WebNovels

Chapter 16 - Minutes and Miles

(Split POV: Director / Asta)

Director

He didn't watch the door; he watched the room remember the door had been there. Trauma leaves dents in more than metal. The lanterns guttered. The chains wrung themselves out and lay limp, sulking like snakes denied a throat.

Knife-lover leaned against the dented column, pinching her nose. Blood down her wrist, grin smaller but true. "He's cocky. I like him."

"You like falling off buildings," he said mildly.

"Only if there's another building," she said, and grinned wider when it hurt.

The suits hovered near the broken lanterns like widowers afraid to touch clocks. One tried to shut the case as if paperwork could be repaired by closing the lid harder. The Director let them.

He retrieved the first chain with bare hands. It bit nothing. He whispered a name to it that wasn't his and it curled, docile, around his wrist, then vanished into his sleeve like a well-trained rumor.

"Asset lost," a suit managed.

"Assets move," the Director said. He glanced at the ceiling. The suppressants rumbled awake late, coughing foam that had nowhere to be useful. City contracts were always a comedy of budget lines.

He turned to Knife-lover. "Send the notice. Not the public thing. The other thing."

Her eyes flared with appetite even as she wiped more blood on her sleeve. "Bounty or bell?"

"Bell," he said. "Let the other houses know a Hollow walked out of a double with his personality intact." He considered the broken lanterns. "And tell the Sun people we'll need a loan again. They'll pretend to be offended; let them."

She tilted her head. "You're really gonna keep him in the city? Feels messy."

He smiled, which on him was like weather pretending to be a person. "Mess makes maps."

Her grin matched it, cheaper but sincere. "On it." She pushed off the column, rolled her jaw until it clicked right, and limped toward the side door like the limp was a style choice.

The suits started to exhale. The Director lifted a finger. They went quiet like children who heard a floorboard creak.

He took out his phone. No contacts list, just the same two numbers everyone thinks they don't have. The line trilled once, then wore a voice.

"Yes," the voice said. Genderless, exhausted, bored by the end of empires.

"We've located an Heir candidate," the Director said. "Shadow type. Compatible with two keys to date. Hostile; salvageable."

"Name," the voice said.

"Asta," he said, letting it sit on his tongue like a test. "Hollow by file. Not for long."

"Your vessel is stable?"

He glanced at the stain the lantern made on his skin and the way his shadow craned toward it, curious and loyal. "Stable enough."

"Do not allow him to merge with Competing Authority," the voice said. "We will release the lighthouse."

He breathed out through his nose, pleased. "Good."

The line died. No goodbye. The Director looked around the hangar, the dented column, the two dead lanterns, the suit's trembling with the relief of not being named.

"Pull all street cameras in a two-mile radius," he said. "Every private feed with a view of rain. Run it through the sieve."

"The… essence filter?" a suit said, hating the words he knew.

"Yes," the Director said, forgiving the flinch by refusing to notice. "They'll leave traces. Everyone thinks they don't." He looked at the dent in the column again and smiled a small, private thing, more wonder than threat. "He ate daylight. Who taught him to be rude?"

No one answered. He didn't need them to. He put his hands in his pockets like a man with nothing sharp there and walked out, already writing a map only he wanted to be true.

Asta

They moved through the bone corridors under the city, letting distance convert adrenaline to decision. Pipes sang with old water. Rats worked night shift. Far ahead, a maintenance light blinked a slow pulse like a heartbeat that had misplaced the rest of the body.

"Stop," Lysandra said once, and he did. Two breaths later a drone whispered by above the grate, silent the way money teaches machines to be. Blue cone swept the wet. Kept going.

"Lighthouse," Asta said, because the word had arrived in his skull on a breath that tasted like the Director's smile.

"Essence array," she said. "They'll try to follow what the Rift scraped off us."

"Can it find us here?"

"Depends," she said. "On how arrogant the operator is."

"And you?"

She smiled without it reaching the eyes. "I'm very arrogant."

Asta's ribs hurt in a clean line. The chain taste was clearing. The day's weight wasn't. He considered stopping. He didn't. The hound scouted ahead; the Knight carried silence like furniture.

