In the aftermath of the highway battle, Dr. Sweet and Kraller — revealed to each other as Wraith siblings — use anti-gravity discs to levitate the defeated Firefall into a government van and spirit him back to Project Safeguard's training base, The Farm. Stryker, regaining consciousness in transit, overhears them confirming everything Rom had told him: that he has been permanently grafted into stolen Spaceknight armor and will never be human again. His rage is displaced onto Rom.
Meanwhile, Wraith operatives commanding the Hellhounds of the Dark Nebula — eyeless, telepathic tracking creatures bred by the Dire Wraiths — deploy them to hunt Rom. The sightless beasts immediately detect him hiding in the woods with Brandy Clark and Steve Jackson. Unwilling to fight the Hellhounds while shielding his companions, Rom fires his rocket-pods and carries both humans into the night sky, evading Wraith weapons fire as the police watch helplessly below.
Rom sets down at a seemingly abandoned country house, sensing with his scanner eyes that it is unoccupied and safe. Brandy and Steve, exhausted, fall asleep together by lamplight. Rom, needing no sleep, enters an introspective rest-mode to process accumulated data — a state his narration compares to dreaming. In this state he perceives a vision: a caped figure enters the house and confronts a malevolent presence within. The figure identifies himself as Doctor Strange, who tells the dwelling he knows its secret and banishes it — referencing a past encounter — back to its shadow realm.
Rom snaps alert as the house comes to life around him. The mists that lulled Brandy and Steve to sleep solidify into serpentine bonds, and disembodied hands hurl Rom across the room. The alien entity — a Dweller in the Shadows, an ancient evil consciousness inhabiting the structure — reveals that the Wraiths' destruction of their own interdimensional transporter in issue #3 accidentally freed it from the shadow realm where Doctor Strange had previously imprisoned it. It attempts to levitate the unconscious Brandy and Steve away as a prize.
Rom summons his Neutralizer and blasts the grasping hands, then his Translator to communicate with the entity. The Dweller refuses to return willingly, hurling eldritch flame and claiming Rom lacks the sorcery of Doctor Strange. Rom answers that the Elders of Galador armed him with something greater — his Neutralizer, which can shatter any evil. He fires a full blast, banishing the Dweller back to the shadow realm. The house collapses into silence. As Brandy and Steve wake, Rom tells them the house was never a house — only an alien being in the shape of one. Steve asks grimly whether Earth has more to fear than just the Dire Wraiths. Rom's answer: yes.
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