Showtime.
He grabbed his notepad. He forced his face into a smile. He walked toward the tables, leaving the magic and the monsters in the corner, and went to take an order for eggs.
Marcus approached the table, his notepad held like a shield, a professional smile plastered across a face that felt too tight. He clicked his pen, the sound sharp in the quiet room.
"What can I get for you folks?"
They ordered with the casual indecision of people whose biggest problem was cholesterol. Two coffees, black. Scrambled eggs, dry wheat toast. Then, the woman looked up, her eyes bright behind the oversized sunglasses.
"We heard about something called… Texas Trash Pie? Is that still a thing?"
Marcus shook his head, the movement stiff. "Sorry. The ladies over there got the last of it. Kitchen's tapped out on sweets for the day."
The woman glanced over her shoulder at the booth where Eira and Liri sat frozen. She smiled, amused by their stillness. "Well, good for them. I guess we'll have to come earlier next time."
"Best pie in town," Marcus said, the lie tasting like copper. "Apple's still good, though."
As they made small talk about the weather and the road construction on I-35, Marcus watched them. He didn't just look; he dissected them. He checked their hands as they reached for water glasses—five fingers, pink skin, manicured nails. He checked their eyes—normal pupils, iris distinct from the sclera, no horizontal goat-slits or glowing energy. He checked the line of their jaws for gills or seams.
No snouts. No fur. No malice.
They were aggressively, painfully normal.
Marcus walked back to the kitchen to drop the ticket, his hand shaking slightly. He wasn't sure if their normalcy made him feel better, anchoring him back to reality, or worse, because it highlighted just how far off the map he had fallen.
Evening, Tea, and an Old Woman
The couple finished their eggs, left a five-dollar tip on the table, and walked out into the heat with a cheerful wave. The door swung shut, the damaged latch clicking weakly.
The afternoon drifted by in a slow, agonizing crawl after that. No more customers turned off the highway. No more bells chimed. The silence returned, filling the space where the violence had been.
Outside, the sun began its long slide down the western sky. It turned the streetlights into glowing halos against the deepening blue and painted the boarded-up storefronts of Weedfield in a tired, bruised orange light.
Marcus walked to the front door. He turned the deadbolt, feeling the heavy thunk of the metal. He reached up and flipped the plastic sign to CLOSED.
He went behind the bar and brewed a pot of tea. He didn't want it, but he needed the ritual. He needed the sound of water boiling, the clink of ceramic, the smell of bergamot to replace the smell of cordite.
He poured himself a glass over ice, the cubes cracking in the heat, and brought two more to the booth.
Eira and Liri had not asked to leave. They hadn't moved from the corner.
He set the glasses down on the table. Liri reached out and cradled hers with both hands, staring fascinated at the way the ice cubes spun and clinked against the glass.
Eira watched him. Her questions were layered in her eyes, deep and heavy.
Marcus sat on the edge of the opposite bench, resting his elbows on his knees, scrubbing his face with his hands.
"I have no idea what the rule book is for this," he admitted, his voice rough. "I make burgers. I grill onions. I don't do extradimensional monster control."
Eira tilted her head, catching a few recognizable words in the stream of English.
"Monsters," she repeated quietly, testing the shape of the word. "Hunters."
He nodded, staring at his hands. "Yeah. Those."
They drank in a fragile sort of quiet. The ice melted. The shadows in the corners of the room stretched out, merging with the darkness.
Twilight thickened outside the plate glass. The neon OPEN sign buzzed, casting a red, useless glow onto the empty sidewalk.
Then, a sound broke the stillness.
Footsteps.
They approached on the sidewalk, distinct against the ambient hum of the evening. They weren't heavy and wet like the Hunters. They weren't fast and frantic like someone running for their life.
They were slow. Measured. Deliberate. Scuff… step. Scuff… step.
Marcus set his glass down. He rose slowly, his movement fluid. The sawed-off shotgun was leaning against the inside of the bar, within arm's reach. He wrapped his hand around the pistol grip and moved toward the door, his shoulders tight, his body angling to minimize his silhouette.
He peered through the glass, past the neon glare.
An old woman stood under the red light.
She was wrapped in a heavy brown shawl that looked like rough wool, pulled tight around her despite the lingering Texas heat. Her white hair was braided down her back in a thick, silver rope. Her face was a landscape of deep lines, every wrinkle cut by years of brutal sun and hard worry.
She wasn't looking at the door. She wasn't looking for a menu.
She was staring straight up at the sign above the door. At the word.
SLIPGATE.
