Kael woke to the sound of nothing.
Not the hushed pause before dawn in a city that never sleeps — not the steady thrum of power plants, not the squeal of a vendor's cart, not the gulls bickering over the harbor.
Nothing.
It was the kind of silence that had texture — thick, damp, clinging like a wet cloth pressed to his ears. He lay still, his chest rising in shallow pulls, unwilling to disturb the suffocating calm.
The residue of the Shrine still clung to him: smoke pooled in his lungs, the metallic bite of old blood lingering on his tongue, a voice he could still feel curled in the hollow of his skull. Not a clear memory, not even words — more like the phantom weight of a hand that had pressed too long into his skin and left its heat behind.
He breathed, slow, and tried to convince himself this was the safehouse. That it was over. That they had stepped out.
When he pushed himself up, the room appeared exactly as it had when he'd fallen into that half-sleep: the battered table, the stack of maps, the coat slung over the back of a chair. But something in the air had warped. The corners seemed too deep, shadows pooling there like they refused to simply be absence. Dust motes floated in the lamplight but didn't fall. They just… hung, caught in an invisible pause.
"Dario?"
His voice slid across the room and was swallowed whole. No echo.
He waited, listening for the familiar sound of a footstep, a shift of weight, the faint scrape of a weapon being set down. Nothing came.
A ripple of unease moved through him. He went to the window. The glass bowed slightly inward, like old glass warped by time, distorting the world beyond.
And the world beyond was wrong.
The street across from the safehouse looked like a stage backdrop — flat, painted brickwork, shadows too neat and unmoving. Windows were black squares, no depth, no reflection. In the center of the cobbled street stood a wooden cart, motionless, its wheels sunk deep into the stones as if they had melted around it.
Kael's stomach tightened. He pushed the sash up. It didn't screech like wood on wood — it slid with a wet, viscous sound, like a hand moving through shallow water.
The air that drifted in tasted faintly of salt.
Sea on a windless morning. Salt from cages. The old ocean.
They hadn't left the Shrine.The Shrine had followed them.
He unlatched the door. The hinges groaned low and wet, the sound finding a place under his skin.
Outside, the sky was a color he didn't have a name for — pale, bruised, holding a light that wasn't sunlight. Each cobblestone underfoot gave slightly, like he was walking on thick fabric.
A shop window drew his gaze. The glass was old water, wavering. His reflection met him — only, it wasn't quite right. The figure in the glass stood straighter, shoulders squared, eyes a shade paler than his own. Its movements lagged a fraction of a second, like they were considering him before deciding to follow. Then its mouth curved, slow and deliberate.
Still mine.
Kael's collarbone prickled sharply. The sigil carved into it — Mother Elizia's binding — had always been his anchor. Now it burned steady, as if resisting something pushing against it from the other side.
He started walking.
The streets didn't behave.
A left turn returned him to the cart. A right bled into an alley that narrowed unnaturally, walls closing in until his shoulders brushed rough stone. Streetlamps bent toward him like thirsty flowers.
Shadows gathered under doorframes, thick and oily. Faces sometimes appeared behind curtains — pale eyes, the shape of a mouth — and vanished when he tried to focus on them. A child's silhouette drifted across a balcony before dissolving into the flat paint of the building's façade.
The city was watching him.
"Kael."
The voice was soft, fabric on skin, close enough that it brushed his ear.
He spun.
Dario stood at the mouth of a narrow side street, blade low but ready. Relief hit him with enough force to steal his breath. The sight of him — the slope of his shoulders, the scar at his temple, the bruise blooming along his collarbone — was like a rush of air after being underwater too long.
"You're here," Dario said, voice low, steady.
Kael moved toward him. Dario smelled of smoke, sweat, and something darker that had settled deep, something that didn't wash away. His right hand trembled faintly — unusual for Dario, whose grip had always been the surer of the two. Kael wanted to take it, to still it. But before he could, Dario's hand shot out and caught his wrist.
