The fissure did not roar. It pressed.
It pressed on lungs, on bones, on the fragile habit of being a person.
Above Arden Gate, three shadows leaned without leaning. They were not closer, they were simply more. Their presence slithered into every breath, into the cracks of stone, into the tiny pause between one heartbeat and the next. The seal had failed. The town flickered. The air tasted like wet iron and paper ash.
Lio stood in the square, drenched in ink that was not quite blood. His claws curved like dark hooks. Each breath rattled with hunger. The more he fought, the easier it became to want more. Under his skin, a second pulse throbbed—slow, heavy, patient. It did not belong to him.
He crouched. Every muscle hummed. The duplicates ringed him again—dozens wearing his face, mouths leaking thin black paragraphs. He had cut them apart so many times the ground had become a scrapyard of letters. They kept reforming. He kept breaking them.
