We don't leave through the main doors.
Of course we don't.
If I'd tried to go alone, I would have dragged my IV stand down the hallway, hit the elevator button, maybe apologized to a sleepy security guard on the way out.
With Ardan, it feels like I'm breaking out of somewhere much worse than a hospital.
"On your feet," he says quietly.
The nameless girl hooks my arm over her shoulders. She's smaller than me but surprisingly strong, or maybe I'm lighter than I think. Pain spikes with each movement, but the adrenaline keeps it from drowning me.
The curtain sways closed behind us. My bed, the monitors, the safe fluorescent rectangle of my room—they vanish the second the fabric falls back into place.
The hallway outside is dimmer than it should be. Or maybe my eyes are still adjusting.
Shadows pool under every chair, every cart, every door. And above each of them: words.
**NUMB.**
**RESIGNED.**
**EXHAUSTED.**
**WAITING.**
Labels. Brands. Tiny glowing verdicts hanging over every dark stain on the floor.
My breath catches. "There are… so many."
"Don't read them all," Ardan says sharply. "Your head isn't ready."
"It's not like I can turn it off," I whisper.
"You can blur." He glances back at me. "Look through them, not at them. Like you do with those dumb 3D posters that only work if you half-go cross-eyed."
"That's a very specific reference for a… whatever you are."
"Accountant," he reminds me. "And you'd be surprised how long I've been watching humans waste time."
We pass a nurse asleep at the desk, chin on her chest. Her shadow stretches behind the chair like a spreading stain. Above it, the word **EMPTY** flickers.
I look away before my chest can tighten again.
The girl under my arm keeps glancing at me like she's making sure I'm not going to phase out of reality. Her hand is still looped around my wrist, our skin warm where we touch.
"Why is she here?" I ask under my breath. "Why is she… tied to me?"
"You dragged her in," Ardan says.
"I've never seen her before tonight."
"I don't mean her body, Mark." His tone sharpens. "Her thread. Her… possibility. When your name slipped, it pulled in anything that resonated with it. She got caught. Now she's stuck to you."
"Like static cling," the girl mutters.
"What do I call you?" I ask her.
She hesitates.
"Don't," Ardan interrupts. "Names have weight. If she tells you something and you start believing it, that thing will start to stick. She isn't ready for that."
"I'm right here," she says.
"And you're still not ready," he replies.
Her shadow moves with us, obedient and human. But above it, **BOUND** shivers like a candle flame every time she tightens her grip on me.
We turn a corner.
The fluorescent bulbs buzz louder here. One of them stutters, casting the corridor in a jittering, uneven light. This is the kind of hallway horror movies love—too long, too empty, too quiet.
Halfway down, the air changes.
I can't explain it any other way. It's like walking from a room with the window open into one where the air has been sealed for months. Heavy. Stale. Charged.
"Stop," Ardan says.
We stop.
He raises his hand and the small glow around his fingers brightens, not much, just enough for me to see that the shadows ahead aren't lying flat.
They're leaning.
Except there's nothing for them to lean toward.
"What is that?" I whisper.
The words over the shadows at the far end of the hall haven't formed fully yet. They twitch and smear, like someone trying to write with their non-dominant hand.
"That," Ardan says softly, "is why we're not taking the elevator."
Something cold slides down my spine. "There's something in the elevator?"
"There's something that likes straight paths," he says. "Long steel wires. Closed boxes. No corners to hide in. We use the stairs."
He takes a step toward the stairwell door.
Every shadow in sight flinches away from him.
Even the girl's.
Mine… doesn't.
My shadow lags half a second behind my steps, struggling to keep its shape. For a moment, there's a shimmer above it—like heat over asphalt.
I don't see letters, not fully. Just the ghost of them.
I stop walking.
"Don't," Ardan says sharply. "Don't look at your own yet."
"Why?" I whisper.
"Because you'll try to read it. And reading is the same as accepting. And accepting…" He exhales. "Let's put it this way: you mis-signed one contract already by screaming for your life. Let's not add an unedited signature on top of it."
We reach the stairwell.
The door is an ugly gray metal slab. No glowing words over its shadow, just the bland smear of **FUNCTIONAL**.
It's the first neutral word I've seen tonight. Somehow, that makes it worse.
Ardan pushes the bar. It doesn't creak. The sound is swallowed as soon as it's born.
The stairwell is darker than the hall. The girl's grip on me intensifies as we step in.
"Down?" I ask.
"Not this time," he says. "The Contract's pull is below. We go up, where the threads are thinner."
"You're going to have to explain that sentence eventually."
"Yes," he says. "But I don't have to do it while something is sniffing for you in the wiring."
That's not comforting.
We start to climb.
My legs protest. My stitches pull. Every breath feels like dragging cold glass through my lungs. Still, I'd rather climb stairs with an immortal accountant and a nameless girl than lie in bed waiting for something called a Collector to ooze under my door.
