Inspections fostered safety. Carelessness killed its preserving touch.
It was fitting then that it was Eve who volunteered to fill in Selma's shoes, her nagging mind a close rival to Selma's own paranoid hues.
Eve drifted through the Church's bowels, fastening and securing brass bolts cold enough to sting her palms. If caution had a quota, Eve intended to fill it. The doors surrendered first. Then the windows. Even the basement. She scoured every inch. No corners went exempt from her vigilant scrutiny.
Children, with their restless fingers and whispered secrets, would test even iron bars. And tragedies, like shadows, had a nasty way of spilling through the most marginal seams.
'So the children are in the showers then', she noted. 'Good'. Their absence would quicken Eve's work.
Her eye lingered in one room of the dormitory. Three sets of bunkbeds cramped into a small, scuffed rectangular floor. Soft sunlight splashed through a glass pane on the end where leaning buildings hadn't robbed their shine. Useful at day, a liability come dark.
The pane was a peculiar piece of construction. Devoid of handles, knobs or rails; they were more a slab of glass like translucent brick and mortar than any typical window. The door was a heavy wooden construction. Neither oak nor mahogany, it had the peculiar quality of ringing like metal on knocks. The door only opened from the outside, essentially trapping its inhabitants until someone deemed to release them.
Eve carefully pulled out a flat panel of steel from behind the door, making sure it never closed behind her.
She heaved it, shuffling to the window. The panel clicked in place on a contraption, and heavy padlocks secured the frame at four corners, thick as arms. Father Gregari carried their keys. Eve didn't envy the priest's duties a single bit. Unlatching and removing these lumps of steel every Morning was as tedious as it was draining. Though perhaps it explained his imposing shoulders, the way he moved like a man accustomed to weight.
Eve repeated the same in an odd dozen different rooms, each panel a coffin lid sealing out the dark. A low grunt escaped her nostrils. 'Keep the children safe?', she laughed. 'A greener Night would think me the danger.'
Her forearms pulsed. Tendons pulled like cables beneath her skin, but the load felt manageable. Familiar, even. Like the weight of mud separating from earth at a shovels edge.
Metal cages blocked every exit but one, welded and sealed. Eve fled towards her next obligation, working with haste that still calculated.
In the kitchen, a small band of men and women scrubbed soiled bowls clean until their sweated and grimy faces shone on its metallic sheen. Some mopped floors; others tidied the spice racks. Eve joined them. Cold water hissed on the stove grates, dousing fire until no kindling smouldered in its ash.
Outside in the hall, she spied the familiar shape of a mother and her son in the corner, preparing to leave.
'Live up to your name, was it.'
Eve approached them with hushed steps. The boy was busy tracing the lintels with his fingers when she pressed a warm, wrapped box in the palms of his hands.
Eve put a finger on the boy's lips before he could react. She levelled her gaze, folding down to his height.
"Not too loud. The others will hear." Her whisper barely disturbed the air between them. "Our little secret."
She withdrew the index, offering a pinky instead.
The boy nodded, his own pinky hooked around Eve's. The boxy quivering frame betrayed excitement boiling under his skin.
Eve's mouth curved without her will. 'Not much older than Ars', she thought.
"Oh, you're spoilin' us, dear!", the mother whispered. "Erik's been moanin' about food and more food since an odd week now. Where he hides his second stomach, I couldn't tell ya. Not under the bed, last I checked", she sighed.
"It's only leftovers", Eve said. "No one will miss it." The lie came easy.
Gratitude welled her eyes as she clasped Eve's hands. Erik stood to the side, smiling from ear to ear.
"Growing boys, I tell ya. They fit in yer arms one second, and fill their frame next with the appetite of a beast."
The mother bowed slightly as she left. The boy held his mother's hand, a slight hop to his gait.
She glanced outside. The westering Sun bled across the horizon. The city lay awash in molten gold, soon to be faded into something pale and sinister. At the eastern tip of the sky, the Abominable Moon swelled—a silver scythe promising severed hope.
Night was coming.
She averted her gaze from the Moon, lingering on the spot where the Sun set instead.
The city scurried with quick steps, breathing like something alive, like a threatened rat, or a small beast cornered, panting through bronze teeth.
