The words on the screen pulsed once and went dark.
Lucian stared at his own reflection, waiting for something — anything — to explain what he'd just seen. Nothing came. No voice. No sound. Just the low hum of the lights and the beat of his own heart pounding too hard in his chest.
He backed away from the window. His fingers brushed the edge of a desk, and only then did he realize how badly they were shaking. He needed to leave. Now.
The air shifted. He felt it before he heard it — the deep rush of something enormous sweeping past the building. A faint whine in the glass, like it was about to splinter. Lucian pressed his back against the nearest wall, holding his breath.
A shadow glided across the floor.
He glanced up, and through the window, something vast eclipsed the sky. A shape too big to make sense of, wings stretched wide enough to block the afternoon sun. It circled once, twice, the sheer weight of its presence making the building groan. Then the thing tilted, and one great eye slid into view, scanning the windows as though peering into fishbowls.
Lucian's stomach flipped. He ducked low, crawling between scattered chairs, praying the light didn't catch on him. For a moment, it didn't. The shadow wheeled away. The hum of its wings faded.
He ran.
Out the office, into the stairwell, his shoes slapping concrete as he took the steps two, three at a time. The walls shook with another pass. Dust rained from above. He risked a glance through the narrow stairwell window: the Harrower swept past again, tendrils trailing, lashing at the glass.
On the next floor he pushed the door open, ducked into an empty hallway. Desks overturned, ceiling tiles hanging loose. He crouched behind one, chest heaving, as the creature banked close, its eye flashing across the windows. He pressed himself flat, heart in his throat, until it slid past.
A scream echoed from somewhere else in the city. Not human. Another one. Lucian bit down on the sound trying to rise in his own throat. This wasn't just one monster. The world was tearing open.
The Harrower came back. The entire floor rattled as its head struck the side of the building — glass shattered, beams snapped. Lucian stumbled forward as the floor lurched under his feet, a sudden gap opening where carpet and concrete had been a heartbeat before. He dropped, slamming onto the level below in a shower of debris. His legs screamed with pain, but he forced himself upright, coughing through the dust.
The stairwell. Find the stairwell.
Another rush of wind screamed past the windows. The Harrower was still circling, patient as a hawk, waiting for movement. Not hunting him specifically — he knew that now. He was just something it had seen through the glass. Something small. Convenient.
And it wasn't going to stop.
Lucian staggered down another flight, lungs burning. His legs felt like lead, every step heavier than the last, but he didn't dare slow down. The stairwell echoed with his footfalls, a beacon for whatever circled outside.
A shadow swept across the slit windows again.
Then came the sound.
The Harrower shrieked, a jagged, metallic cry that drilled through his skull. Lucian clapped his hands over his ears, but it didn't help — the noise was inside him, rattling his teeth, stabbing his nerves. Glass burst in the hallway just beyond, shards spraying across the stairwell landing. He stumbled, nearly pitching forward, vision blurring as the building itself seemed to quake beneath the sound.
By the time the ringing dulled, the creature was gone again. For now.
He pushed through the next door, dragging himself into another office floor. Cubicles stretched like a maze around him. He kept low, weaving through overturned desks, trying to keep away from the windows.
A glimmer caught his eye — a reflection in a hanging shard of glass.
The Harrower's great eye passed by the window, unblinking, searching. Lucian froze, breath locked in his throat. It lingered a second too long, and then moved on. The hum of its wings faded.
He bolted back to the stairwell. Down another floor. And another. His throat was raw, his legs screaming at him. The routine had become a rhythm: dash, hide, wait, move.
But the Harrower learned.
On the fourth floor down, Lucian flung the stairwell door open — and the wall in front of him exploded inward. Tendrils smashed through concrete, snapping railings like twigs. The entire stairwell collapsed in a roar of dust and rubble, plunging into darkness.
Lucian staggered back, coughing, eyes wide. The Harrower screeched again, so loud his vision spotted white. It knew. It was cutting him off.
There was only one other option.
The elevator.
He sprinted through the hall, weaving between cubicles as the Harrower's shadow passed overhead again. The glass walls trembled. Another screech split the air, and every window on the floor spiderwebbed and collapsed inward. Shards rained like knives. Lucian shielded his head with his arms, stumbling blindly until his shoulder hit steel — the elevator doors.
"Come on, come on," he muttered, jamming the button with frantic stabs. The light flickered. A groan of old machinery answered. At last the doors slid open with a sluggish scrape.
He dove inside and hammered the button for the first floor again and again, as if pressure alone would make the doors move faster.
For a heartbeat, it worked. The doors shut. The world outside was cut off. He sagged against the wall, chest heaving, eyes closing.
The building shook.
The elevator lurched violently, throwing him to the floor. Cables screamed overhead. The floor dropped out beneath him.
The elevator was plummeting.
Lucian's heart seized in his chest. Instinct — maybe something deeper — took over. He threw himself flat on his back, arms spread, bracing against the floor just as the freefall gathered speed.
All he could do was clench his teeth and pray he survived the impact.
The elevator screamed as it tore down the shaft, every floor flashing past in a blur of sparks and darkness. Lucian pressed himself flat, heart slamming against his ribs so hard he thought it might burst. His stomach lurched into his throat; every nerve in his body screamed this is it.
The impact came like a bomb.
The floor punched the breath from his lungs as the car slammed into the base of the shaft. Metal shrieked and crumpled, the world folding in around him. He slammed against the steel, his spine rattling, his vision bursting into static. Ceiling panels shattered and rained down, scraping his arms and pinning his shoulder.
For a second, he lay stunned, blinking grit and blood out of his eyes. Then the crash site groaned around him — the shaft walls cracking, cables snapping loose — and instinct took over.
Move.
With a roar of effort, he shoved twisted debris off his chest and dragged himself across the tilted wreckage. His legs burned, every breath a knife, but adrenaline pushed him forward. He clawed at the bent doors, pried one open far enough to squeeze through, and pulled himself into the smoke-filled hallway beyond.
Finally in the lobby he makes a mad dash for the streets.