Chicago

  Finn

  The city hums around me.

  Neon flickers in the wet pavement, sirens echo somewhere beyond the river, and the elevated train roars past like the city clearing its throat. Chicago never really sleeps—it shifts, breathes, grinds forward. Magic threads through it the same way it does through any old city, woven into foundations and forgotten corners.

  But here, at the edge of her building, everything is still.

  The air changes the moment I step closer. The noise dulls at the edges, not silenced but softened, like sound filtered through deep water. I exhale slowly and watch the space in front of me ripple. Barely perceptible—most wouldn’t notice it—but the magic is there. A ward, fine and deliberate, braided into brick and glass with careful hands.

  She’s good.

  The protection isn’t brute force. It isn’t some dramatic barrier meant to intimidate or announce itself. It’s precise. Intentional. It allows the world to move around it while keeping her untouched, tucked safely inside the rhythm of the city. The weave shifts faintly when I lift my hand, fingers hovering inches from its edge. It doesn’t shove me back or flare in warning. Instead, it curls toward me, cautious but curious, testing.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Recognition hums beneath the surface.

  She doesn’t know who I am. Not yet. But the magic does.

  I let my hand fall, rolling tension from my shoulders as I take in the building again—the darkened windows, the quiet facade hiding something far older than the brick suggests. I already know how to get through if I need to. The paths are there. I’ve seen enough of them.

  The pulse hits before I can brace for it.

  It begins as pressure behind my eyes and then fractures into something sharper. My breath stutters as the world tilts and splinters around me. The ward blurs. The streetlight above me flickers.

  A glass of water trembling on a counter.

  Salt thick in the air, heavy and suffocating.

  Gold eyes—furious, blazing—and then those same eyes soft with something that looks dangerously close to hope.

  Laughter. A board game scattering across a table. The sharp crack of something breaking.

  Then cold.

  A vast, black depth swallowing sound and light.

  Something ancient shifting beneath it.

  Something reaching upward.

  I grit my teeth and force the vision back, anchoring myself in the present. The brick digs into my palm where I’ve braced against the wall. The train passes again in the distance, the sound dragging the world back into alignment. The ward remains steady, untouched, shimmering faintly in the corner of my sight.

  I draw in a slow breath, steadying the lingering tremor in my vision, and fix my gaze on the quiet building.

  Soon.