"You're bleeding," Dario murmured, his thumb brushing the raw skin over Kael's knuckles.
"It's nothing," Kael lied.
"Everything here is something."
The alley barely fit them both. Dario's breath was warm against Kael's skin, his presence a steady, grounding weight in the suffocating strangeness. Kael leaned his forehead to Dario's, letting the strange streets, the watching windows, fall away until there was only the two of them.
"This place wants you," Dario whispered.
"You think I can't feel it?"
Dario's hand lifted, cupping Kael's cheek. That touch carried a thousand small histories — steadying him after blackouts, taking the gun from his hand without a word, refusing to let him turn pain into a joke.
Kael kissed him.
It was deliberate, a decision carved in heat. Rough enough to be a challenge, soft enough to be a promise. Kael's fingers tangled in the hair at the back of Dario's neck; Dario's hands slid to Kael's hips and anchored him as though daring the city to try and pull him away.
The kiss broke when the city seemed to lean closer. The glass in the windows across the street expanded and contracted like lungs. Voices rose from the alleys, not speaking to them but about them, plucking memories and throwing them back in fragments.
"You left," one whispered.
Dario's lips brushed Kael's temple. "No running. Not this time."
Kael almost smiled. "Fine. But if something climbs out of the street, you're in front."
"Deal."
They moved on together.
The streets tilted subtly, drawing them forward. Lamplight bent lower, as if trying to catch their faces. A whisper brushed Kael's elbow — not Dario's hand — followed by more voices. His own voice, asking for forgiveness. Dario's voice, answering. Twining together until Kael couldn't separate which was real.
Then Dario was gone.
"Dario!"
A figure shaped like him waved from a doorway ahead, urgent. "Kael, quick — this way."
Another voice behind him said softly, "Don't go. Come to me."
Kael turned. Another Dario stood there, paler under the strange light, eyes set in a face that carried both hurt and warning.
"If you walk to him," this Dario said, "you leave me behind."
Two Darios. Two hands. Two voices.
The sigil at Kael's collarbone thrummed with heat, Elizia's bond working against a pressure it couldn't stop.
"Both of you can rot," Kael said.
He lunged — not to either of them, but toward the shadow between, the narrow strip where neither could fully touch him.
Hands closed on him from both sides.
Salt rushed into his mouth. The emptiness between them flexed, and he reached for it. The air split with a soundless snap.
Both shapes collapsed into one man — one body, one face — and Dario's hand was on his chest, his voice raw.
"Don't you dare."
Kael gave a short, shocked laugh. "You're here."
"You think I didn't hunt the whole city for you?" Dario pulled him in and kissed him — hard, hungry, like men trying to keep each other alive through the same breath.
Kael's fingers traced the familiar lines of Dario's back, the map he'd known since they were boys. Dario's hands slid under Kael's shirt, pressing against the warm skin over his ribs as if counting each one to make sure they were still there.
When they finally broke apart, Kael's voice was quiet. "Why did you come after me?"
"Because I'd rather be broken than let the city have you."
Something in Kael's chest cracked, letting in air he hadn't realized he'd been starving for. He'd given his attention to the wrong person before; the city liked knives like that.
"I'm tired," he admitted.
"Then stay. Let me carry you when you can't."
They slept pressed together in the small room, the city's hum just outside the walls.
When Kael woke, the space beside him was cold.
The cart in the street was overturned now, spilling a black pool across the cobbles. A bead of seawater slid over his collarbone, dripping across the sigil.
"You sleep like someone who thinks they've won," a voice said from the doorway.
A figure stepped in — Dario's shape, perfect down to the scar at his temple.
"Come with me. I found a way out."
Behind Kael, the real Dario's voice: "Don't go."
The false one smiled.
"Which one do you trust?" it asked.
Two voices. Two hands. Both feeling like home.
Kael reached. His fingers brushed both — real and false — and the world lurched like a ship striking rock.
Outside, the painted city smiled.