A Shift in the Rain
The rain had settled into a slow, steady fall, each droplet striking the lantern-lit street like the ticking of a clock. The woman walked ahead of me, her boots splashing softly through shallow puddles. I followed, my steps hesitant but steady, the ink along my arm quiet for now.
"This city isn't dead," she said without looking back. "It's listening. Always. The lanterns are its eyes, the cracks are its teeth, and the shadows…" She glanced over her shoulder at me. "The shadows are what's left after it eats."
I swallowed hard. "And the ink?"
"That," she said, "is the hunger that bit you. But it didn't finish the meal."
A faint rumble passed through the ground beneath us, making the lanterns sway slightly. The sound wasn't thunder — it was sharper, like glass under strain. I knew that sound without knowing how I knew it.
"A crack," she said quietly. "Close."
I felt it before I saw it. A tug beneath my skin, the ink twitching, eager. The street ahead blurred, the cobblestones bending in impossible angles as if someone was folding reality itself.
Then I saw it — a thin, jagged tear in the air just beyond the next lantern, splitting the world like paper. It shimmered faintly, edges glowing with a pale light that hurt to look at.
The woman slowed, her eyes locked on the fracture. "This one's small, but unstable. If it spreads, it'll rewrite everything in its reach — the buildings, the people, maybe even you."
A gust of wind swept down the street, carrying with it faint whispers. The sound clawed at the edges of my mind. My knees felt weak.
The ink pulsed harder, tendrils sliding down my wrist like it was straining toward the crack.
"It wants it," I said.
"It always will," she replied. "Cracks feed the ink, and the ink feeds cracks. That's why you have to master it now, before we get near bigger ones."
Her hand rested on the hilt of the short blade at her hip. "This will be your first test. The ink will try to act on its own. You can't let it. You must command it. Restrain the crack, close it. Or it will eat through this street in minutes."
My throat tightened. "How?"
"You'll feel its edges in your mind — like threads pulling at you. Grab them. Pull them closed. Focus too hard, and the ink will overtake you. Focus too little, and the crack wins. Balance is survival."
The fracture widened slightly, its edges sparking. The whispers grew louder, each one sounding uncomfortably like my own voice, speaking in words I didn't remember saying.
The woman stepped aside. "Your move, Kael."
The ink writhed in anticipation. My pulse quickened. I took a slow breath, stepped forward, and faced the tear in the world.
The fracture hissed softly, like rain on hot metal, its jagged edges trembling in the lamplight. It was small — no wider than my forearm — but it felt vast, like staring into a deep ocean trench where no light could reach.
The whispers crawled along my spine.
Step closer.
It's yours.
The ink surged up my arm, coiling like smoke beneath my skin. My fingers twitched against my will. For a moment, I thought I could hear its thoughts — not in words, but in sensations. Hunger. Excitement. Claiming.
I reached out my hand.
The moment my fingertips brushed the air around the fracture, the world tilted. I wasn't standing on cobblestones anymore. I was in a space between — weightless, endless, flooded with light and shadow tangled together.
The crack wasn't just a tear in reality. It was a wound, and I could feel its edges pulling at me, trying to make me part of it.
"Threads," the woman's voice came faintly, as if through water. "Find the threads."
I closed my eyes and felt. There — thin, almost invisible strands of pressure pulling from the edges of the fracture. Dozens of them. They tugged at my mind, not my body, each thread humming with a different tone, as if they were… alive.
The ink reacted instantly, stretching toward them, wanting to weave itself into the crack. I gritted my teeth and forced my arm to move slowly, deliberately.
"Control," I muttered. "Not instinct."
I imagined grabbing the threads and drawing them together, weaving them into a knot. The first two came easily — their pull softened, their tone dulled. But the third resisted, vibrating violently in my grasp. The ink lashed, pushing me to tear instead of mend.
Destroy, it urged.
"No," I hissed.
The resistance grew stronger. My heartbeat thundered in my ears. My knees buckled slightly as the crack pushed back, widening just enough for the pale light inside to flare. Something shifted in that light — a shape moving deeper within, too far to see clearly, but close enough to know it was watching me.
Sweat ran down my face. My arm burned. The ink screamed in my head, its hunger nearly matching my own rising panic.
Then — snap.
The last thread broke, not because I cut it, but because I forced it shut. The pale light vanished. The hiss died. And suddenly, I was back on the rain-slick street, gasping, the fracture gone.
The woman stepped forward, eyes sharp. "Not bad," she said. "But you let it lead for a moment."
