
"That's suicide," Reed said flatly. "Even with Roy's help."
"Roy doesn't need to know. And I won't be doing it alone." Adam pulled out his phone. "I have a contact. Someone who specializes in demon intelligence."
"Another hunter?"
Adam's mouth quirked. "Something like that."
Reed studied him for a long moment, concern etched in the lines around her eyes. "You're changing, Adam. This obsession—it's consuming you."
"It's not an obsession," Adam replied, though the defensiveness in his tone suggested otherwise. "It's survival. For all of us."
The unspoken words hung between them: If I don't stop Azazel, everyone dies. My mom. The Winchesters. Maybe the whole world.
Reed sighed. "Just... be careful. Whatever you're planning—whatever game you're playing with this demon—remember that chess pieces don't walk away from the board unscathed."
Adam nodded, but his mind was already elsewhere, plotting his next move in a game where the stakes kept rising.
________________________________________
Back with Azazel
He walked through the woods at sunset, smoke curling from his fingertips, lips forming names as he tested the air for divine interference.
The Montana forest was silent around him, animals fleeing from his presence by instinct. Pine needles crunched beneath his boots as he moved with unnatural grace between the trees. The vessel's breath fogged in the cold air, a human detail that Azazel found amusing—this pretense of life, of mortality.
He stopped in a small clearing where the last light of day filtered through the branches overhead. Here, away from human eyes, he could work uninterrupted.
With practiced movements, he drew symbols in the dirt with the toe of his boot—ancient sigils, older than Christianity, older than the written word. Symbols that predated humanity itself.
He knelt, pressing his vessel's palm against the cold earth, and began to chant. The words weren't Latin or Enochian or any human tongue. They were older, darker—the language of Hell itself, syllables that made the air shiver and the ground beneath him warm unnaturally.
The ritual was simple but effective—a demonic GPS, designed to track interference in his plans. To find anomalies in the pattern.
To find his ghost.
As he chanted, the symbols began to glow with sickly yellow light—the same shade as his eyes. The light spread, forming a map of sorts across the forest floor, pinpricks of illumination representing his marked children, his agents, his traps.
And there—a shadow. A void where light should be. Not in Sioux Falls, as he'd expected, but somewhere to the east. Midwest. Minnesota, perhaps.
Faint, but unmistakable.
Someone blocking his sight. Someone who knew how to hide from demonic detection.
Azazel smiled, a cold expression that never reached his eyes.
He wouldn't rush the plan anymore.
Instead, he'd tighten it.
He'd pick the children one by one. Push them in secret. Pit them against each other without revealing his hand.
And this ghost? This invisible hand that dared to twist his story?
He'd find them.
Soon.
Because even if the kid was smart—even if they hid in the shadows—eventually…
Everyone looks up when the sky falls.
Azazel erased the symbols with a wave of his hand, the glow fading as quickly as it had appeared. He had what he needed—a direction, if not a name. A shadow to hunt.
He straightened, yellow eyes gleaming in the gathering darkness.
"Let the games begin," he whispered to the empty forest. "Let's see how long you can hide."
And somewhere in Minnesota, Adam Milligan shivered without knowing why, a sudden chill racing down his spine as if someone had just stepped over his grave.