Evening tastes like smoke and silence. The kind that doesn't just fill the air — it sinks into your coat, your lungs, your thoughts. A silence that lingers long after the wind has left, like the echo of something important you forgot to hear.
I walk with my hands buried deep in my pockets, fingers curled tight around old fabric, knuckles brushing against worn lining. My boots drag against the fractured pavement — one scuffed toe at a time, as if the weight of movement is negotiable tonight.
The city exhales around me in lazy, mechanical rhythms. Neon veins blink alive on cold glass storefronts. Holo-ads flicker on, casting low-blue light on pedestrians with half-dead stares. Above, street lamps buzz like they're nursing old grudges — half-awake hornets dancing in cages of static. A delivery drone zips overhead with a tired hum, trailing vapor like cheap perfume.
Somewhere, two blocks down, someone's yelling at a vending machine, every word punctuated by a mechanical whir and clunk — frustration against indifference.
Just city things.
People things.
Nothing sharp or urgent.
Not assassin-things.
Not legacy-things.
Just people pretending life won't ask more of them tomorrow.
Behind me, Rei walks in silence — always two steps behind.
Never one.
Never three.
His rhythm synced to mine like muscle memory, like he's part of the coat I'm wearing.
He doesn't speak unless necessary.
Doesn't breathe unless I do.
He's not a bodyguard. Not a friend. Not quite a shadow.
Rei is the silence you choose to carry.
We're walking back from the gym — or what Kael Vaelen, my charming father, insists on calling "low-intensity engagement readiness."
Normal people call it working out.
I call it Kael Vaelen's disappointment in motion.
My phone vibrates against my leg — sharp and familiar. I glance down.
[Incoming Call: Bro]
Of course.
The worst part isn't that he's calling.
It's that I knew he would.
I stop walking. Gravel crunches.
Rei stops too, silent beside a parked hover-bike. His arms fold across his chest, head tilted slightly toward the alley across the street. His eyes scan it like he expects the shadows to vomit bullets. They might. That's how this city works — peace is just a ceasefire waiting for context.
I let the phone buzz once more in my palm.
Then I tilt my head up.
The sky bleeds orange into navy, like someone smudged fire into ink with tired hands. A few stars try to peek through the haze, but the city's light pollution drowns them out, smothering the cosmos in advertisement and exhaustion.
I swipe the green circle.
Connection clicks like a trigger.
"Yeah?"
His voice answers. Calm. Controlled.
A mirror of mine if you polished the edges and replaced the rage with clarity.
Kai.
My brother. The golden one.
The one reality never seemed to bite hard enough to scar.
"Where are you?" he asks.
"Walking. Training just finished."
There's a pause.
I know that pause.
The "I know you're spiraling again" pause.
The kind that fills a conversation with everything not said.
Kai exhales through the line. It's soft — not annoyed, not judging. Just aware.
"Don't feel bad."
I scoff. Bitter. Automatic. "You're still doing that?"
My voice cuts sharper than intended.
"Still trying to buffer reality with brotherly grace?"
Another pause. Longer now.
He's letting me talk, and I hate that he knows to do that.
"Nyx, I'm just saying—"
"I'm not you."
It comes out flat. Empty of venom, yet too sharp to ignore.
"You always did everything right. Right choices. Right words. Right rhythm. I can't even get basic right. I trip over fundamentals and call it growth."
My hand drops to my side.
Instinct.
Fingers find the metal weight on my wrist — a scuffed, cracked, too-heavy relic.
My grandfather's watch.
My father gave it to me like it meant something. Like legacy was a comfort, not a curse.
This was meant for someone who could read time like a weapon.
I can't even track my minutes without feeling behind.
"I'm not trying to be you," I whisper, barely above breath.
"I just… keep getting reminded I'm not."
Across the street, Rei glances over.
His eyes catch mine for a second — unreadable as always, but I know he heard.
He always hears.
I rub my thumb against the watch face, over the fractured glass.
The crack splits through the center like a fault line, like the watch itself is barely holding together — like me.
And then—
Everything stops.
No warning.
No buildup.
Just snap—
Reality phases.
It doesn't feel like falling.
It doesn't feel like blinking or dreaming or dying.
It's more like… someone unplugged me.
Like my body was a socket and the world just yanked the cord.
No sound.
No wind.
No heartbeat.
No Rei.
No Kai.
No city.
No call.
Just—
Nothing.
I'm standing.
Somehow.
Not in a place.
Not in a dream.
I am standing in a black room.
But it's not shadow.
Not void.
Not even silence.
It is perfect black. Like the concept of color and light had never been invented.
I try to breathe. Nothing answers.
I try to move. There is no sensation. No feedback. No muscle.
There is only me. And not-me. Coexisting in contradiction.
Then—
The darkness cracked.
Not metaphorically.
Not in some poetic, soul-revealing way.
It cracks like glass.
Lines of glowing silver fracture across the black — spiderwebbing across the empty like something on the other side just punched through.
And behind those cracks—