The days clamour choked under the curfew's bronze triangles, ringing with urgent chimes.
Vendors shuttered stalls. Neighbours clanged spoons against dented pots, a frantic beat against the dying Light.
A chorus of shouts blended together into a harsh wail, like the throes of an old man too afraid to breathe his last.
Eve waded through the unraveling fever.
"They're coming!"
"Watch out!"
"Curfew! Curfew!"
Soon, life would drain from the streets. And she rushed home before that.
Lampposts punctuated every other turn, diffusing the space with a soft lime shimmer. They didn't warm Eve's skin. Only made the shadows grow deeper.
Gradually, biting shivers and settling mist replaced the fervour of marching boots. Dark rivers seeped through the cracks, swallowing the day with hungry ardour.
Eve's tongue went dry. Cold fog curdled in her throat like swallowed gravel, each breath scraping raw against her windpipe like tarnished silverware.
It was as though this domain—if you could call this stagnant, rusted city one—of Morning came apart around her.
The world ended every day at sundown, but today felt louder. Somewhere, the bell tolled until the final child rushed home, until the market bickered its last, until a father settled his errands for the day. Until the trenches emptied, and only shovels littered the earth. Until all that was left behind were their echoes. Then, even those vanished.
Approaching home, Eve shuffled in her coat-pockets trying to find her keys. The cold touch of oil stained parchment grazed her fingers instead: Bran's bread.
The bread had been forgotten in her pocket, now crushed to a dense wad. The day seemed to slip through her fingers. Kindness wasn't something Eve rejected. But trusting foreign food? Caution and habit silenced her buds when reason couldn't.
A closed up stall draped in thick covers was beside her. She placed the bread on top. Hungrier souls could salvage it come Morning.
Eve shouldered in through the front door. Inside, candles wept wax, lighting the darker corners. A pair of shoes lay by the entrance; Tilda was back. Going by the silence, slumber claimed her before she could claim the apples.
'Long day for the both of us, huh?' Eve mused. 'The Watchtower has been demanding on Tilda lately. I should try to wake earlier and treat her, for a change.'
Eve left the pouch of apples on the cupboard. She went ahead and freshened, dragging herself to her bedroom.
By then, Night fell.
Darkness swallowed the streets, and shadows clawed at a Lamplight near her window, clinging like wet rags refusing to retreat. The city's heartbeat had stopped. The world turned empty, lifeless, as far as sight could carry—a far cry from the day's bustle.
A small lamp sweated green embers into the corners of her room. It would keep her company through the night. She went to close the drapes over the window, peeking outside for the briefest of moments. The vendor's stand came into view.
And for a fleeting second, the stall's shadow twitched.
The bread left there just moments earlier nowhere to be seen. Just...gone.
Eve's breath snagged.
Cold grit sawed at her throat.
A figure emerged, unfolded, like a bat stretching its wings.
Her instincts screamed with conflicting commands.
Run.
It raised a hand.
Fingers unspooled, seven joints clicking at the knuckles, like a spider learning to walk in stolen skin.
Stay still.
Their eyes locked.
A grin split its ashen face, the corners stretched wide.
Too wide.
But its eyes stayed flat and dark, like stones in a frozen river.
Scream.
Its wave was casual.
Neighbourly, almost.
Eve felt the cold deepen in her marrow.
She heard her own pulse thudding in her ears like a death knell.
Don't breathe.
Eve recognised the look on its face.
Hollow eyes that mirrored a familiar need she had served today, one sated only with warm soup.
Hunger.
What manner of price would placate the bony, ravenous visitor?
A few answers came to mind. None reassuring.
The lipless mouth moved—slow and deliberate—accentuating every syllable.
Eve swore she could make out the words spoken in the common tongue.
'I. See. You.'
Complete eternities fit into mere seconds. Sweat beaded Eve's forehead.
In an abrupt bout of sobriety, Eve went against the dictate of gravity, raising a hand—and waved back.
The smile widened.
With her other hand, she shut the curtains.
It took some time before Eve remembered. 'It can't hurt me. Not inside.'
Morning's world, the one of warm bread and children's laughter, had bled out at dusk. Now, Rot seeped through its cracks instead, thick as clotting blood.
The old world had died, and a new one contorted in its place.
Now was the time of monsters.