After the night at the pier, my days slipped into something that felt… uneventfully normal.
Too normal.
Morning came and went with the same routine—alarm, uniform, silence. During the night, the city didn't feel different. The streets didn't look haunted. No bloodstains lingered on my shoes. I still keep roaming. Cerberus never asked for a meal. I don't know why, but I never asked.
Mae kept doing what she always did.
She messaged me every morning. Short messages. Long ones. Apologies, updates about class, reminders to eat, pointless observations about the weather. I never replied. I didn't even open them anymore. Still, every time my phone buzzed, my chest tightened before I forced myself to ignore it.
By the time I reached school, her desk was already vandalized.
Again.
Marker scratches carved across the surface—ugly words, cruel jokes, things I didn't need to read to know what they were. Someone had taped a folded piece of paper to her chair this time. She removed it without looking, hands moving automatically, like she'd done this too many times already. Her shoulders sagged just a little more every day. The exhaustion was settling into her bones.
She didn't cry. She didn't argue. She didn't ask for help.
She just sat there, silent.
No one in the class tried to comfort her. Some avoided looking at her altogether. Others glanced for half a second, then looked away, pretending they didn't see the vandalism, pretending it wasn't their problem.
I hated them for that.
I hated myself more.
Lunch was the same ritual, repeated like a curse.
I'd leave the classroom and head for the cafeteria, and Mae would already be waiting in the hallway, clutching lunchboxes with both hands. She never called my name. Never asked me to stop. She just walked behind me at a careful distance, close enough to follow, far enough not to provoke me.
We ate at our usual spot near the soccer field, where the noise was distant and the grass muffled the world. I sat down, unwrapped whatever sandwich I bought to look normal, and ate without tasting anything.
She placed the lunchbox beside me.
I never touched it.
She opened her own meal and ate slowly, quietly. No attempts at conversation. No pleading looks. Just silence, broken only by the wind and the faint shouts from the field.
I never looked at her.
Still, I knew when she glanced at me. I could feel it, like pressure against my skin.
Honestly, I wished she would keep her distance.
Not just because we were already broken up—but because danger clung to me like a shadow. Every night, every hunt, every choice I made dragged something closer. I didn't want her anywhere near that.
But when it came down to it, I didn't have the guts to push her away.
Cerberus never missed a chance to remind me.
"You're too sentimental," he'd say, voice dripping with amusement. "She's a liability."
He wasn't wrong.
John came to class, too. He looked different—quieter, more cautious. I noticed him trying to talk to Mae more than once. Each time, she shut him down before he could finish a sentence. A shake of her head. A flat look. Silence.
John eventually stopped trying.
At home, my parents stayed exactly the same.
My mom watched her dramas, complaining about plot twists like the world wasn't quietly falling apart. My dad asked about school, about exams, about things that felt embarrassingly normal. They didn't look at me like I was a monster. They didn't ask if I was okay.
The only reminder was the food.
After that one night—the heart stew—the meals went back to normal. No human heart. Just rice. Soup. Meat cooked the way normal people cooked meat.
To them, it was comforting.
To me, it tasted like nothing.
Bland. Empty. Fuel without meaning.
Weekend came faster than I expected.
Saturday morning, my parents told me they were going to visit Tristan. They invited me along, my mom already halfway convinced I'd say yes.
"I have to study," I said instead. "Exams are coming up."
They didn't push. My dad just nodded, my mom reminded me to eat properly, and then they were gone, the house falling quiet behind them.
The silence pressed in.
Cerberus stirred. "Lying to people who care about you now?"
"I'm busy," I muttered.
"With what?" he taunted. "Pretending you're still human?"
I didn't answer.
Instead, I opened my notes and forced myself to read. Formulas. Dates. Half-familiar concepts that used to matter. My eyes moved across the pages, but nothing stayed. The words slid off my mind like water on glass. Every few lines, my thoughts drifted—to Hephaestus, to the smell of ash and blood.
After an hour of pretending, I closed the notebook.
I opened my computer instead. The screen's pale light filled the room as I searched—news, forums, half-baked conspiracy sites. Nihilkin.Hephaestus.Artifacts. Every article said the same things in different words: speculation, fear, blurry photos, eyewitnesses contradicting each other. Hephaestus had vanished again. The Nihilkin were either demons, experiments, or hoaxes, depending on who you asked. No mention of a serpentine armlet. No cloak of undying. Nothing useful.
I shut down the laptop. The silence rushed back in, heavier this time. My phone lay face-up on the desk. No new messages. Mae had finally stopped tonight—or maybe she was just asleep.
I stood and walked to the window.
The street below was bathed in yellow light, empty except for a stray cat darting between parked cars. The city looked peaceful, almost fragile, like it didn't know how close it always was to breaking.
My reflection stared back at me in the glass. Normal face. Normal eyes—for now. If I focused, I could almost believe that nothing had changed.
Almost.
"You're restless," Cerberus said, quieter than usual.
I flexed my fingers. They felt tight, coiled, like they didn't belong to a student who should be worrying about exams. "I can't just sit here."
"That's more like it."
I hesitated. Just for a second. My parents' door was closed down the hall. The house smelled faintly of detergent and cooked rice—ordinary, human things. Walking out meant stepping away from that again. From pretending.
But the night was calling. I felt it in my bones, in the way my pulse synced with the distant city noise.
I reached under my bed and pulled out the folded hood and pants Tristan gave me. I changed quietly, every movement deliberate. Mask last. When it slid into place, the world sharpened.
My eyes burned. Purple bled into my vision.
"There he is," Cerberus murmured, pleased. "Ready to stretch your legs?"
"Just roaming," I said. "No hunting unless I decide."
He snorted. "We'll see."
I opened the window. Cold air poured in, carrying the smell of asphalt and distant smoke. I climbed onto the sill, crouched, and listened. The city breathed below me—sirens far away, laughter somewhere blocks down, music thumping faintly from a passing car.
For a moment, I stayed there, balanced between my room and the void.
Then I jumped.
I landed against the wall, absorbed the impact, and pushed off again, clearing the streetlight with ease. Rooftops blurred beneath my feet as I moved, faster than thought, lighter than fear. The city unfolded before me, vast and alive, full of secrets and sins and people who thought the night belonged to them.
As I disappeared into the dark, Cerberus' voice echoed softly in my mind.
"Let's hope this night won't be boring, kid."