The sound woke her before the dawn did — a hum so low and constant it seemed to come from beneath her skin rather than the room around her. Arielle's eyes shot open to the faint glow bleeding into the shadows of her bedroom.
She sat up slowly. The threads.
Where they usually floated like lazy motes of dust, half-faded and ignorable, tonight they glowed as though they were alive, pulsing softly in the dim light. Every single one curved toward her, bending and quivering in unison.
Her breath quickened. "What… the hell…"
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, her bare feet brushing the cool hardwood floor. As she stood, the hum inside her chest intensified — not painful, but heavy, like her ribs were carrying a secret weight. She raised a hand experimentally, and the nearest thread brightened, twisting slightly as though reaching for her.
They were responding. To her.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand, startling her into the kind of sharp inhale that hurt. She snatched it up. A message from Selene glowed across the cracked screen:
Meet me. Now. Don't touch the threads.
No context, no location, just the implicit assumption she'd know where to find them.
Arielle grabbed her camera — not because she planned to use it, but because the familiar weight steadied her hands — and pulled her jacket over her shoulders. Outside, the streets were quieter than usual. Pride banners still hung from streetlamps, fluttering faintly in a weak dawn breeze, their once-vivid colors muted by the heavy overcast sky.
But the hum followed her. Worse, so did the threads.
Wherever she walked, they bent toward her path, glowing faintly, converging like she was some kind of anchor. People she passed didn't notice, smiling sleepily on their morning commutes, earbuds in, coffees in hand. Not one of them glanced at the luminous cords twisting through the air, inches from their faces.
By the time she reached the alley behind the Velvet Lantern — one of Starlight City's oldest nightclubs, its sign still flickering in last night's neon — her skin tingled like static, every hair on her arms standing on end.
Selene was waiting.
They stood in the shadows, their coat drawn tight, the silver needle in hand. Its faint pulse matched the hum vibrating in Arielle's chest. Above them, the skyline glowed faintly as the massive black tether stretched farther than Arielle had ever seen, as if the thing inside it had been feeding, growing stronger.
Selene didn't turn, didn't even greet her. They simply said, low and sharp, "It's feeding faster. And now… it knows you can see it."
Before Arielle could form a single word, every thread around them went taut, yanked tight like a thousand invisible wires. The glow brightened until it burned white, and the hum inside Arielle's chest spiked into something almost painful.
Then, for the first time, the tether twitched. And something inside it turned to face them.