"You called me Heir," he said into the tunnel. "The thing in the Rift called me that, too. The Warden."

Lysandra's breath turned careful. "I told myself I wouldn't tell you this early."

"And?"

"I lie to myself for sport," she said. She slowed just enough to point at a rusted hatch. "There. Stairs up. Not street, service. Good."

They climbed. Doors; a machine room that smelled like power forgotten; a ladder behind it with dust that had judged no one. She spoke as they moved, short, clipped, like filing blades.

"There are Sovereigns. Call them kings if you need a simpler story. They own Kinds: shadow, light, hunger, names. Their power has rules and appetites. When Rifts open, those appetites leak. Sometimes they choose a-" She searched the ceiling for a better word and settled for distaste. "—proxy."

"An Heir."

"Sometimes," she said. "Most Heirs break. The rest kneel. Very few steal." She glanced back. "Guess which you are."

"The third," he said.

"Don't get proud," she said. "It's a death sentence drawn with nicer ink."

"Who were you to them?" he asked.

"A chain," she said, too fast, then corrected like a fencer: "A guard." She pushed the hatch with her shoulder; it gave, offended. Dawn breath lifted from somewhere like a rumor. "Long time ago."

"What did you guard?"

She didn't look at him. "A door people kept calling a god."

Silence rode the ladder for a few rungs.

He said, "Why me?"

"Because you were empty," she said, and that was kinder than it sounded. "Hollow doesn't mean worthless. It means room."

They emerged into a forgotten sub-basement with lockers peeled open like fruit left in sun. A cracked vending machine held three bottles of blue sugar water that had expired when the city still believed in good news. He broke the glass with a whisper of shadow and stole two.

They drank sitting on the edge of a loading dock where rain fell in clean ropes. The sky was a bruise remembering how to be morning.

He watched water find its own map down the ramp. She watched him not watching her.

"You bit the chain," she said finally. Amusement there. A line of respect she didn't hand out for free.

"I ran out of doors to open politely," he said.

"That's the voice that builds empires or prisons," she said. "Often by accident."

He looked at the bottle, at the way the blue glow made the rain in it look like a different weather. "We can't run forever," he said.

"We can," she said. "But it's boring." She wiped rain out of her eyes with the back of her hand. "You need somewhere to stand that the Guild can't own."

"Suggestions?"

"Three," she said. "A ruined church under the highway owned by a Sun cult that hates everyone equally. A decommissioned substation where light goes to retire. Or a dead mall that rats have given political representation."

He snorted. "Which is closest?"

"Mall," she said. "It has a food court."

He stood. "Then we rule the rats."

She slid off the dock. Pain pulled her mouth sideways; pride straightened it again. "Try not to call yourself 'Lord' in front of them. Rats are sensitive to titles."

"Noted."

They started walking again. He felt the city wake under their feet, the first buses trying to be reliable, pastry ovens yes-and-ing dawn, a man on a bike whose jacket remembered beer. Somewhere the Director moved pieces across a board no one else could see. Somewhere a lighthouse spun slow, patient, measuring the rain.

The System flickered once like a tired eye.

[Commandment Three: Devour to Grow]

[Passive: Daylight Trace - Integrated]

[New Option: Feast Sites - unstable essence zones suitable for safe Devour.]

[Nearest: Substation E-19 (0.9 mi), Dead Mall "Harborwalk" (1.2 mi), Underway Chapel (2.6 mi).]

Lysandra looked up as if she heard it too. "Substation," she said. "Rat politics later."

He nodded.

They cut through a lot where weeds won money back from asphalt, crossed under a stack of roads that argued with each other, and slid into a neighborhood that had been redrawn by neglect. He felt watched. Not by lenses. By expectation.

"Do you ever miss quiet?" he asked, not sure who he meant.

"Quiet is a kind way to describe ignorance," she said. "I miss simpler lies."

A car drifted past with the music low like a secret between bad friends. The driver glanced at them once and decided to have a better day somewhere else. Good decision.

At the corner, a child's chalk drawings melted under rain into clean hieroglyphs: suns with too many rays, a person holding hands with a dog that was also a cloud. Lysandra slowed, smiled once, a small, private tilt, and kept moving. He didn't ask. Some things are not for devouring.

