The alley behind the Mehta Market smelled of fried spices and old rain. At dusk the smell arranged itself into memories—lilies from a funeral last week, the diesel breath of the buses, the burned sugar from the vendor who sold candied apples two blocks over. Rin kept his breath shallow. He knew the rhythm of this place: loud, quick, and indifferent.
He rode the courier's life like a rope slung over a cliff. Rides for food credits, packages for secrets, tenminute deliveries that paid better than a week's wage at the warehouse. Tonight was just another night: package full of thermal gel, tip tucked inside a folded note that smelled faintly of lemon soap.
Until the air tore.
At the end of the alley a line like a seam in the sky split and bled pale blue. It wasn't lightning—lightning would have a voice, a smell. This seam hummed, thin as a violin wire, and dropped something. The something hit the wet cobblestones with a sound like a dropped teacup and rolled, transparent and scared.
Rin saw the thing before logic could file it. It had the broad shoulders of a child's toy and the curl of smoke for a spine. Skin—if it had skin—was stretched paper-thin and veined with minute bioluminescent lines. Two dark pits where eyes should have been. It was small, the size of a pup, and it breathed like a smoker who hadn't learned to give air back.
People screamed first. Old Mrs. Patel from the tea stall flung her cart to the side, cups scattering. Then instinct—someone reached for their phone, someone pulled a knife. The alley's normal indifference folded into a predator's curiosity.
Rin did a thing he could no longer easily explain: he stepped toward the thing. Everything in him shouted for distance—this was something the videos warned about, something the forums called a "threshold spawn"—but there was a sliver of recognition, like a scar on a map.
His hand closed before thought. The thing's body registered the contact as if it had been daring the
universe to care. It quivered and pushed its head into his palm. The sensation was a cold thumbprint, then a mild burn and a pressure like a small child's hand asking to be held.
A sigil flared on his palm.
Not like a tattoo. Not ink that sat above skin. The mark slid into him—smooth, patient. Circles and an angular notch that felt like a lock clicking into place. It throbbed in time with his pulse. For a breath he felt connected to whatever that seam had been. He smelled other things, far away: old wood, a lullaby under a bridge, a child's laughter that had been cut in half.
Someone shouted, and the sound spliced like cheap audio. A shadow moved with too many elbows, long and hungry. The lanky thing—the first of the attackers—slid from near the seam, smelling of wet ash. Its mouth forked like a torn curtain; it had more teeth than sense. It lunged.
Rin thought of running and couldn't. Instinct arranged itself into a strategy—an ugly, clever thing he had learned between rooftops. He shoved the spawn away and pushed the newcomer into the spilled crates.The lanky thing's legs tangled; it skittered and struck its head on the iron cart. People screamed and scattered—some fleeing, others slamming doors.
The lanky thing recovered, eyes a smear of milk, and moved with the methodical cruelty of a predator adapting. It reached for Rin, and in that fraction of a second the sigil in his palm answered. A flash: a path that would be taken, a toe that would snag, a breath drawn before it happened.
It was no more than an image—a slash of likely future—but in that slash lay survival. Rin shifted, moved the angle of his weight, and the lanky thing's hand met empty air. It stumbled. The crowd rose like a tide and swallowed it.
When the police came—as inevitable as they were late—lights blue and official, the seam stitched itself up.The alley closed as if nothing had happened. Video feeds would later call it a power anomaly, or a prank, or the usual internet hysteria. The market's vendors stowed their carts and cleaned their cups with practiced hands. Life resumed.
Only Rin's hand still pulsed.
He walked away holding the spawn in his arms because he couldn't leave it. It fit against his chest like a secret. Its breath was shallow. It wept a sound that wasn't language but made his throat know pity.
He didn't notice the man with the sharp suit watching him until he reached the corner.
The man smelled like wax and a file cabinet. He had eyes that did not belong to the market—calm and very collected. "You did not have to do that," the man said, as if they were discussing the weather. He opened a palm, and a card slid into existence: DIRECTORATE — THRESHOLD CONTROL.
Rin's grip tightened. "I didn't do anything," he said, his voice cracked..
"You touched it. Touched one of them. The mark recognizes you. That's not nothing." The man smiled in a way that didn't reach his eyes. "We'd like to talk."
Rin thought of the market, his bike, the tip in the lemon-scented paper. He thought of things that would arrest him if the wrong person decided to call it a crime.
He thought of the spawn in his arms and put it in the crook of his jacket as if the world might not notice.
The Directorate man did not move to stop him. He followed like a shadow. The alley's lamps guttered as if some theater hand dimmed them. Above, the seam's wound had left a smear, a memory in the clouds.
That night, when Rin lay on his narrow cot, the mark on his palm burned like a small brand. The spawn whistled in the corner like a trapped wind. He pressed his fingers together until the pain focused the thought.
Someone, somewhere, had recognized him.
And in the dark, a voice, not quite a voice, not quite memory, breathed: "Bound."