"You are out during curfew," the woman said. Her eyes swept over me in one clean pass. Coat. Boots. Bare wrists. "Explain."
"I didn't know there was one."
Her eyes narrowed. The man's expression went flat.
"You didn't know," he repeated, voice rough. "Where is your band?"
He flicked his chin at my wrist.
I looked down.
Bare skin. Red from the cold. No ring. No device. Nothing.
"I don't have one." My voice trailed off.
His gaze didn't move for a beat.
"On you," he asked, "or at all."
I swallowed, "I don't know. Must've lost it or something."
The woman exhaled slowly through her nose. "Still, being outside during a curfew. In only those clothes? Are you planning to freeze to death?"
"Concussed?" the man said, eyeing my forehead "Or stupid. Or possessed."
My fingers twitched inside my pockets.
"Name," the woman said.
"Noah," I answered. "Noah Reed."
"Where do you live?" the man asked.
I shook my head.
"What?" The man raised a brow.
Silence stretched.
Half my mind scrabbled for a lie. The other half had nothing usable. No map. No context. No safe answer.
"I woke up at a bus stop," I said finally. "Here. I don't remember anything before that."
The woman's stare sharpened. "Nothing."
"Nothing," I repeated.
The man watched my face like he was waiting for the crack. "No home. No band. No memory. Real kicker."
I opened my mouth, then snapped it shut again. Anything I added would only get worse.
The sirens shifted pitch, higher now. More urgent.
The man stepped closer until he was an arm's length away.
"Look at me," he said.
Something in his tone went past my thoughts and straight into my body. My neck stiffened. My eyes locked onto his.
For a second, everything else dimmed.
Insight moved.
The world darkened a fraction, and faint text tried to take shape near his outline.
-
[TARGET ANALYSIS]
Subject: Human (Awakened)
Skill: Arcane Sight (Active)
-
'Arcane Sight'
Was he really trying to check if I was possessed?
The rest blurred into static.
Pain speared through my temples, sharp and sudden. The text jittered and snapped out of existence.
I hissed, hand flying to my head.
The woman's hand dropped to the weapon at her hip.
"What was that?" she asked, and her calm changed into something colder.
"Kid's clean. No signs of manipulation or magic," the man hummed in thought. "His brain's just reacting to my Arcane sight. He's also awakened."
The man clicked his tongue, irritation bleeding through. "Fantastic timing. Get assigned to patrol in this shithole, find a random awakened kid with amnesia. It's looking good, looking real good."
He sighed.
"Viktor." The woman frowned at him.
Before either of them could say more, the world changed.
Light hit like a fist at the far end of the street.
Not a clean flash. Not bright and white.
It was a thick, ugly colour, somewhere between red and violet. It bent the air around it, made the edges of buildings wobble. Heat rolled after it in a hard wave.
The shock arrived last.
It slammed into us with a sound like the sky being punched.
Snow, street, windows, everything warped for a heartbeat. Then the world picked me up and threw me.
Air left my lungs. My back hit the ground hard enough that I felt the stone tiles through my coat. White crowded my vision. A line of fire ran along my left side, and my ribs screamed.
I tried to inhale, but I got only a ragged half-breath.
Glass shattered somewhere. Metal shrieked. Something heavy crashed down the street.
The sirens didn't stop.
I lay there stunned, heartbeat hammering against my bruised ribs.
Something tugged at my attention.
-
[CONDITION]
Overall: 59%
Heavy bruising along the left torso
Possible hairline fracture (7th rib)
Breath capacity reduced (moderate)
Mobility: functional, impaired
Recommendation: reduce exertion, avoid further impact
-
The text was so calm it felt insulting.
I coughed, and it came out harshly. My side flared.
The two Awakened were still standing.
They'd staggered, sure. The woman's coat snapped around her legs. The man had planted a hand against the wall to steady himself. That was it.
They took the same shock that tossed me like trash and absorbed it like weather.
"Breach," the woman said, voice tight now. "Sector C."
"Out of Cordon Range," Viktor replied, eyes fixed on the pulsing glow around the corner. "That blast should not have reached this far."
A new sound cut through the sirens.
A high, thin scream that didn't belong in any human throat.
I had recognised it too. A demon was on the loose.
