The city never truly slept. Towers of glass and steel loomed like watchmen against the star stained sky, their windows glimmering with the restless pulse of human life. In the distance, the neon veins of traffic crawled sluggishly through the avenues, and the low hum of machinery blended with the constant whisper of unseen lives. To most, it was nothing more than a modern metropolis, alive, indifferent, eternal.
But not all who walked its streets were ordinary.
Arin moved silently through the crowd, a shadow among shadows. His footsteps were light, his presence unremarkable, his appearance carefully plain. The world saw him as just another face, a young man with dark eyes, wearing a worn jacket, a little tired from the grind of urban survival. That was exactly how he wanted it.
Because Arin carried a secret that could never be spoken aloud.
Since childhood, whispers followed him. Sometimes in his dreams, sometimes when silence wrapped around him too tightly, he would hear the voices, ancient and soft, like the sigh of wind through forgotten ruins. They told him things no human should know. They showed him flashes of battles that belonged to eras before history was written, visions of beings who had shaped the world long before humans claimed dominion.
For years, he had convinced himself that he was cursed. That he was losing his grip on reality. But tonight, under the chill of the moon, the voices were louder than ever.
They are coming.
Arin froze. He had heard those words before. Always whispered. Always just before something went wrong.
He glanced around. People bustled past, their faces glued to the glow of their devices, oblivious. A woman laughed into her phone as she stepped into a cab. A group of teenagers ran across the crosswalk, daring the light. Nothing seemed unusual. And yet, the hairs on Arin's arms rose, his pulse drumming against his throat.
He quickened his pace, moving toward the quieter part of the city where the neon faded into shadow. The voices continued to stir inside his mind, restless and insistent, but tonight there was a sharpness to them. Not warnings. Not riddles. Commands.
Look closer.
Arin's eyes swept the alleyway he entered. Cracked pavement. Graffiti that stretched like claws across the brick walls. The distant throb of music leaking from a nightclub. And then he saw her.
At first glance, she seemed human enough. A woman in her late twenties, dressed in a sleek black coat that shimmered faintly under the dim glow of a streetlight. Her hair fell in dark, tangled waves, and her eyes glinted with a strange, unnatural brightness. She was too still. Too focused. Her gaze was not on her phone or her surroundings. It was fixed directly on him.
Arin's stomach clenched.
The woman stepped forward, her boots clicking softly against the pavement. And then, in a movement that no human body should have made, she lifted her arm and whispered something under her breath. The air warped. A shimmer, faint but undeniable, rippled outward like heat rising from desert sand.
It was not possible. It could not be. And yet, it was.
She was using power.
Arin staggered back. For years, he had hidden his abilities, terrified that revealing even a fragment of what lived inside him would expose him to danger. He thought he was alone, an anomaly, a mistake of fate. But this woman, she was like him.
No, not like him. Her aura was darker, sharper, threaded with malice.
Finally, she whispered, her voice cutting through the night like glass. I have found you.
The words froze him in place. His mind raced. How? Who was she? What did she know?
The voices within him roared. Danger. Run.
But Arin's body would not obey. The woman lifted her hand higher, and a thread of black flame curled in her palm, alive and Squirming like a snake. The shadows in the alley trembled, bending toward her as if drawn by some invisible gravity.
Arin's heart hammered against his ribs. He had lived in fear of this moment. The day his secret would no longer belong only to him.
What do you want from me, his voice cracked despite his effort to keep it steady.
The woman smiled, a thin cruel twist of lips that promised nothing good.
You already know, she said softly. You carry something that does not belong to you. They have been whispering to you, have they not? The voices. The ancient ones. Her eyes burned brighter, inhuman light dancing in their depths. Hand it over, or I will tear it from you.
Arin's throat went dry. She should not know. She could not know. Yet the certainty in her words shattered every fragile wall he had built around his secret.
For the first time, Arin felt truly seen.
And truly hunted.
The flame in her palm grew, curling upward, hungry and alive. Arin's instincts screamed. He raised his hand in desperation, and for the first time in years, he let the voices guide him. A surge of energy burned through his veins, wild and unfamiliar, crackling at his fingertips.
The air split with a thunderous crack, and the alley was drowned in a storm of light and shadow colliding.
When the world stilled, the woman's smile had widened.
You have only just begun, she whispered.
And before Arin could speak, the shadows swallowed her whole, leaving only the echo of her laughter behind.
Arin stood alone, his chest heaving, his hands trembling with the fading sparks of forbidden power.
The whispers inside him grew louder, overlapping, chaotic.
They have found you. The hunt has begun.