She stared at it like she was reading a warning label on a bottle of poison.
Marcus hesitated. His thumb hovered over the safety of the shotgun hidden behind his leg. Then, he unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door a crack, the chain still engaged.
"We're closed, ma'am," he said gently, keeping his voice neutral. "Kitchen's done for the night. I can do a to-go coffee if you need one, but the grill is cold."
She turned her head toward him slowly. The movement was smooth, serpentine.
Her eyes were sharp. Much sharper than the rest of her suggested they should be. They were clear, piercing, and devoid of the cloudiness of age.
"You shouldn't have interfered," she said.
Her voice was clear. There was no tremor of age in it. No doubt. It was the voice of a judge delivering a sentence.
Cold threaded down Marcus's spine, prickling the hair on his arms.
"Interfered with what?" he asked, though he suspected he knew.
She gave him a look—a withering, pitying glance that said she knew very well he already understood.
With the hunt.
With the balance.
With whatever twisted set of rules governed the things on the other side of that threshold.
He undid the chain and opened the door wider, his instinct caught between polite manners and primal fear.
"Look," he said, his voice hardening. "They came into my place. They went for my customers. I am not just going to stand there and watch monsters tear two girls apart in my dining room."
For a second, something flickered across her ancient features. It might have been grudging respect. It might have been amusement.
Then it was gone, replaced by the stone mask.
She stepped back from the doorway, retreating into the shadows of the street.
"Every gate has witnesses," she said, her voice drifting back like smoke. "And every witness has a price."
Before he could ask what the hell that meant, she turned and shuffled away down the sidewalk.
He watched her go. There was no limp. No cane. Her steps were too smooth, too rhythmic for someone her age. She moved like she was gliding just an inch above the concrete.
Marcus watched her until she reached the corner and disappeared into the darkness of the cross street.
He started to close the door, his nerves jangling.
That was when he saw it.
Something small and round lay on the welcome mat, right in the center, just outside the aluminum threshold.
He frowned and bent down, the shotgun balanced carefully in his left hand. He reached out with his right.
It was a coin. Or a stone. It was hard to tell. It was about the size of a half-dollar, made of a dark, matte metal that seemed to absorb the light. The edges were worn smooth by time or handling.
A symbol was carved deep into its surface—a perfect circle intersected by three sharp lines, looking like a simplified compass, or a crosshair, or an unblinking eye.
When he picked it up, warmth pulsed into his palm.
It wasn't residual heat from the Texas concrete. It was coming from inside the object itself. It throbbed against his skin, a slow, rhythmic beat like a dying heart.
He closed his hand around it instantly, his fingers recoiling. He hissed through his teeth.
"Okay… that's not normal."
Behind him, Eira stood in the doorway of the booth. She had moved silently. Liri hovered just behind her shoulder, peering out like a frightened owl.
Eira saw the coin in his hand. Her expression collapsed.
The color drained from her face, leaving her pale as milk. Her pupils contracted into pinpricks. She took a half-step closer, her gaze locked on his fist as if he were holding a live viper.
"You should not touch that," she whispered.
Marcus looked down at his hand, feeling the heat throbbing against his lifeline, then back at her. "Little late for that."
He held it up. "What is it?"
She shook her head once, slowly, a gesture of profound resignation.
"Hesh-kel," she said. "Marker. It is a Mark-stone. Now they know you. Not just the place. You."
Liri hugged herself, wrapping her arms around her ribs, shivering violently even though the room was still warm from the day.
Marcus closed his fingers tighter around the coin. He could feel the faint thrum inside it, vibrating against his bones.
In answer, the walls of the building seemed to vibrate. The Slipgate hummed—a low-frequency resonance in the studs and the drywall, so quiet he almost thought he imagined it. But he felt it in his teeth.
He looked from the warm, dark coin to the sisters huddled in the booth. He looked at the empty seats where the tourists had sat. He looked at the bullet dents in the wall. He looked at the dark, empty sidewalk outside.
His life had shrunk down to a simple, terrifying question he had absolutely no idea how to answer.
What do you do when the universe drops a marker in your hand and tells you that you are in the game now?
He did the only thing he could manage in that moment.
He shut the door. He turned the deadbolt with a solid clunk.
Then, he reached up and flipped the sign back.
OPEN.
The neon buzzed to life, drowning the street outside in a defiant, bloody red glow.
He turned and walked back toward Eira and Liri, the coin warm and heavy in his fist.
"Okay," he said quietly, pulling out a chair. "Start from the beginning. Tell me everything."