Ace woke up with the vague, uncomfortable awareness that something was wrong.
The wrongness wasn't a single alarm. It was a chorus of small, discordant pains tuning up in the dark. His body felt heavy—not the good, leaden weight of deep sleep, but the dense, granular ache of a system pushed past its limits and dumped back into its chassis. It was the specific exhaustion of a hunter: muscles that had screamed to hold a relic steady now throbbed with a dull, spent fury. Each shallow breath scraped against the cage of his ribs, a rasping reminder of impact. The air in his room was still and close, but cutting through it was the faint, stubborn perfume of the hunt—iron, cold smoke, and the damp, fungal scent of deep woods that refused to be aired out. It mixed unpleasantly with the salt of dried sweat, writing a biography of violence on his skin.
He blinked.
Once.
Twice.
The ceiling above him stared back, a blank expanse of off-white that seemed both too close and infinitely far. It looked unfamiliar, as if he'd woken in a stranger's skin, in a room that merely resembled his own. His eyes burned, dry and gritty. This wasn't the soft fade-in of rest; this was the jarring reboot of a system crash, where the body falls but the mind is still running, stuck on a loop of horned shadows and gurgling laughter.
Ace groaned, a sound that started as a thought and died in the thick air. He turned his head on the pillow. The movement sent a fresh, bright spark down the column of his neck, a fuse lit toward the deeper ache in his side.
That was when it hit him.
His shoes were still on. The heavy, scuffed boots were laced tight, caked with dried mud and leaf litter from the Briar Hill woods. One was propped awkwardly against the other. He hadn't just fallen asleep; he'd abandoned consciousness fully dressed, fully armed, like a soldier who'd collapsed at his post. The normal ritual of untying them, of shedding the day, had been beyond him. They were a anchor to the night before.
"What the hell…" he muttered, his voice a rusted hinge. It wasn't just a question about the shoes. It was about the weight in his bones, the metallic taste in his mouth, the entire suspended, wrong reality of the morning.
He pushed himself upright, a tactical maneuver that required bracing his core, engaging muscles that protested with fiery complaints. He regretted it instantly. A hot, sharp line of fire drew itself across his left side, centered on the deep, throbbing ache beneath the bandage Chole had applied with such care. His ribs issued a unanimous, creaking verdict. Ace clenched his jaw until the tendons stood out, and forced the pain down into a manageable box in his mind. Not broken. Not bleeding. Manageable. He'd catalogued worse. But this was a presence—a persistent, whispering tenant in his body, paying its rent in pulses of heat and stiffness.
The goatman.
The psychic scream that had felt like ice in his veins.
The impact—the world tilting, the smell of wet earth and rotten leaves filling his nostrils as he'd skidded, the breath punched from his lungs.
He dragged a hand down his face, the skin under his eyes feeling paper-thin and fragile. He squinted at the clock on his bedside table, its red digital numbers burning two holes through the gloom.
9:34 A.M.
For a split second, his brain refused to process it. The numbers were just shapes, meaningless glyphs. Morning light, ordinary and cruel, striped the floor. Then, the context slammed home with the force of a missed step.
School. Routine. The Normal World. Its clockwork schedule, so brittle and absolute. A world of bells and attendance sheets that didn't care about monsters or bruised ribs.
"WHAT THE FUCK?"
Ace launched himself off the bed. The sudden verticality pulled a wave of dizziness behind his eyes. The room tilted, the walls swaying like ship bulkheads in a storm. He caught himself with a palm slapped against the cool plaster, his heart now jackhammering against his sore ribs—a useless, belated adrenaline dump. The crisis was already here; it had happened in his sleep, in the quiet hours when he was supposed to be safe.
"Shit—shit—shit—"
School started at 8:15. First period was History with Mr. Gable, who took roll with the grim fervor of a priest recording souls for the afterlife. Second period was Chemistry. He was supposed to have a quiz on ionic bonds, a concept that now felt as alien and irrelevant as astrology.
This wasn't "running late" late. This was "administrative intervention" late. This was the kind of lateness that left a paper trail, that required notes from parents who were out of town, that invited the slow, bureaucratic gaze of the Normal World—a gaze he could not afford.