Substation E-19 sat behind a chain-link fence that had learned to lean. Brick building with windows a smart person had boarded, transformers in a yard that smelled like a coin and a storm. A red sign: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY in a font that always lies.

He palmed the lock. Shadow made bureaucracy forget procedure. The gate sighed them in.

Inside, the air tasted like power that used to get up early. Cables hung like heavy vines. A panel on the main switchgear wore a sticker that said INSPECTED in a year nobody liked to remember.

Lysandra pressed a hand to the nearest transformer shell. "Pulse," she said. "Old. Good."

The System agreed.

[Feast Site: Acceptable]

[Caution: Devour here will leave signatures.]

[Tip: Partition feeding to avoid overload.]

He crouched on the concrete and opened his palm. The Warden fragment rolled under his skin like a bad coin. The Knight stood over him, making the room feel like choices had consequences and swords.

Lysandra leaned against a panel and watched the door and him at the same time. "Small bites," she said. "You are not a wolf yet. You are a boy who steals from wolves and hasn't been caught."

He smiled. "Encouraging."

"It's that or prayer," she said. "You don't look like you pray."

He touched his palm to the concrete and listened for the current that wasn't there anymore. Found the echo. Found where light had lived and gone and forgotten to lock the door. He inhaled.

[Devour: Initiate]

Heat poured through his arm without temperature. His teeth ached. His eyes watered. The chain taste finally left, replaced by the aftertaste of copper pennies stuck to a tongue in winter, a child's dare, grown up wrong.

[Gain: +Essence 12%]

[Shadow Stability: Improved]

[Daylight Trace: Harmonised]

[Erosion: 3% - watch]

He exhaled. The world adjusted one notch closer to bearable.

"Enough," Lysandra said. "You always want one more bite. That's how they teach you to kneel."

He pulled his hand back. It shook less than before. The Knight's eyes dimmed to something like approval.

"Director will find us," he said.

"Yes," she said. "But we won't be the us he knows how to name."

He stood. "We need a guild. Or a guild needs us."

She tilted her head. "You want allies or hostages?"

"Both," he said.

"That's the voice again," she said. "Prisons or empires."

The substation door hummed a new note. Asta lifted his head like a dog hearing good news badly told.

"Drones?" he asked.

"Worse," she said. "Neighbors."

A figure stood in the doorway, hood up, rain dripping, a scarf hiding most of a face that wasn't shy so much as fond of secrets. The figure raised both hands slow, palms "I am an idea you choose not to arrest."

"Don't shoot," the stranger said. Voice young, cocky, tired. "I brought coffee."

Asta's shadow rose a little out of habit. Lysandra's fingers flexed light that didn't show. The stranger kicked a tote inside and two paper cups slid across concrete and stopped obediently at Asta's toes.

"Name," Asta said, not lowering anything.

"Miri," the stranger said. "I run errands for people who hate the Guild and love gossip." The eyes above the scarf crinkled. "And you two just put on the best show in town."

A phone buzzed twice in the stranger's pocket. The scarfed head tilted, listening to a message Asta couldn't hear.

"Also," Miri added, cheerful like a weather report, "congrats. There's a bounty on the Hollow who bit daylight. The bell's out. Every knife with ambition is awake."

Lysandra finished her coffee in one drink she hadn't taken yet. "Fun."

"How much?" Asta asked.

Miri's grin sharpened. "Enough to make even friends stupid."

The rain sounded like applause that meant nothing. The System chimed once, as if it had enjoyed the joke and decided to be crueler.

[New Objective: Survive the Bell]

[Optional: Recruit or Ruin Local Factions]

Asta picked up the coffee. It was hot, bitter, real. He drank and watched the stranger who called themselves Miri watch him back, weighing dangers, measuring fun.

"Welcome to the city under the city," Miri said, and their eyes slid to Lysandra and then back like a dare. "Want a tour or a war?"

Asta smiled around coffee that didn't deserve his teeth. "Both," he said.

Outside, dawn pushed its face against clouds and asked to be let in. The Director's lighthouse spun slow, patient, counting the miles between minutes.

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