Kieran stood on the edge of the old world.
Above him, dawn broke like a wound—soft light bleeding through the smog-choked sky, painting the skyline in bruised pinks and charred golds. Below, Edenridge shivered. The city didn't wake so much as twitch, like something broken trying to remember how to breathe.
He didn't move.
Didn't speak.
Just listened.
Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed. Too early for cops. Probably a fire. Another tenement block gone to ash, another hundred lives scattered like soot.
The weight of time pressed down on him.
Three days left.
Three days before the world tore open.
Three days before monsters walked in daylight, dragging madness and blood behind them.
And here he was, barely more than a kid again. No Cards. No allies. No power. Just fists, scars, and memories that felt like they belonged to a stranger.
Kieran exhaled slowly and turned away from the edge of the rooftop.
He had work to do.
The pawnshop was a cramped, narrow hole buried between a nail salon and a dead grocery mart, its windowless interior lit by a single flickering strip light. Everything smelled faintly of mildew and cold metal. Behind the counter sat an old man with a face like withered leather, yellow eyes sunk deep into skull-like sockets.
He didn't ask questions when Kieran laid the bag down.
Inside: a rusted revolver, two boxes of mixed ammo, and a hunting knife still stained from last night's fight.
Kieran tapped the glass counter once. "I need gear. Not junk."
The old man's mouth twitched. Not a smile. More like a muscle remembering what one used to feel like. Without a word, he shuffled into the back.
Kieran waited, thoughts drifting.
He'd taken three fights since The Pit. Not for the money. Not even for the muscle memory anymore. Just to feel the edge. That sharp place between survival and surrender. He needed to stay there. Balanced on it. Because once the Gates opened, hesitation got you killed.
The shopkeeper returned and laid out a few items on a faded velvet cloth.
A tactical vest, light enough not to slow him down but tough enough to stop a knife. Steel-toed boots. A military flashlight with a strobe mode. A short crowbar wrapped in black tape—unmarked, untraceable.
And tucked beneath it all, like a secret: a flare gun.
Kieran stared at it for a moment too long.
In his first life, he'd fired one of these at the sky just before the fall of Eastwall. Not as a signal. As a funeral pyre.
He took the gear. Strapped it tight. Adjusted the vest. Felt the weight settle on him like an old friend climbing onto his back again.
This was good.
The body remembered.
But it wasn't enough.
He needed more.
Later, in the ruins of a shuttered subway line, he found the girl.
She was maybe ten. Thin. Filthy. Wrapped in a hoodie two sizes too big. Her eyes were glassy, red around the rims. Her hands trembled.
Next to her, a man lay in a heap.
Dead.
No blood. No wounds. Just… hollow. Like something had chewed out his soul and left the skin behind.
Kieran crouched beside the corpse.
The man's mouth was frozen in a silent scream. His pupils dilated. His fingernails cracked, bleeding.
This wasn't natural.
The girl didn't speak. Just watched him, too tired to cry, too afraid to blink.
Kieran studied the ground.
Dust. Scuff marks. A ring of disturbed gravel near the body's feet. A faint shimmer in the air.
He felt it then.
That electric taste in the back of the throat. Like licking copper. Like the seconds before a storm hits.
Residual aura.
Something had passed through here.
And it wasn't human.
Kieran turned to the girl. "What did you see?"
She didn't answer.
Didn't need to.
The way her shoulders hunched. The way her mouth opened and closed without sound. She'd seen it—whatever had come through.
A pre-Gate anomaly.
Impossible. And yet…
Kieran stood. Eyes scanning the tunnel's dark curve ahead.
"Come on," he said quietly.
The girl didn't move.
He offered a hand. "It's going to get worse before it gets better. But I can keep you alive."
She hesitated.
Then took it.
They walked in silence, their footsteps echoing through the tunnel.
And behind them, unseen, something watched from the cracks in the walls.
That night, Kieran sat on the roof of an abandoned clinic, staring at the city's bones. The girl slept beside him, curled beneath a scavenged blanket, clutching the flare gun like a teddy bear.
Kieran lit a cigarette with hands that didn't shake.
He was starting to feel it again.
That old rhythm.
That ancient hunger.
He wasn't ready yet. Not fully.
But he was close.
And when the Gates finally opened, when the sky split and the monsters came pouring through…
He'd be there.
Waiting.
With teeth and fire.