Rain slicked the streets of the city, turning neon signs into bleeding streaks of colour. Prince kept his hood up as he left the repair shop, eyes scanning the crowd. Two years had passed since the night of the escape, yet the memory clung to him like smoke. They had been children, dragged into a secret facility, experimented on, remade. Now they were fugitives. He could still smell the antiseptic corridors of the lab sometimes, hear the echo of slammed doors and the cries of other test subjects in his dreams.
He adjusted the strap of his backpack and slipped into an alley. Down here the noise of traffic faded, but the noise of thoughts never did. Minds were open books to him now. He brushed against them as he moved, checking for danger: a shopkeeper thinking about closing, a driver cursing at the rain, a pickpocket planning his next mark. Nothing unusual. Until he felt it. The signal cut through the background like a blade, sharp and cold, raising goosebumps on his skin.
A whisper slid across his consciousness — not a human thought but a trained signature he'd learned to recognise: Revenant. Cold. Precise. Hunting. They had found him. His pulse thudded in his ears. If Revenant's scouts were this close, the hunters would not be far behind.
Prince quickened his pace. The ghosts that haunted the city walls stirred, sensing his panic. One drifted close, a girl no older than twelve, translucent and flickering. Her lips moved but no sound came. He had no time to listen. He wanted to, though. The dead often knew more than the living, and her eyes were full of warning.
Across town, Lammy Ammy stood on a crate in the drizzle, performing his street routine. Coins clinked into his hat as sparks of harmless magic danced from his paw to amuse the crowd. The small lammy's fur was damp, his cloak frayed, but his eyes were alert. He felt the disturbance too — a ripple through the faint magical threads that bound him to Prince. "Not again," he muttered, packing up his staff and vanishing into an alley. For a heartbeat his fur bristled, his magic rising instinctively like static before a storm.
In the underground fight pits, Jed's gloves were torn and his knuckles raw. He fought human, always human, keeping his other side secret. But when his next opponent stepped into the ring with glowing eyes and an inhuman smile, Jed's heart sank. A Revenant Hunter. Silver light pulsed through the veins of his forearms. He barely won, bolting before anyone could stop him. Blood still dripped from a cut at his brow, and he tasted iron as he ran up the stairwell into the rain.
By nightfall all three of them were moving through the city toward the same hidden meeting place, each sensing the others' alarm. For two years they had hidden in plain sight. Tonight that life ended. The hunt had begun, and none of them were ready. And somewhere in the city, unseen eyes watched and waited.