The studio door barely clung to the frame.
One hinge sagged as if it had taken a knockout punch. Deep gouges scarred the wood around the lock. Smudged handprints—blood—dragged across the metal plate.
Someone had tried hard to get in, more than one, judging by the frantic patterns. Only the absurdly heavy deadbolt his grandfather once called "overkill for a broom closet" had saved the door from folding.
Kell patted his pockets.
Empty. No wallet, phone, or keys. His heart skipped once. He lifted a hand and parted the air. A clean, circular tear opened with the ease of muscle memory, shadows peeling back like curtains. Kell stepped through into his living room, letting the portal seal behind him with a soft ripple.
Warm, dusty silence waited inside. He turned back toward the door—still intact on this side—and checked the chain, the bolt, the old oak frame. All solid. He wrapped his fingers around the handle and gave it a testing shake.
Firm. A pulse of wry disbelief rolled through him.
Maybe he didn't need keys anymore.
The familiar quiet hit him in the chest.
Salt air drifted through the cracked window. Dusty sunlight spilled across unwashed laundry. A half-toppled stack of instant ramen sat by the sink, frozen in time like a museum exhibit of his old life.
A life that felt like it belonged to someone else.
Ink clung to his skin in faint streaks—shadows that hadn't fully retreated. He peeled off his clothes in the hallway and walked naked to the bathroom, a trail of dimly pulsing darkness dissolving behind him like dying embers.
The shower coughed awake.
Water steamed.
Black swirls bled off his shoulders, spiraling down the drain like galaxies circling an invisible sun. The mirror fogged over, blurring the outline of what fate had forced him to become.
By the time he shut off the faucet, the bathroom was a cloud of warm mist.
He wiped a hand across the mirror. The face staring back wasn't Kell.
Lean—almost inhumanly so. Muscle carved into an elegant, unnatural geometry. Shoulders sharp. Collarbone pronounced. Ribs visible not from hunger but from some new, eerie symmetry written into his bones.
Veins gleamed faintly silver under skin that looked too smooth, too polished. Too perfect, and his hair… It slid through his fingers like flowing silk, reaching all the way to his thighs—red as rust, shining like a river lit by distant stars.
His own eyes met his in the reflection. They were still his shape, his placement, his color—yet somehow sparkled with shades of cosmic moonlight. They looked tired—haunted.
"Three months," he whispered.
The words fogged the glass.
"And I come back a stranger."
When he turned away, the shadows behind him shifted—mirroring the tilt of his head like an attentive animal waiting for praise.
He dressed slowly. A soft tee, gray joggers. The shirt draped off him like wet cloth. The joggers sagged until he yanked the drawstring tight enough to bite into his hips. Everything felt borrowed. Wrong.
He stepped back from the mirror. A second reflection stood behind him. Tall. Fluid. Ink swirling into the suggestion of shoulders, arms, a face without features. Only two dim points of moonlit silver broke the darkness where eyes might have lived.
The god.
Vessel. The voice's purr against his ear created a vibration that he felt before hearing it. This attire is primitive… beneath us. Acquire better. I require it.
A long shadow-finger brushed the hem of his shirt, as though offended by the fabric itself. Then the silhouette dissolved into smoke, curling back into the corners of the room.
Kell swallowed hard. "Let me eat first."
He moved to the kitchen on legs that felt too light, too unfamiliar. The ramen he'd abandoned three months ago still sat on the counter like a relic. He boiled water, stirred the noodles, and leaned against the counter while steam rose around him.
He lifted a tangled mound with his chopsticks and slurped it straight from the pot.
Salt. Heat. Something normal to anchor him. For a moment, he let himself breathe. The flavor—salty, cheap, perfect—made heat bloom behind his eyes.
Normal.
He'd forgotten what that word tasted like. He carried the pot to his desk and woke his PC. It buzzed alive like an old friend shaking off dust.
A flood of news articles filled the screen…
Awakened individuals emerge across the country. HUMAN STRONGHOLDS HOLD OUT AGAINST GREYLITH OCCUPATION. NEW ABILITIES DEFY SCIENCE.
Videos auto-played—grainy footage.
A man throwing a car single-handedly. A woman freezing an entire street with a sweep of her arm. A kid causing sparks to flicker from his palms.
Fantasy made flesh. Reality rewritten.
A strange comfort lightened something in his ribs. He wasn't the only thing in the world that no longer made sense.
A blinking link caught his eye.
REGISTER AS A HUNTER — CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO DEFENSE NETWORK
EARN COMPENSATION. ACCESS PATROLS. ASSIST EXFIL OPERATIONS.
Before he clicked it, the god's presence coiled through the dim apartment.
Why does my vessel involve himself in fleshlings' affairs?
Kell leaned back in the chair. "You told me to hunt Greylith."
I did.
"Then this gives us a front-row seat."
A ripple of satisfaction—dark, faint, approving—passed through the room like a shifting breeze.
He clicked the link.
A form opened.
