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143. What listens beneath the skin
The moment Adam crossed the school gates, the pressure intensified.It wasn’t dramatic. There was no sudden wind, no thunder cracking open the sky. It was subtler than that—more insidious. Like walking deeper into water without realizing how far the ground had dropped away beneath his feet.He stopped at the sidewalk, backpack slung over one shoulder, eyes fixed on nothing. Cars passed. People laughed too loudly nearby. The world kept moving, ignorant of the fact that something ancient had shifted its attention fully onto him.Malrick stirred.Not with words.With weight.It settled into Adam’s chest, not like possession, not like control—but like a second gravity layered beneath his own. His breath hitched for a fraction of a second before he mastered it. He had learned, painfully, how to hide these things. How to let the storm rage inward while his face remained calm.Lilith paused a few steps behind him.“You’re not okay,” she said.Adam didn’t turn. “I never am.”“That’s not what
142. The weight that follows
Adam didn’t sleep.He lay on his bed fully clothed, staring at the faint crack in the ceiling that ran like a hairline fracture through plaster. Every time his eyes drifted shut, the pressure returned—not as pain, not even as fear—but as awareness. As if something behind his eyes was watching him watch the dark.The room smelled wrong. Familiar, but slightly diluted, like a copy of itself. Even the ticking clock on his nightstand hesitated between seconds, its rhythm uneven, uncertain.He rolled onto his side and pressed his palm against his chest. His heartbeat felt louder than it should have been. Deeper. As though it was echoing through a larger space than his body.Malrick did not speak.That alone was alarming.Adam had grown used to the presence—resented it, fought it, but relied on its sharpness. The silence now felt intentional. Calculated. Like a predator going still so its prey would forget it was there.Across town, Lilith stood at her bedroom window, curtains half-drawn, w
141. When silence practices your name
They didn’t move for a long time.The forest seemed to hold its breath with them, as if even the trees were afraid that sound might invite something back. Leaves hung motionless mid-sway. Insects refused to sing. The hum that had saturated the air faded into something thinner—quieter—but far more deliberate, like a pulse counting down somewhere beneath the ground.Adam stayed on one knee, one hand pressed to the soil as though he needed the contact to remind himself what was solid. His shadows lay close now, no longer flared or aggressive, but they trembled faintly, reacting to things only they could feel.Lilith knelt beside him, her fingers digging into his sleeve, grounding him as much as herself. Her heartbeat was still racing, loud in her ears, each thud echoing with a question she wasn’t ready to ask.Kaleb finally broke the silence. “Tell me that thing didn’t just memorize us.”Adam’s jaw tightened. He didn’t look up. “It didn’t need to.”That answer settled like frost.Sirens
140. The shape that notices back
The smile did not belong to a face.Adam felt it before he understood it—a pressure behind his eyes, a subtle curl in the wrong places of reality, like the world itself had learned a new expression and was trying it out on him. The shadows at his feet tightened, no longer merely reactive but alert, drawn taut as if listening.Lilith sensed the shift instantly. Her hand tightened around Adam’s sleeve. “It’s still here,” she said. Not a question.Adam nodded once. “Closer.”The sirens grew louder, bleeding through the woods in uneven waves. Flashing lights flickered between tree trunks, red and blue slicing through the gray haze that clung stubbornly to the air. The man on the ground groaned softly, stirring, his breathing shallow but steady.Kaleb wiped his shaking hands against his jeans. “We can’t be standing here when they arrive,” he said. “They’re going to ask questions. And I don’t think ‘reality malfunction’ is going to sound convincing.”Lilith glanced back at the man, then at
139. Where the cracks learn to speak
The first thing that broke wasn’t the sky.It was the silence.Not the absence of sound—there was plenty of that now—but the way the world could no longer hold it properly. Noise lingered where it shouldn’t, stretched thin and warped, like echoes refusing to fade. Lilith noticed it as they moved farther down the road, the crunch of gravel beneath their shoes repeating itself half a second late, as if the sound were unsure which version of reality it belonged to.Adam felt it more acutely.Each delayed echo scraped against the inside of his skull. The ache behind his eyes had sharpened into something rhythmic, a pulse that did not match his heartbeat. It throbbed in uneven intervals, like a code being tapped directly into his nerves.Kaleb walked a few steps ahead, glancing back too often, his shoulders hunched as if expecting the forest to lunge after them. He kept rubbing his arms, as though cold had seeped beneath his skin.“Do you hear that?” he asked suddenly.Lilith paused. “Hear
138. The weight of what almost was
Dawn arrived wrong.The sun crept over the horizon like it was unsure it was welcome, its light pale and thin, filtered through clouds that hadn’t finished deciding what shape they wanted to be. The forest around the clearing looked the same at first glance—trees standing, grass still bent where it had been flattened—but everything felt subtly displaced, like a photograph nudged out of alignment.Lilith noticed it when she tried to stand.Her foot sank a fraction too deep into the soil, as though the ground hesitated before supporting her weight. She stumbled, catching herself on a tree whose bark felt unnervingly smooth beneath her palm.“Kaleb,” she said quietly.He was already staring at his hands.They shook as if he’d been standing in cold rain for hours. He flexed his fingers, watching them lag a half-second behind his intention. “I don’t feel right,” he murmured. “It’s like… like my body’s still somewhere else.”Lilith followed his gaze back to the center of the clearing.Adam
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