The smell hit him first.
Not the sterile, lemony-fake scent of the cleaner in his bucket.
Something older.
Metallic.
Luo Shen paused, rag dripping onto the scuffed linoleum.
Blood.
His eidetic memory threw up the comparison instantly.
The orphanage courtyard. Age seven. Split lip.
Same sharp, intimate tang.
He wasn't supposed to be on this floor.
The work order said 'Basement Storage B-C.'
The elevator had shuddered and spat him out here, lights flickering.
A sign, half-fallen, read 'QUARANTINE'.
He'd decided to take the stairs back down.
Now, he regretted not running.
A muffled thud echoed from the large, windowed lab at the corridor's end.
Not a door closing.
Something heavier.
Every instinct screamed to turn, to run back the way he came.
But his feet stayed rooted.
His eyes tracked to the lab's floor-to-ceiling window.
It was grimy, streaked with neglect.
The view was clear enough.
Inside, a man in a torn lab coat scrambled backward, hands raised.
His face was a mask of terror.
Lit by an impossible, shimmering blue light that danced around his fingers.
The light coalesced, swirled, and erupted into roaring azure flames.
They licked up to the ceiling tiles without scorching them.
"Stay back!"
The man's voice was high and frayed.
"I paid my price! I paid it!"
He hurled a comet of blue fire across the room.
It never reached its target.
A figure stood between the man and the door.
A silhouette that drank the light.
The shadows around it moved, peeling away from the walls.
Pooling at its feet like loyal hounds.
As the firebolt approached, the figure didn't dodge.
It lifted a hand.
The fire didn't hit a shield.
It didn't explode.
It simply… ceased.
Winked out of existence mid-air.
Luo Shen's brain recorded it all.
The precise arc.
The way the shadows twitched a microsecond before.
The absolute silence that followed.
The man in the lab coat whimpered.
"No, no, no…"
The dark figure stepped forward.
It moved wrong.
The space between it and the terrified man simply collapsed.
It reached out.
A hand that was less a hand and more a tendril of concentrated midnight.
It touched the man's chest.
There was no scream.
The man came apart.
Not into gore.
Into thousands of shivering, prismatic fragments of light.
They hung in the air for a breath.
Beautiful.
Horrifying.
The darkness surrounding the figure surged forward.
It consumed them, sucking the light down into nothing.
Silence.
Luo Shen had stopped breathing.
His lungs burned.
The mop handle was slick in his sweaty grip.
Move. You have to move.
His body was locked in place.
The dark figure turned.
It turned its head, slowly, deliberately, toward the grimy window.
Toward Luo Shen.
Fifty meters of dark corridor and glass separated them.
It shouldn't have been able to see him.
He was a shadow among shadows.
He felt it anyway.
A pressure, cold and infinite, settled between his eyes.
A gaze that was about acknowledgement.
The shadows in his own corridor began to stir.
The long, dark stretch under a parked gurney deepened.
Stretching toward his shoes like flowing tar.
His heart was a jackhammer against his ribs.
Run. NOW.
He sucked in a ragged, burning gasp of air.
He wrenched his body into motion.
He spun, shoes squealing on the wet floor.
He didn't look back.
He sprinted.
The emergency exit stairwell door was twenty meters.
Ten.
His hand slammed against the push-bar.
He burst through into the concrete stairwell.
The door swung shut with a heavy, final thud behind him.
He didn't stop.
He took the stairs two, three at a time.
Breath coming in sharp, panicked rasps.
The bucket and mop, forgotten.
Just get to the cart. Clock out. Get out.
Pretend this never happened.
He hit the basement landing.
Shoved the door open.
Stumbled into the familiar, dimly lit storage area.
His custodial cart stood where he'd left it.
Under a flickering fluorescent light.
Normalcy.
He leaned against the cart, head down.
Trying to steady his breathing.
The metallic smell was gone.
Replaced by damp concrete and disinfectant.
It was over.
He'd gotten away.
That's when he noticed the light.
A soft, azure glow.
Emanating from his own clenched fists where they gripped the edge of the cart.
He froze.
Slowly, he forced his fingers to uncurl.
He lifted his hands.
Dancing across his knuckles, curling around his wrists.
The exact same shimmering, otherworldly blue fire.
It didn't burn.
It felt… cool.
Hungry.
What did you do?
His mind whispered.
He knew.
He'd witnessed.
His perfect memory hadn't just recorded the event.
It had ingested it.
Every detail of the power's manifestation.
Its flow.
Its essence.
Now, in his panic, his soul had somehow hit 'replicate.'
The fire flickered, responding to his spike of terror.
A tiny wisp of blue flame detached from his finger.
It floated toward a stack of cardboard boxes.
"No."
He hissed, clenching his fists again.
Stop. Go out. Be nothing.
The fire obeyed.
It sank back into his skin.
The glow faded.
His hands were just hands again.
Pale and trembling under the sickly fluorescent light.
A different kind of cold washed over him.
Not the fear of being chased.
The dread of understanding.
He hadn't just seen a murder.
He'd stolen a piece of it.
The sound of the stairwell door banging open shattered the silence.
Two floors above him.
Heavy, rapid footsteps.
Several.
A voice, crisp and authoritative, echoed down the stairwell.
"Secure the perimeter. Check all levels."
"The resonance spike came from this sector."
"If it's a Manifestation, it might still be here."
"If it's a witness… bring them in."
Luo Shen's blood went from cold to ice.
He looked at his ordinary, powerless hands.
Then he looked up at the ceiling.
Toward the sound of the approaching hunters.
The blue fire was gone.
But in the utter silence of the basement, he heard a new sound.
A faint, dry, rustling whisper.
Like pages turning in a distant library.
It came from the long, dark shadow his own body cast on the concrete wall.
A shadow that was now, he realized with a slow, sinking horror, ever so slightly out of sync with his movements.
It was watching him.