"The map lies because the map was never meant for you."
– Last word of Robert tillturn
1st Second
I eased my back against the worn leather seat, forcing a smile that felt like it belonged to someone else. Waiting. Watching.
The man by the window moved with an unsettling precision — rag in hand, slow circles against the glass, as if scrubbing away invisible ghosts. Something about it drilled straight into my nerves.
My heart spiked.
Without meaning to, I let the barrel of the gun peek from under my coat, a small whisper of metal in the dim light.
He didn't flinch.
Didn't even blink.
Just kept cleaning.
That scared me more than anything.
2nd Second
The waitress drifted past, perfume mixed with cheap coffee. I raised a hand.
"Newspaper," I murmured.
She nodded.
Strangely, I stood to collect it — couldn't stomach sitting there any longer with that man polishing my view like he owned it.
The train was massive, the corridors felt like arteries of some metal beast. My mind jumped back to the waitress. She hadn't written my seat number in the new logbook. She had scribbled it in the old one.
Old books meant old secrets.
VIP names. Contraband lists. Things you'd blackmail a governor for.
My fingers tightened on the newspaper. The thin paper crinkled under my grip. Focus, Daemon. Scout first. Think later.
I had the vermin. I had the fairy.
As soon as the cleaner left, I'd run it.
No—straight to the bathroom.
I moved fast. A man stared at me as I passed.
"Shut up. I'm not gooning," I hissed.
He looked away.
Cold porcelain, a locked door. Finally.
I sat on the toilet seat, breathing like I'd outrun a predator.
Half a Minute Later
I tore through the newspaper, eyes darting, scanning. Most of it was filler—maps, tickets, lists of restricted zones. Nice. Useful.
Then something caught me off guard.
Each train had a name.
I tore the map out and folded it into my pocket. That's when it hit me—like a photograph falling face-up.
Her.
That damn woman.
That smile framed like a saint in a picture but hollow as a corpse.
A governor's mistress?
A messenger?
A witness?
Rage crawled up my spine like fire ants. My name. My seat. Her pen in the old book.
Registering me for what? A client? A scapegoat?
A father?
My hand clenched around the paper until it trembled. My mind spun with all the ways I could break myself for this failure, all the ways I'd been outplayed again.
By a woman.
By an NPC no less.
Or maybe something worse.
Merchants. Journalists. All of them circling her like flies.
Was she trying to blackmail me? The governor? Both of us?
Oh my God.
I'd done it.
Daemon.
Flashback
The screen blazed red. You Died.
Daemon's thumb twitched on the controller, fury boiling hot. Too greedy. He should've gone back for the cocoon, healed, waited. Instead, Hornet's blades carved him apart.
He almost hurled the gamepad across the room. His knuckles whitened, wrist cocked back—then he froze.
The glow of the TV screen reflected off the dark fabric of his Hoodie jacket, shadows crawling across the room. His chest heaved once, twice.
His eyes flicked to the clock.
4:59.
A crooked smile tugged at his lip.
"...Nah. I'll just respawn."
He leaned forward, hit play.
Flashback end.
The train roared beneath me. My pulse matched it. We where both beating in sync
hand jiggled like a condemned man's at the block—then locked into a steady clamp, like I was gripping a gamepad.
I told myself, "calms".
The newspaper in my lap hiccupped. Rune-ink crawled across the print like a virus, fine black script blooming into blue-white veins. The page screamed light and then was gone—flame without heat, devouring the paper until nothing remained but a curl of ash in my palm.
Something scuttled under my legs. The vermin slipped out, a little living knot of fur and metal. It ran—fast, precise—and as it ran a third eye cracked open on its forehead. One of my eyes closed; the other split to share its vision. It shoved its sight through me like a pinhole camera.
It dove into the second carriage. I saw men there—armed heavily and mean . The vermin threaded between their boots, a silent scout. Suddenly Bloody tears pooled on my cheeks before I'd made sense of the fear, and I snapped my eyes open.
---
Before the summon:
Inside, a dark-skinned man sat alone in the gloom of his cabin. All black. Waistcoat sharp. Gloves immaculate. A 19th-century cut, clean and precise, like he had been drawn in ink.
He froze. His gaze locked directly onto the vermin.
For a heartbeat, neither moved.
Then he blinked—
—and the vermin vanished.