Name. Age. Contact. Emergency contacts. (He left that blank.)
Power classification. (He typed "Travel—Portal Creation")
Experience. (He hesitated, then put: "Survived hostile encounter.")
He hit the submission.
A confirmation window popped up.
REGISTRATION COMPLETE.
Please report to the Hunter Operations Center within 24 hours.
Bring this confirmation to receive: Hunter ID Card, Rank Designation, Welcome Package, Orientation Materials, and Compensation Overview.
Kell stared at the blinking text.
He exhaled through his nose. "Great. The world ends, and somehow I still have to go stand in a line for paperwork." He rubbed his face. Did they even issue driver's licenses anymore? Rubble covered half the city; the other, barricaded, and somewhere in between, a DMV probably still clung to life out of pure bureaucratic spite.
Ramen cooled beside him.
Kell shoved away from the desk, chair scraping across the floor. He needed air. Space. Something to anchor him before the god's presence swallowed the room entirely. He crossed the living room, stepping over three months of mail shoved through the slot. Envelopes fanned across the floor like fallen feathers. He crouched and gathered them into his arms—junk flyers, grocery ads, red-stamped overdue bills addressed to a version of him that barely existed anymore.
A thick envelope slid free and landed at his feet.
White. Heavy. Official.
He froze. The return address wasn't the power company. Not the landlord. Nor anything ordinary.
SILVERMAN & BROWNING — FAMILY ESTATE SERVICES
His heartbeat stumbled. Through the windowed front, he saw printed text: RE: ESTATE OF MICHAEL & SARAH STERLING — URGENT
His parents.
The room tilted. The apartment suddenly felt too small, too bright, too loud with the hiss of his own breathing. Kell sank to the floor, envelope balanced on his thigh like a living thing that might bite him if he looked directly at it.
Kell didn't open the envelope.
He didn't need to. His parents' names staring back at him were enough to rip the floor out from under him. He knelt in the scattered mail, fingers tightening around the thick paper until it buckled. Breath hitched hard in his throat. His vision blurred.
The little girl's limp body. Her mother's screams. Kell had watched helplessly as the acolytes dragged people out by handfuls of hair.
Needles biting into his bones. Three months vanished.
His parents were dead.
It crashed into him all at once. A sob punched through his chest before he could swallow it. Kell pressed his fist to his mouth, shoulders shaking, tears freckling the envelope until their names smeared.
"I wasn't here," he choked. "I wasn't here—I wasn't—"
His voice cracked and collapsed. Shadows rolled across the wall like a tide turning. The air chilled. Pressure deepened. Something vast and familiar unfolded from the dim corners of the room. The silhouette coalesced behind him—not a man, not a creature, but a presence, tall enough to blot out the apartment light.
A cool, velvety brush slid through his long red hair. Slow. Careful. A tenderness impossible to reconcile with what this being was.
Hush… Vessel. Still thy pain, I'm here.
The voice spilled through the room like smoke through water—low, resonant, ancient enough that it vibrated behind Kell's ribs.
Let the ache leave you. You survived.
The shadow-hand continued combing through his hair, untangling strands as if he were something precious that needed smoothing back into shape. The touch wasn't human. It was too steady, deliberate, and knowing. It carried a strange gravity of care, as though the god were tending to a bruise on something it considered its own.
Kell's cries broke into soft, jagged gasps.
A second hand—cool ink-light—touched the back of his neck, thumb passing in slow circles. Shadows around the god rippled, and a sound vibrated through the air. A melody. Not hummed the way mortals hum.
It was a tremor of existence, a vibration that lived in the walls and in Kell's bones. Notes that bent around human understanding, echoes of something once sung in the deep places of the world before language existed. It soothed something primitive inside him.
Kell leaned forward and let his forehead rest against the edge of the couch cushion. Tears soaked the fabric. His chest hitched. His hands shook as he held the unopened letter.
Your pain is not weakness, precious one. Claws brushed a lock of red hair behind Kell's ear. It is the last echo of the mortal shell you shed in my city. Let it fall away.
Kell's breath trembled. "I don't… I don't know how to do this."
The god's shadow enveloped him like a cloak.
You already have. You survived R'lyeh, survived death, and survived your own breaking.
A gentle stroke traced from his scalp down the full length of his hair, as if admiring the strands even while comforting the trembling man beneath.
Now you grieve. This too is survival, Vessel.
The melody deepened, resonating like a cathedral bell struck underwater. Kell's sobs eased, not gone, but grounded. He let the envelope slip from his fingers onto the carpet.
The god's voice lowered to a whisper that brushed the side of his throat. You are no longer alone. Not in grief, or purpose.
Shadows tightened around him—not binding, but holding him as if being embraced by a thousand hands.
Rest, Vessel. Heal. In time, we will make the ones who took what was ours understand their mistake.
Kell closed his eyes and let the darkness cradle him, and for the first time since R'lyeh, he wasn't falling apart.
He was being gathered.