The next minutes were a blur of frantic, doomed motion. Brushing his teeth was a savage, hurried attack, and he winced as the bristles stabbed a tender gum. He tugged on the first clean clothes he could grab—a grey t-shirt, jeans—only to freeze mid-pull, the shirt tented over his head.
The smell finally, fully caught up to him.
It rose from his own skin in a complex, offensive wave. He lowered his head, trapped in the cotton, and took a cautious sniff near his armpit.
Immediately regretted it.
"Jesus…" Ace gagged quietly, tearing the shirt the rest of the way on and turning his face away.
He didn't just smell like sweat. He smelled like the deep, damp dirt of the forest floor. Like dried blood, coppery and faint. Like the sharp, ozone-tinged residue of discharged enchanted rounds. And underneath it all, something else—something old and cold and wrong, a psychic musk that clung like the memory of a scream. It was the scent of the Hidden World, and it had followed him home, seeping from his pores.
Cologne. He needed to bury it. He needed the cheap, chemical flag of normalcy.
He reached for the shelf above his dresser, the line of cheap, half-used bottles—gifts from Christmases past, impulse buys from the mall, a sad arsenal of olfactory denial. He grabbed the first one, a blue bottle promising "Ocean Breeze," and gave it a decisive spray onto his neck.
Nothing. Not a scent, not even the feeling of moisture.
He frowned, shook the bottle. It gave a pathetic, hollow slosh. He sprayed again, a frantic puff of scentless alcohol.
Empty.
Methodically, with a sinking feeling that settled in his gut, he checked the others. One was utterly dry, a plastic monument to abandonment. Another released a faint, expired puff that smelled like chemical roses and regret. A third had separated into oily, useless layers.
Ace stared at the pathetic battalion of failed defenses. The silence in the room was accusatory. The monster was dead, but it had marked him in a way a shower couldn't scrub off. He let out a long, slow, defeated sigh that made his ribs twinge in protest.
"…of course."
He ran a hand through his messy black hair, which only stirred up more of the unwanted forest smell, and leaned heavily against the dresser. The exhaustion, held back by panic, came flooding back, a tide of lead filling his limbs. His ribs throbbed in time with his sluggish heartbeat.
I'm already screwed, he thought, the logic of surrender feeling heavy and final. The day is a write-off. The system has already flagged me. One day won't kill me.
He hoped. But in his world, hope was a flimsy shield against the consequences of the unseen.
The shower was a baptism in near-scalding water. He stood under the stream, head bowed, watching the dirt and grit swirl at his feet in a grey-brown vortex before disappearing down the drain. The heat loosened the clenched muscles in his shoulders but made the bruise on his side bloom into a hotter, more vivid ache. He changed into soft, forgiving clothes—a knitted green sweatshirt that smelled faintly of cedar from his closet, loose brown pants. He tossed the ruined clothes from the hunt into the laundry basket and stood there for a long moment, staring at them. The dark stain on the shirt wasn't just dirt; it was a map of where the Goatman's horn had grazed him, a testament written in fabric. They held no answers, only evidence.
He pulled his phone from the charger. The screen was a gateway to the other world, the normal one. He hesitated, his thumb hovering over his mom's contact photo—a picture of her laughing in a garden, a lifetime ago. Then he pressed it.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Each tone was a hollow gong in the quiet house.
"Hello?" Her voice was there, wrapped in static, but there. It was the sound of the world still turning.
Ace let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding, a tension unwinding from his spine. "Hey, Mom. It's me."
"Oh—Ace." Sophie sounded weary, a thin layer of relief stretched over deep fatigue. "Are you alright?"
That question lingered longer than it should've. It wasn't about a cold or a bad grade. In their coded language, it meant: Are you whole? Are you safe? Are you still my son and not just a hunter?
"Yeah," Ace said, layering ease over the truth like a thin coat of paint. Too easily. "I'm fine."
There was a pause on the line, filled with the thousand things she wanted to say and couldn't.
