The Canvas is Bleeding
The air in the subway tunnel was a thick, humid paste of brake dust and despair. For Eliza "Ezzy" Reed, though, it smelled mostly of fading gold.
She leaned against a graffitied column on the D-train platform, her backpack—a graveyard of old sketches and half-empty charcoal tubes—slung low. She wasn't watching the tracks; she was watching the people. Not their faces, but their Auras.
Most people glowed in dull, safe tones: corporate beige, anxious gray, or a frantic, sputtering neon blue. But the old man across the platform, the one with the cracked leather briefcase and the weary tilt to his shoulders, was slowly leaking a rich, sunken gold. It was the color of his passion—forty years of teaching music, reduced now to a slow drain. Ezzy knew if she didn't interfere, he'd go home and decide he was finally too tired to touch his cello again.
She took a sharp breath, filtering the city's chaotic psychic noise through her mind. This was her secret, her curse: the ability to see the color of a soul's energy.
Control it, Ezzy. Small nudge.
She aimed her focus like a beam, not touching the man, but subtly weaving through the energy currents around him. She pulled a tiny wisp of the platform's anxious blue—a color that fed action—and wrapped it around the gold. It was a jolt, not a recharge. The man blinked, straightened his tie, and pulled out his phone, a sudden, brisk determination in his posture.
Good. He'd call his daughter, make plans, do something instead of fading.
She didn't steal or deplete; she just redirected. In a city this crowded, a little redirecting could save a life, or at least a career. She did it to earn a little cash, finding lost auras for superstitious clients, but mostly, she did it just to keep the city's heart beating.
Ezzy sighed, pulling back her focus. The effort left a familiar, thin line of ache behind her eyes. That's why she was working a late shift designing book covers—she needed coffee, rent money, and a two-day break from soul-juggling.
She headed for the stairs, the neon EXIT sign a sickly green above her. That's when she saw it.
It wasn't a person. It was a void.
Just past the turnstile, where the crowd thinned, was a woman who should have been radiating a blinding, furious magenta—the aura of a top-tier installation artist Ezzy recognized from the gallery circuit. But the magenta was gone. All that remained was a sickening, absolute blackness, like a fresh oil spill where a star used to be. The woman stood frozen, eyes wide and dull, clutching an empty, invisible space in front of her chest.
Gone. All the passion... taken.
Ezzy's entire system seized up. She'd seen auras fade before, but never plucked. This was not a natural decline; this was theft. The level of power needed to do this was immense, predatory.
A tremor of pure, panicked dread shot through her, and her eyes shot up the stairwell.
A man was climbing.
He was all sharp edges and expensive shadows: a black cashmere coat that looked painted onto him, high cheekbones, and hair so dark it seemed to absorb the sickly station light. He wasn't overtly looking at the victim, but his mouth was curved in a slow, deep satisfaction.
And his aura?
There was none. He was the only true void Ezzy had ever seen. Just a hollow of solidified night. Except... not quite.
Trailing behind him, like the scent of ozone after a lightning strike, was a fine, smoky filament of that beautiful, stolen magenta. It was a residue of raw power, and it was retreating back into the blackness of his coat, back into him.
Caspian Vance. The stories—the hushed whispers on the dark net—called him the Aura Thief. Ezzy had always thought he was a myth.
He reached the top step, his eyes—a startling, glacial gray—flicked down, catching her gaze. There was no surprise in his expression, only a chilling, ancient recognition, as if he knew exactly what she was and what she could see.
The silent, primal message was clear: He saw her seeing him.
Ezzy didn't think. She dropped her backpack, felt the city's chaotic energy surge under her skin, and sprinted toward the stairs. She was reckless, terrified, and utterly furious. She wasn't going to stop him from escaping; she was going to stop him from ever doing this again.
Not in my city.
He smiled then—a flash of perfect, dangerous beauty—and the blackness around him seemed to deepen, pulling at the light. He turned to leave the subway, stepping out into the neon buzz of the evening street.
Ezzy launched herself after him, reaching out with her mind, ready to fling a chaotic blast of subway-anxiety-blue at his feet, hoping to trip him up, to slow him down.
But Caspian was faster. He didn't just dodge the mental attack; he swallowed it whole.
The air between them cracked, not with noise, but with an agonizing, internal pressure. Ezzy's power, instead of deflecting, was yanked forward, tearing a scream from her throat. Her essence, her light, shot out, a blinding silver thread connecting her to the void of the Aura Thief.
And then, in a terrifying, shattering moment of psychic contact, she felt his cold, consuming hunger—a vast, echoing emptiness that terrified her to her core—but also, a pinprick of something else. Something like surprise.
Ezzy instinctively fought back with everything she had, desperately trying to yank her power free. But instead of severing the connection, the sheer force of her terrified life-energy overloaded his defenses.
The shadow recoiled. It didn't let go of her light; instead, a sliver of his own solidified shadow-essence—a piece of the void itself, colder and heavier than lead—snapped off and plunged, like a shard of ice, directly into the core of Ezzy's being.
The silver thread of her life-force instantly coiled around the black shard, sealing it inside her.
Ezzy stumbled back, gasping, crashing against the metal railing. The pain was blinding, physical, and internal—a sensation of being simultaneously frozen solid and set on fire.
Caspian, who had been untouchable moments before, staggered, his face contorted in a brief, agonizing grimace. He clutched his side, his glacial eyes wide with a shock that eclipsed even his desire to escape.
He looked at Ezzy, who was doubled over, trembling, a dark, oily stain spreading, unseen, across the edges of her silver aura.
Heal. His voice hit her mind, not through his mouth, but a raw, frantic command through their newly, terrifyingly connected minds. You... You took a piece of me.
Ezzy looked up, her vision blurring. She could feel his power thrumming inside her, a dark passenger, and suddenly, the frantic, consuming hunger he felt for the world was overlaid with her own terrified heartbeat.
The Aura Thief, the myth, the predator, was staring at her, breathing hard, and for the first time in his ancient life, he looked vulnerable.
He turned and bolted, melting into the chaos of the New York street. He hadn't just lost a piece of himself; he had, in a terrifying, split second, bound his essence to her light.
Ezzy pushed herself up, staggering. Her own aura was now tainted, stronger, darker. She felt the chill of the void and the strange, desperate pull of the thief's mind.
She was no longer just the aura-juggler. She was carrying a ticking time bomb.
She had taken a piece of the darkness, and now the darkness had a map to her soul. She could feel his hunger, and he could feel her fear. The hunt was on.