I looked at my arm. The black lines were calm now, but there was something different in their curves, as if they had learned a new pattern from that struggle.
I swallowed. "What was inside?"
Her gaze lingered on the space where the crack had been. "Something that shouldn't be here yet. If it's watching you this early…" She trailed off, and for the first time since I met her, I saw something that looked like concern.
I straightened my back, still breathing hard. "Then I'll be ready for it when it comes."
She smiled faintly, but there was no humor in it. "You'd better be, Kael. Because next time, it won't just be watching."
Lantern Shadows
We didn't linger where the fracture had been. The rain had washed away its glow, but the air still felt thinner there, stretched, like the skin of a drum pulled too tight.
The woman led the way, her pace quicker now, her head turning occasionally as if she expected someone to follow.
"You felt it too, didn't you?" I asked, keeping stride beside her.
Her eyes flicked to me. "The thing watching you? Yes. Which means we don't have much time before—" She stopped mid-step.
I followed her gaze.
Up ahead, the street forked in two directions. Both were lined with those same old iron lanterns, their glass panes fogged with condensation. But the right-hand street… its lanterns weren't lit.
The rain didn't fall there either. It just stopped, a clear line in the air where droplets hung for a heartbeat too long before vanishing.
Something moved in the dark beyond.
The woman's voice was low and sharp. "Stay here."
I ignored her and stepped forward anyway, my boots splashing in shallow puddles. The moment I crossed the invisible line, the sound of the rain behind me cut off. My ears rang with sudden silence.
The lanterns along the dead street were dark, but as I looked closer, I realized the glass panes weren't fogged at all — they were blackened from the inside, as though something had burned them hollow.
I felt the ink stir uneasily. Not eager this time. Wary.
The woman caught up to me, her hand on her blade. "This street wasn't supposed to be here," she murmured.
"You mean in the rewrite?"
Her jaw tightened. "No. I mean ever. Someone's building spaces where they shouldn't exist. And they're using the cracks to do it."
That was when I saw it — carved into the base of the nearest lantern, half-hidden under rust and rain, was a symbol.
Not drawn with chalk or paint. Burned in.
It was a spiral, broken in three places, each gap dripping into a shape like an eye.
The moment I looked at it, a cold, crawling sensation crept up my neck, and for a heartbeat, the street seemed to bend toward me.
The woman's hand shot out, pulling me back. "Don't look at it too long. Not here."
"What is it?" I asked.
She didn't answer right away. When she did, her voice was almost too quiet to hear.
"It's a sign. For whoever — or whatever — is opening the cracks. And if they know your name already, Kael…"
Her grip on my sleeve tightened.
"…then we're already behind."
Footsteps in the Wrong World
The rainless street stretched ahead, every shadow clinging too tightly to the ground, like oil that wouldn't wash away.
We started moving again, slower now. Each step felt heavier, the air thick, as though we were walking underwater. I glanced back at the fork in the road — the lit street we'd left behind seemed farther away than it should be.
That's when I heard it.
A footstep.
Not the woman's — hers were quick and careful. Not mine — I was barely lifting my feet from the slick cobblestones.
This one was deliberate. Heavy. And it came from behind us.
I froze.
The woman didn't look back. "Don't," she whispered.
The ink prickled along my arm, but not in hunger this time. It was… warning me.
Another step. Closer.
The urge to turn around clawed at me. My mind flashed with the thought: If I look, I'll see what's there. But right beneath it came another, colder one: If I see it, it will see more of me than I want it to.
We walked faster. The footsteps behind us matched our pace exactly.
The woman's voice was taut. "When we reach the next lantern, run."
"Run where?" I hissed.
"Doesn't matter. Just—"
A sharp scrape echoed through the street, like a boot dragging over stone. My pulse spiked.
The next lantern — dark, blackened like the rest — stood ten steps ahead. I counted them in my head, matching each one with my breath.
Nine. Eight. Seven—
The footsteps stopped.
I made the mistake of listening harder. There was no sound now, not even the soft hum of the dead lanterns. Just stillness.
Six. Five. Four—
The woman's hand brushed my arm — not to stop me, but to steady me.
Three. Two. One—
The instant we passed the lantern, the air behind us shattered with a sound like tearing cloth and cracking ice all at once.
We ran.
I didn't look back, but I felt it. The space we'd been in breaking, collapsing inward, something tall and wrong pouring through it. The ink surged in panic, flooding down my arm and up into my shoulder, like it was trying to shield me.