"Why didn't you pick up yesterday?" he asked instead, steering the conversation onto the solid ground of her absence, away from the quicksand of his.
"I'm sorry," she replied, and the apology was genuine, edged with her own frustration. "Your grandma needed help. I was with her all night. It was… chaotic."
Ace clenched his jaw. A familiar, cold resentment settled in his stomach.
Of course. The predictable crisis. The reliable summons. The uncles, useless as ever, had likely been panicked background noise while his mother did the work.
"Is she okay?" he asked, keeping his voice steady, neutral. He cared, but the caring was boxed up tight, separate from the anger.
"She's stable now. The doctors say she'll be fine if she rests." A beat. "Which she won't."
"That's good," Ace said quietly. The script was familiar.
Then Sophie asked the question he knew was coming, the one that transcended hospitals and heart conditions. Her voice dropped, not quite a whisper, but the tone she used for things that belonged to the other world.
"…Did you take care of it?"
Ace's eyes flicked to the mirror across the room. In the dim light, he could see the faint, dark bloom of the bruise creeping above the waistband of his pants, a shadow of the truth. He turned slightly, a pang firing from the spot as if on cue.
"Yeah," he replied, the word flat and final. "It's done. You don't have to worry about that anymore."
Another pause. This one was heavier. It held the ghost of his father, the echo of other calls that ended with similar words.
"I'm glad," Sophie said softly, and he could hear the fragile relief in it, the desperate wish to believe the danger was past. Her next question was a jarring, beautiful return to pure, normal motherhood. "Did you eat?"
Ace blinked, thrown. He looked from the bruise in the mirror to the silent, waiting kitchen doorway.
"…Not yet."
"You should," she said, and the worry was back, simple and direct. "Don't skip meals, Ace. Your body needs fuel to heal." Heal. Did she know? Could she sense it over the phone?
"I know."
"I have to go now," she added gently, pulled back to the other crisis. "The doctor is rounding again. I'll call later, okay?"
"Okay."
The line went dead, leaving a silence louder than the conversation. Ace stared at the phone in his hand, the screen darkening back to a reflection of the empty room. He set it down on the counter with a quiet tap.
The silence expanded, filling the house. It was the silence of an empty battlefield. No monsters, no mother, no school bell. Just him, his throbbing side, and a yawning, domestic void.
"…Guess I'll make breakfast," he muttered to the silence, the words sounding absurd even to him.
That was the first mistake.
***
Ace stood in the middle of the kitchen, staring at the stove like it was a strange altar to a capricious god. It was an old, white appliance, its surface dotted with ancient, unidentifiable stains. It had never been his domain. Meals appeared, conjured by his mother's quiet efficiency. This machine was an enigma.
He crossed his arms, ignoring the pull across his ribs.
"…Okay," he announced to the empty room, as if stating his intent would compel the universe to cooperate. "How hard can an omelette be?"
The stove, in response, remained silent. Menacingly so.
Ace leaned closer, squinting at the control panel. There were four identical black knobs, their markings worn away by time and cleaning. None were labeled. Why were there four? What domestic sorcery required so many points of control? Fire was fire. You either had it or you didn't.
He reached out and twisted the leftmost knob.
Nothing. Not a click, not a hiss.
He twisted the one next to it.
Same profound nothingness.
Ace frowned, a flicker of genuine irritation cutting through his fog. "Is this thing fucking broken?" His voice bounced off the tiles.
He twisted the third knob.
WHOOSH.
A sudden, aggressive fist of blue flame erupted from the burner with a sharp, violent hiss. It was taller than he expected, hungry and immediate. Ace yelped, a purely undignified sound, and stumbled back, his socked feet nearly sliding out from under him on the linoleum.
"OKAY—OKAY—TOO MUCH—"
Heart hammering, he scrambled forward and twisted the same knob back in the opposite direction, logic dictating that 'off' was the reverse of 'on'.
The flame grew bigger, leaping higher with an eager roar.
"WHY ARE YOU GETTING STRONGER?!" he yelled at it, panic sharpening his voice. This was less cooking, more bomb disposal.