The first flight passes without incident.
On the second, the lights flicker.
On the third, they go out.
Total darkness.
I freeze.
The girl sucks in a sharp breath. "I can't see—"
"You don't need to," Ardan says. "Keep a hand on the rail and one on him. If he falls, the hospital paperwork will be annoying."
"Wow," I mutter. "Heartwarming."
My eyes strain, useless. Then I realize I *can* see something.
Not walls. Not steps.
Shadows.
They're brighter than the darkness around them, an inverse stain. My own shadow clings to my feet like a nervous dog.
Over it, something flickers again.
This time I catch the shape of a letter—
and a second—
like a word trying to punch through the skin of reality.
Heat presses behind my eyes.
Without thinking, I lean closer, as if I could somehow "squint" at my own feet.
The first letter starts to form fully.
A sharp pain spikes behind my forehead like a nail being hammered.
"Mark." Ardan's voice is right beside my ear now. I didn't hear him move. "Look away from yourself."
"I just—"
"Now."
He doesn't shout. He doesn't have to. There's something in his tone that hooks my spine and jerks my gaze up.
The pain eases immediately.
My breathing doesn't.
"Rule one," he says in the dark. "You don't stare at your own name. Not until you're ready to hold it and not shatter. Right now, you'd carve pieces out of yourself trying to understand it."
"And the other rules?" my voice shakes.
"We'll get there. If you don't die before sunrise."
Again: not comforting.
We keep climbing.
By the time we reach the top, my legs feel like they've been replaced with hot sandbags. Ardan pushes open the door to the roof with the same casual motion he used on the stairwell.
Cold air hits us immediately.
Real night air, not hospital night. It smells like wet asphalt, car exhaust, the distant hint of something burning.
The city spreads around us—rooftops, streetlights, lines of windows glowing in the dark.
And everywhere, everywhere, shadows.
They're poured out under every lamp, every tree, every parked car.
And above each of them: words.
Hundreds of them.
Thousands.
**GUILT.**
**HOPE.**
**RESENTMENT.**
**FORGOTTEN.**
**WAITING.**
Some are dim, barely legible. Some flare like neon signs. A few flicker between two states, glitching as if reality can't decide what to call them.
I sway on my feet.
"It's too much," I say.
"Then stop trying to drink the ocean," Ardan replies. "Skim the surface. Let it be background."
"How are you so calm about this?"
"I'm not." He scans the horizon. "I just don't have the luxury of screaming every time reality peels back a layer."
The girl beside me shivers. Her shadow is thin in the rooftop light, the word **BOUND** above it dimmer than before.
"Are we safe up here?" she asks.
"No," Ardan says. "But we're less *obvious*."
He turns to me.
"Lesson one," he says. "You made a Contract you don't remember and lived when you should have died. That put a mark on you. Predators that feed on names can smell that from far away."
"The Collectors," I say.
"The minor ones," he corrects. "Collectors are scavengers. They tear off scraps from people who've already half-signed themselves away. The thing that answered you…" He glances toward the dark sky. "That wasn't a scavenger."
I swallow. "Then what was it?"
"Something that doesn't bother with scraps," he says. "Something that likes full meals."
The wind gusts. For a moment, all the words over the city shimmer.
Then one more appears.
It doesn't hover over a shadow. It doesn't belong to any person, any building, any object.
It writes itself across the sky.
Huge. Cold. Made of pale, distant light.
**WATCHING.**
The girl's fingers dig into my wrist.
"Is that… for him?" she whispers.
Ardan's face goes tight.
"No," he says. "That's not talking to him."
"Then who—"
"To us," he says. "To anyone foolish enough to stand still under it."
The word pulses once.
A dull throb runs through my chest in sync with it.
My shadow shivers.
A faint glow forms above it again.
"Mark," Ardan says sharply. "Inside. Now. Off the roof."
But I can't move. The word in the sky holds me pinned like an insect.
**WATCHING.**
The glow above my own shadow brightens—
And letters start to form.
I don't read them.
I *can't*. Ardan's hand clamps over the side of my head, forcing my gaze away. Pain flares through my neck as he physically drags my attention down.
"Do not look," he hisses. "Not at it. Not at you. Not yet."
The girl is shaking. "What is that thing?"
"The higher kind," Ardan says. "The ones that don't need bodies to mark you."
The rooftop door behind us slams in the wind.
Or maybe it doesn't slam at all.
Maybe something pushes it.
A shadow spills from the doorway, thick and cold. No body steps through. No person.
But a new word appears right at the threshold, written with the same cold light as the one in the sky.
**HERE.**
The pain in my skull spikes. My knees buckle.
Somewhere, very far away and too close at the same time, a voice I don't recognize whispers—
"Found you."
The last thing I see before my vision whites out is the glow above my own shadow finally snapping into a single, clear word.
I don't read it.
But it feels like it reads me.