The first sign that something is wrong is the silence.
Rain still falls outside the fractured walls of the tower, but the sound no longer reaches me. The steady rhythm I've grown used to—the city's constant heartbeat—has been severed, as if someone turned down the volume on reality itself.
I flex my fingers.
Light ripples beneath my skin, faint and involuntary, tracing veins that weren't visible before. It fades quickly, but not before the man notices.
"You're leaking," he says.
"That's comforting," I mutter.
He doesn't smile. "It means the boundary between you and EG is thinning."
I swallow. "So I'm becoming a beacon."
"Yes."
The tower reacts before either of us can move.
A sharp vibration tears through the stone, concentrated and violent, nothing like the deep hum from before. This is not recognition.
This is intrusion.
Cracks race up the walls, converging toward a single point above us. The air compresses, heavy enough to make breathing a conscious effort.
Then the pressure snaps.
Something steps into the chamber.
It does not use the door.
It arrives by subtraction—space folding inward, light collapsing into absence. Where it stands, the tower's surface seems… unfinished, as though reality failed to finish rendering it.
The man moves instantly, positioning himself in front of me.
"Stay behind me," he says.
I don't.
The thing straightens slowly, unfolding into a tall, humanoid shape draped in shifting shadow. No face. No eyes. Yet I feel its attention like a hand wrapped around my throat.
"What is that?" I whisper.
His voice is tight. "A Collector."
The word lands with weight.
"It tracks anomalies," he continues. "Events that shouldn't exist. People who disturb equilibrium."
People like me.
The Collector tilts its head.
When it speaks, the sound is wrong—layered, fractured, as though multiple voices are speaking slightly out of sync.
"Designation confirmed."
My skin prickles. "Confirmed what?"
"Anchor," it replies.
The pearl reacts violently, flaring bright enough to cast hard shadows across the chamber. Pain blooms across my chest, spreading outward like fire under ice.
"Stop it!" I gasp, clutching at it.
The Collector turns fully toward me.
"Containment required," it says. "Extraction preferred."
The man draws something from his coat—thin, metallic, etched with symbols that hurt to look at directly.
"You can't take her," he says evenly.
The Collector's head tilts again. "You are obsolete."
He doesn't argue.
He throws the device.
Light detonates midair, slamming into the Collector and warping its form, forcing it back a step. The tower roars in response—an angry, grinding sound, stone protesting stone.
"Move!" he shouts.
I hesitate for half a second too long.
The Collector reaches out.
Its hand passes through the air like smoke, but when it touches my arm, pain explodes—sharp, absolute, stripping thought down to instinct. Images flood my vision: locked chambers, endless shelves, anchors suspended in silence.
Stored.
Catalogued.
Forgotten.
I scream.
The pearl burns white-hot, and something inside me snaps.
Not breaks.
Aligns.
The pain vanishes.
I meet the Collector's faceless gaze, and for the first time, I do not feel small.
"No," I say.
The word is simple.
Final.
Light surges from my chest, not outward, but inward—folding, compressing, shaping itself around the space the Collector occupies. The tower responds instantly, symbols igniting, channels opening.
The Collector recoils.
"Unauthorized authority detected," it says. "Escalation—"
It doesn't finish.
The light slams it backward, tearing a rent in the air as it is forced out of the chamber the same way it entered—by subtraction.
Silence crashes down.
I stagger, the aftershock leaving my limbs weak. The light beneath my skin fades, leaving behind a deep, bone-weary ache.
The man grabs my shoulders, steadying me. His eyes search my face, sharp and intent.
"That," he says quietly, "should not have been possible."
I manage a shaky laugh. "You keep saying things like that."
He doesn't return it.
"Now they know you can fight back," he continues. "Which means they won't send Collectors anymore."
My stomach drops. "What will they send?"
He looks toward the place where the air still hasn't quite healed.
"Something that remembers you."
The tower hums again.
Low.
Uneasy.
And deep beneath the stone, something ancient shifts—aware that the hunt has truly begun.