Rain fell over the city of Veyl as if the sky were trying to wash something away. The streets glistened like spilled mercury, and neon signs flickered half-heartedly through the mist. It was the kind of night when people hurried home, pretending they didn't notice the strange things that sometimes wandered the edges of their vision.
Liora, however, was not most people.
She stood beneath the crooked awning of a closed tea shop, clutching a paper bag of leftover pastries. Her shift had ended twenty minutes ago, but she hadn't moved. Something in the air felt wrong — a metallic tension humming just below hearing, like the world was holding its breath.
Then a whisper slid across the street.
Not to her.
Through her.
"Found… you…"
Liora froze. No one was around. The street was empty except for puddles and reflections. She scanned the alleys — nothing. But the whisper lingered in her skull like a fingerprint left on glass.
She swallowed hard. It's happening again.
The first time she heard a voice like that was when she was seven, and it had led her to a girl who had gone missing. A girl who was found alive only because Liora had followed the whisper. A miracle, they called it. But the voice had stopped after that — until tonight.
She stepped out from the awning and the whisper came again, clearer:
"Run."
The streetlights flickered. One by one, they went dark.
A shadow stretched across the pavement — wrong, detached from anything real, like a silhouette that had lost its owner. It slid toward her, moving without sound, flattening itself thin as smoke.
Liora's breath caught. She dropped the pastry bag and bolted.
Her boots splashed through puddles as she sprinted past shuttered storefronts. The shadow glided behind her, gaining with each heartbeat. The whisper returned, more urgent now, like someone speaking through shattered glass:
"Left. NOW."
She turned left.
A rusted gate swung open by itself. She squeezed through, slamming it behind her. The shadow struck the metal with a hiss, recoiling like a wounded beast.
Then silence.
Her lungs burned. Rain soaked through her coat, dripping down her neck. The whisper faded, softer now, almost a sigh.
"Not safe… but alive…"
Liora pressed her forehead against the cold gate. "What do you want from me?" she whispered back.
And for the first time, the voice answered with something she had never expected:
"You called me first."
Her blood went cold.
I did what?
But before she could ask again, a figure stepped out from the deeper dark of the alley — human-shaped, wearing a long coat, eyes glowing faintly like shattered stars.
"Liora Vale," he said, as if reading her name off her soul. "We need to talk. The shadows know you're awake again."