The woman glanced at me, then at the man. The decision on her face was obvious. Liability or duty.
He grimaced. "Sylvie, we don't have time to drag him to a shelter."
"I can move," I said. It came out as barely a wheeze.
He crouched beside me in one smooth motion.
"Can you stand?" he asked urgently.
I nodded. It hurt. I nodded anyway.
"Good," he looked back, "Give him a stim."
The woman was already digging into a pouch. She pulled out a slim metallic cylinder, palm-length, faint green light pulsing at its core.
"Hold still," she said.
"What is"
The needle punched through my coat and into my arm before I finished the question.
Cold liquid flooded under my skin, then flipped into spreading heat that sank into muscle and wrapped around my ribcage like a brace.
Insight updated as if it had been waiting.
[CONDITION]
Overall: 82%
Bruising along the left torso (moderate)
No fracture detected
Pain signals dampened
Mobility: acceptable
My breath eased. The knife edge in my side dulled into a heavy ache.
I looked up at her. "Thank you."
The man stood and looked toward the glow again.
"If you want to live," he said, turning back to me, "get inside something with thick walls. No glass if you can help it. Stairwells and basements are good. Stay off main roads. Do not go towards that light. Do not assume we can come back."
That was all I heard.
Then they moved.
One moment, they were in front of me. Next, they were motion, coats snapping, boots kicking up snow. Flitting away in a blur like it was nothing, heading straight into the pulsing light and the screaming.
For a second, I just stood there, breathing, listening to distant destruction chew on the city.
Then I forced my legs to work.
Even with the stim, my side protested. My knees wobbled as I started walking away from the glow.
Insight flickered at the edge of my vision.
[Note: exertion will aggravate bruising.]
"Noted," I muttered, and it came out rough.
The street ahead was littered with glittering glass and thin drifts of snow. A car alarm tried to start somewhere, then died.
Each step sent a dull pulse through my ribs.
It made one truth brutally simple.
I was fragile. Far more fragile than I had ever been.
For a moment, I had forgotten that this wasn't high immersion. This was real. The pain, the blood, the demons. Everything was real.
I kept moving, hunting for shelter.
Most buildings were sealed tight. Shutters down. Doors locked. Small red sigils painted near thresholds. The ones with broken fronts worried me more. If people had fled, something else could have decided the place was open.
A squat office building sat on the corner, entrance half gutted. One glass panel shattered entirely. The other spiderwebbed with cracks. The door hung crooked, one hinge gone, the other barely holding.
Inside, a lobby. Reception desk. Chairs. A corridor leading deeper. Emergency strips glowed faintly along the floor.
Insight whispered again.
[LOCAL STRUCTURE]
Status: damaged, stable
Immediate threats detected: none
Shelter suitability: acceptable (short term)
Good enough.
I squeezed through the broken doorway, boots crunching over glass. The sound felt too loud in the sudden quiet.
The air inside was still cold, but it didn't move as much. The wind stayed outside.
Three steps into the lobby, my legs gave up pretending.
My back hit the wall. I slid down until I was sitting on tile, one hand braced beside me, the other pressed to my ribs.
Breath sawed in and out, fast and shallow at first, then slowly easing as the stim did its work.
Dust drifted in the emergency light. The reception desk lay on its side. Papers scattered. A coffee mug had been left behind, stain dried on the floor like someone had run out mid-sip.
The building creaked as another distant impact rolled through the city. Fine powder sifted down from somewhere overhead.
I stared at my hands.
They were shaking.
Not from the cold this time.
Everything felt too heavy. Too solid. Too permanent.
I closed my eyes, not to hope for waking up, but to make the light less harsh.
My hands were soft. My lungs weren't trained for air that bit. My body had been thrown by collateral like it was nothing. The only thing I had right now was my mind.
Tactical sense. Theory.
Knowledge without muscle.
"Can I survive?" I asked myself, voice low.
Whatever predicament I was in was beyond me. Could I really survive? One second, I was confident; the other, I was almost half dead. It was like the world had heard me and decided to crush my hopes.
I pressed my head back against the wall and exhaled.
"Tonight," I told myself, "at least tonight, I won't die."
It was painfully obvious that this world didn't care what I used to be.
It only cared about what I could do next.