The woman pulled me hard into a side alley, shoving me against the wall. Her eyes were fierce, her breathing controlled. "That wasn't for you," she said quickly. "It was looking for something else. But now it knows what you smell like."
My chest heaved. "Smell like?"
She didn't answer. Instead, she peered out into the street, the faintest flicker of relief crossing her face.
"It's gone. For now."
But her voice made one thing clear — whatever it was, this wouldn't be the last time we heard its footsteps.
The Alley's Second Mouth
The rain returned all at once, hissing against the cobblestones, pattering on the warped roof tiles above. It should have been a comfort after the suffocating stillness of that dead street.
It wasn't.
The woman's hand tightened on her sword hilt as she scanned the alley. It was narrow, barely wide enough for the two of us to walk shoulder to shoulder, the walls leaning inward as if the buildings were conspiring to crush the space between them.
She took a step forward. Then froze.
I followed her gaze — and saw it.
A hairline crack, floating in the air less than three paces ahead. Unlike the one on the street earlier, this one wasn't pale. It bled black, its edges rippling like the surface of oil in a jar.
The ink in my arm surged at the sight, but this time it wasn't hunger or fear. It was… curiosity.
The woman's voice was low. "This wasn't here a moment ago."
Before I could speak, the shadows along the alley walls began to bend toward it, stretching unnaturally. They didn't touch the crack — they fed into it, sinking into its edges like smoke into fire.
A deep, pulsing thud echoed from inside, too slow to be a heartbeat, too heavy to be anything human.
I took a step closer without realizing it. The ink shifted under my skin, forming faint, twisting lines across my fingers.
"Kael—"
Her voice was sharp now, but it sounded far away.
The black crack began to widen, the air warping around it. I could feel its pull — not on my body, but on something deeper, the way an undertow drags at the bones beneath the skin.
Something moved inside. Not fully visible, just the outline — tall, bent, with joints that flexed in the wrong directions.
The woman grabbed my arm and yanked me back just as the crack flared. The sound it made was like a breath being drawn in reverse.
She raised her free hand, tracing a sigil in the air with startling speed. Lines of faint silver light burned in her wake, shaping themselves into a circle that hovered between us and the crack.
The moment it was complete, the pull lessened. The crack shrank slightly, its edges shivering.
Her jaw was set. "It's not supposed to be able to open here without an anchor. Which means—"
Her words cut off. Both of us turned toward the far end of the alley, where a single lantern flickered on.
Beneath it stood a figure. Hooded. Still. Watching us.
And in the space between blinks, it was gone.
The black crack gave one final shiver before sealing shut, leaving behind only the rain and the sound of my pounding heart.
The woman lowered her hand slowly, her expression unreadable. "Kael… someone's setting the table. And we just sat down without an invitation."
The First Name Spoken
The rain softened to a drizzle, washing away the last traces of the black crack. The woman kept scanning the alley, her eyes lingering on the spot where the hooded figure had been.
I stayed silent, partly because my throat was still dry from the pull of that thing — and partly because I was afraid of what she might say if I asked the wrong question.
She sheathed her sword and started toward the far end of the alley. I followed, stepping over puddles that reflected nothing above them, as if the sky had forgotten this place.
Halfway down, she stopped again. Not from danger this time. From recognition.
A scrap of parchment clung to the wall, soaked but untouched by the wind. The ink on it hadn't run at all, as though the rain had chosen to avoid it.
She peeled it free and turned it over.
My stomach tightened.
It wasn't a message in words. It was a symbol — the same spiral broken in three places we'd seen carved into the lantern earlier. Only now, beneath it, a single line had been added in thin, sharp handwriting.
She read it aloud.
"Kael."
Hearing my name in her voice wasn't strange. Hearing it written by someone I'd never met — someone who'd left it waiting in the rain — made my skin crawl.
The ink under my skin stirred violently, like a swarm of wasps trapped just beneath the surface. I had to clench my fist to keep it from spilling out entirely.
The woman looked at me, her eyes searching. "They know you."
I swallowed. "Or they think they do."
She didn't argue. Just folded the parchment and slipped it inside her coat. "Then we need to move. If they've spoken your name, the next crack won't wait for us to find it. It'll come to you."
As we stepped out of the alley, I couldn't help glancing back.
For a fraction of a second, I thought I saw someone standing in the rain at the alley's mouth — tall, thin, head tilted unnaturally — but the blink of a lantern washed the shape away.
Only the spiral remained, burned into the inside of my thoughts.