The man inhaled slowly. Eyes narrowed. His gloved hand dipped into the desk drawer, withdrew a long black feather slick with Aetherium ink. No circle without it. No spell without its stroke.
The quill hissed as he drew across the wall. Lines bright and vicious, angles hooked like talons, forming a rune that seemed to pulse, then connectedthen and encapsulate them in circle and arc until it depicted a hand. He lifted a frameless curved mirror and hung it crooked, those who looked it from ouside sawa hand as if warning them to stop, its warped glass reflecting only the door. A watcher for a watcher.
---
Back in my seat, I kept the fairy hidden beneath my suit. Nausea pricked my throat; the blood from my nose slowed to a stubborn drip. I asked a waiter for anything to aid, she replies —"Siren Grace?"— i accepted unfortunately they said it was finished. Refill would take a pilgrimage through the train as this was the first and the refill was farther. I agreed. Better pain than panic.
I came back, sat, tried to look ordinary. The fairy, sick of living in my suit, flicked free. Light burst into my eyes—sharp, white—and I pawed at my face. The man beside me stared like I'd offended him; I smiled, crossed my legs, and pretended the world wasn't folding.
I snapped back.
My eye opened. I realized was in the first carriage. Not the last. Not where the map had marked me. But I came through the back door.
Reminiscing of what was in front of me was nothing but impossible, what I saw was a vision from hell.
The air pressed close, hot and slick. Walls swam, veins pulsing faint yellow beneath the surface, oil-dark. The floor heaved as though I stood inside the ribcage of something alive. A hiss ran under my feet, rhythmic, almost a heartbeat. The chamber flexed. The scent was thick—iron, bile, rot.
And then the rush. Blood. Fluids. Corpses drifting slow like weeds on a current. The stream was patterned—stripes of green–brown to red to brown again, like tiger hide stretched across,. Workers swept among them, brooms pushing flesh and bone into the dark like it was nothing but dust. Waiters. Cleaners. Ticket men. Their faces gray, eyes vacant, hands tireless. The audacity of it—the indifference—made my throat gag.
Above, a spine curved across the ceiling. I coughed, bile searing my tongue. For a moment, I swore the snake swallowed me whole.
Then it was gone. One blink. One second. The cabin again.
I turned to the window, clinging to one thought: I can always escape as long as I can see.
My pupils widened.
Nothing.
The mirror outside reflected the world—stone, grass, stars, the neat-cut road. A harmless night.
But within that reflection, it shifted. A pillar rose. Red. Vast. Infinite.
My shadow stretched across the floor—longer than me, wider, spilling too far. It spread until it swallowed the cabin whole.
I sprinted, bone-deep panic turning my lungs to fire. For a breath, the world dissolved — everyone in the carriage blinked out as if the air itself had swallowed them. Fear clawed my hands; I dragged a woman down by the collar, held her like a shield.
"Turn it off," I barked, voice raw. "Get on your knees or you're dead."
There was no painted magic circle to smash — maybe a rug, wallpaper, some old trick hiding a rune. The workers kept sweeping, mechanical and wrong. When she stuttered, begging for mercy—"I have a family, let me work"—something in me snapped. I fired. She went silent and folded like a rag. The waitress froze, voice gone. Three seconds later she vanished.
I emptied shots into the space where she'd been, bullets tearing at nothing. The corridor answered with a sound like a throat closing; something enormous lunged — a tongue or a slab of flesh — I didn't stay to name it. I snapped my fingers. My coat flared, runes blooming bright yellow like a virus; light lashed out and ate at the thing. Pain cracked across my cheek but I kept moving. One by one the monstrosities convulsed, then collapsed; in their place rose hollow-eyed creatures that turned on each other with blind hunger.
I ran for the exist but there wasn't, then all thats left is the darkness i saw the door leading to the next carriage.Walking back i retrieved the old book: lists, names, a ledger of favors and threats. It was the only map I trusted. At the top, the door wasn't a door at all but a mouth of darkness rimmed in green veins — a portal that breathed cold. I wouldn't step through. I shut one eye and opened the other to the vermin's vision.
In the next carriage the little spy sat staring at an empty seat. When I blinked, I was there. The man beside me—fast, silent—had a dagger hidden at his hip. Reflex took over. I seized the blade and drove it up into his neck; he went down hard, the movement sudden and final.
The train groaned. The mirror outside still showed a pillar of red, endless and obscene. My shadow lay over the floor like a stain. I tasted metal and fear and kept moving.