The church did not invite them in.It yielded.The doors, heavy with age and soaked in old prayers, swung outward with a sound like a long-held breath finally released. The hinges did not creak. They sighed. Air spilled from within—not cold, not warm, but wrong in a way Adam felt immediately in his bones. It carried the scent of dust, iron, and something unfinished, like stone cut and abandoned before it learned its purpose.The pressure that had been spreading laterally across the city gathered itself in response, coiling tighter, more deliberate now. It no longer brushed against Adam’s awareness like a curious touch. It pressed.Lilith’s hand tightened on Adam’s arm. She didn’t look at the church at first. She watched him—the way his shoulders drew back slightly, the way his spine straightened as if responding to an invisible alignment. The world around them seemed to adjust in quiet increments, pavement sinking a fraction of an inch, shadows leaning inward.“Don’t,” she said under

The city did not sleep that night.Lights stayed on in apartments where no one remembered turning them on. Screens flickered with static that resolved into nothing recognizable before snapping back to normal. Dogs refused to settle. Infants cried without waking. Even the streetlights hummed differently, their glow slightly too pale, as though filtered through an atmosphere that was still deciding what rules applied.Adam felt all of it.Not as pain. Not even as noise.As orientation.He stood on the rooftop of a low-rise building a few blocks from the church, the concrete cool beneath his boots. From here, the city stretched outward in layers—streets, buildings, bridges—ordinary geometry overlaid with something else entirely. Lines he could not see with his eyes traced themselves through his awareness, intersecting, branching, looping back. Thin places. Stress points. Regions where reality had been folded too many times and never fully flattened again.Lilith stood beside him, arms fo

The city did not return to sleep.It pretended to—lights dimming, streets thinning, windows darkening one by one—but beneath the surface, everything remained alert, like a body lying still while the heart refused to slow. Adam felt it as a low vibration under his ribs, a persistent hum that refused to fade. The containment had begun, not as a cage, but as a question the universe kept asking itself: What do we do with you?They left the rooftop in silence.Not because there was nothing to say, but because every word felt too loud, too capable of tipping something delicate into catastrophe. Lilith walked a step ahead, her shoulders squared, eyes scanning reflections in glass and metal as if expecting the city itself to blink at her. Kaleb trailed behind, hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets, trying—and failing—to look like a normal teenager heading home after a long night. Malrick’s presence thinned, retreating inward, though Adam could still feel him coiled tightly, watchful.When

The school did not close.That fact alone told Adam everything he needed to know.If a student collapsing mid-hallway had been a purely human incident, the administration would have reacted with the usual panic—dismissals, assemblies, murmured reassurances that everything was under control. Instead, classes resumed after a brief, carefully managed delay. Teachers spoke in calm, measured tones. The announcement over the intercom was bland, rehearsed, stripped of emotion.Medical episode. Situation handled. Please return to class.Containment disguised as routine.Adam felt it immediately: the net had not loosened. It had adapted.He sat in his seat, back straight, hands folded on the desk, eyes forward. To anyone watching, he looked composed—perhaps a little pale, perhaps a little distant. Inside, every nerve was alert. The hum beneath his ribs had deepened, no longer a vibration but a steady pressure, like a second pulse beating out of sync with his heart.Malrick was no longer silent

The authorities arrived too late to understand anything.They flooded the building in fluorescent vests and practiced urgency, radios crackling with codes that assumed the crisis had a name. Firefighters checked for structural damage that didn’t exist in any conventional sense. Paramedics attended to students in shock, their questions gentle and repetitive, designed to keep people tethered to the present.Adam watched it all from the hallway, seated on the floor with his back against the lockers, a thermal blanket draped around his shoulders like an accusation. Lilith stood nearby, arms crossed, eyes never leaving him for long. Kaleb paced in short, agitated lines, running his hands through his hair and stopping every few steps to glance at the ceiling as if expecting it to ripple again.The school had been partially evacuated, but not closed.Containment again.The net was quieter now—less pressure, more presence. Adam could feel it in the way people avoided the hallway he occupied,