The woman's name was Samantha Kathi. She was 25 years old and a first-year architectural associate at a firm that demanded sixty-hour weeks, paying her just enough to afford a one-bedroom walk-up in a neighbourhood that was permeated by the scent of damp brick and the distant hum of traffic. She was pragmatic to her core, her world governed by zoning laws, load-bearing calculations, and the precise, predictable nature of concrete and steel. Her life was a series of grids and schedules, and there was no box on any form for "small, traumatised boy from another dimension found on a rainy street corner".
Yet, her pragmatism was not cold. It was a framework for a deep, unshakeable kindness. She didn't panic. She assessed. The boy was small, maybe four years old. He was dressed in what looked like a costume from a high-concept fantasy film—silk robes now soaked and muddy and a cloak that seemed to… seethe subtly around his shoulders, its black fabric occasionally letting off a faint, shadowy mist that the rain couldn't seem to wash away. He clutched a strange, bony object in his fist so tightly his knuckles were white. But it was his eyes that decided it for her. They weren't a child's eyes. They were ancient, black pools of pure, undiluted terror, staring through her and the rain at some horror only he could see.
Her calculations were swift. Police? They would place him in a system, and a boy who appeared like this, who remained silent, would be chewed up and spat out. Hospital? They would pose questions she couldn't answer. Her apartment was warm, it had food, and it was safe.
"Okay," she said, her voice low and calm, cutting through the hiss of the rain. She didn't ask another question he clearly couldn't answer. "It's okay. You're coming with me."
She didn't try to take the spiked device from his hand. She didn't question the sentient cloak. She simply shrugged off her own coat and draped it over his small shoulders, on top of Kaiphus, adding a layer of mundane warmth and concealment. Then, with a firm but gentle hand on his back, she guided him away from the orange glow of the streetlamp and into the welcoming, unremarkable darkness of her apartment building.
Her home was a study in ordered simplicity. Beige walls, a second-hand sofa, bookshelves filled with technical manuals and a few well-loved novels. It was quiet, save for the persistent hum of a refrigerator and the soft tick-tick of a radiator fighting a losing battle against the autumn chill.
Mordecai stood just inside the doorway, dripping on the woven entry mat, a creature of shadow and magic utterly bewildered by linoleum and the smell of lemon-scented cleaner. The world had ended in fire, screams, and folding reality. This new world was… humming. And quiet.
Samantha moved with a quiet efficiency. She returned the coat to its hook. She filled a kettle and placed it on the stove. She brought him a thick, clean towel. She didn't crowd him. She gave him space to simply be in this strange new environment.
She placed a slice of warm, buttered bread and a glass of water on the coffee table. "You must be hungry," she said, as if finding interdimensional refugees was a Tuesday evening occurrence.
He didn't move. Kaiphus, however, extended a single, damp corner and nudged the plate slightly closer to him. The gesture was so faint, so quick, that Samantha almost missed it. She decided, pragmatically, to file it away for later.
He eventually ate. He drank. The silence stretched, but it wasn't an uncomfortable one. It was a quiet of mutual assessment, of unspoken truces. She wrote her name and address on a piece of paper and slid it across the table to him. "Samantha Kathi. This is where we are." It was a gesture of transparency, an offering of stability.
And so began the long quiet.
Mordecai learnt the rules of this new, hard world. He learnt that the low, vibrational hum came from the refrigerator, a box of cold that held food. He learnt that the bright, artificial light from the ceiling fixture was harsh and could be softened by a smaller lamp in the corner. He learnt the creak of the third stair, the rattle of the pipes when the shower was on, and the way the afternoon sun hit the dust motes in the living room, making them look like tiny, floating stars—a pale, pathetic imitation of the lanterns of Umbra.
He learnt English with a fierce, scrappy determination. Samantha brought him picture books from the library. He would sit for hours, pointing at objects, his brow furrowed in concentration. "Window," she would say. "Refrigerator. Bread. Book." He would repeat the words, his accent strange and melodic, tasting the unfamiliar shapes in his mouth. He learnt the names of the flowers in the small balcony planter: geranium, petunia, and marigold. Simple, earthy words for simple, earthly things.
Through it all, Kaiphus was his silent sentinel. The cloak would not curl up by the radiator like a cat. It refused to be separated from him, remaining perpetually draped around his shoulders, though it would sometimes loosen its grip, flowing around him like a pool of liquid shadow. It did not speak, of course. It only watched Samantha with an unnerving, focused stillness, its teal threads like faint whispers of its former power. It was assessing her, judging her intentions, a guardian ensuring this new world would not harm its charge.
Samantha, in her incredible, matter-of-fact kindness, accepted this too. She began calling him "Mordi", a softer, easier name for this new, softer world. She never pressed for a story he couldn't give. She saw the hollows in him, the vast, silent spaces where a family and a whole world should have been, and she set about filling them not with questions, but with simple, solid things.
A bowl of tomato soup on a cold day. The patient helps with sounding out English words. A warm bed in the small room she cleared out for him. A set of coloured pencils and paper on which he drew nothing but intricate, geometric patterns that made her architect's eye itch with their impossible precision.
The screaming terror of his arrival slowly subsided, not into peace, but into a deep, pervasive quiet. The trauma was not gone; it was buried under layers of routine and quiet care, like a fossil sealed in sedimentary rock. He was safe. He was warm. He was learning.
But at night, when the hum of the refrigerator was the only sound, Mordecai would lie awake, the dead device hidden under his pillow. He would stare at the ceiling, and in the darkness, he could still see it: his mother's face, turned to stone, her eyes like lanterns, her final command etched into his soul. And he could still feel the ghost of a small, warm hand being torn from his own.
Samantha gave him a place to sleep. But the quiet she offered was the quiet of a shelter between storms. He knew, even then, that his sleep would never truly be restful again.