Blindly, he grabbed and twisted another knob, trying to kill the gas at the source.
CLICK.
Now a second burner directly in front of him ignited with the same ferocious blue jet.
"STOP—STOP—I DIDN'T ASK FOR THIS—"
He was now facing two roaring gas jets, the heat blasting his face. With frantic, stabbing motions, he twisted everything back to their original positions. The flames vanished with a soft puff, leaving behind the ghost of heat and the faint smell of gas.
Ace stood there, hands on his knees, breathing heavily as if he'd just sprinted a mile. His ribs screamed in protest at the posture. He stared at the now-innocent burners.
"…Whatever," he muttered to himself, straightening up with a wince. "I got this."
He grabbed a pan from the rack—a large, supposedly non-stick skillet that was slightly bent and bore the baked-on ghosts of a hundred past meals. He slapped it onto the right-front burner, the one that had seemed slightly less homicidal. He turned its knob a precise, quarter-inch.
A perfect, polite circle of blue flame ignited, licking the bottom of the pan. No fury, no rebellion.
A slow, triumphant smile spread across Ace's face. Success.
Feeling a surge of confidence, he reached for the carton of eggs. He took one, cool and smooth in his palm, and tapped it firmly against the edge of the counter.
Too firmly.
The egg didn't crack. It detonated. Shell fragments shot in all directions. Yolk and albumen exploded outward, a sticky yellow comet that splattered across the cabinet door and oozed slowly toward the floor.
Ace stared at the Rorschach blot of his failure.
"…That's fine," he said, his voice tight. "One egg is plenty."
He took a second egg, breathing carefully. He gave it a gentle, precise tap.
Crack. A clean fracture. Perfect. He beamed, thumbs poised to part the shell over the bowl.
And his thumb slipped.
The egg, in its entirety, slipped from his fingers, did a full somersault in the air, and hit the floor with a wet splat.
He looked from the empty bowl to the ruin at his feet. The smile was gone.
The third egg? He didn't even attempt the bowl. In a moment of bleak acceptance, he cracked it directly into the trash can. It landed with a definitive, final glug.
By the time he actually managed to get two intact eggs into a bowl, Ace was sweating, a fine sheen on his forehead. The simple, stupid task had become a battle of attrition. He grabbed a fork and started whisking as if he were trying to beat the very concept of egg into submission. Aggressive, jabbing circles. Flecks of egg-white launched from the bowl, landing on his sleeve, the counter, his cheek.
"Awesome."
He poured the violently aerated eggs into the waiting pan.
They didn't settle. They erupted. A violent, angry sizzle filled the kitchen, like the pan itself was screaming. A cloud of steam and spray shot upward. Ace jumped back, shield-raising an arm.
"WHY IS IT ANGRY?"
Almost immediately, a thin, acrid smoke began to rise from the pan's surface. The edges of the egg mixture were already curling, browning too fast.
"Okay, okay, calm down—" he said, to the eggs or himself, he wasn't sure. He grabbed a plastic spatula, its edge worn soft.
He attempted to slide it under the forming omelette.
It didn't slide. It stuck. The eggs had fused to the ancient pan with a bond stronger than any enchantment.
Ace poked at the edge.
Nothing gave.
He wedged the spatula in harder and levered it upward.
The omelette remained, defiantly whole. The spatula did not.
With a sickening SNAP, the white plastic head broke clean off, spinning across the floor.
Ace stared at the handle in his hand, then at the broken piece on the ground.
"…You've gotta be kidding me."
At that exact moment, as if summoned by the zenith of his incompetence, the smoke alarm in the hallway awoke with a piercing, brain-scrambling shriek.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
"Oh NO—"
Ace waved his arms wildly beneath the alarm, as if he could fan the sound waves away. "Stop—STOP—IT'S JUST EGGS—"
But the smoke was thickening, a grey haze carrying the unmistakable, criminal scent of scorched protein and regret. The omelette was now a blackened, crispy disc, smoking ominously.
Panic, pure and undiluted, took over. This was no monster, but the stakes felt just as high. His home, his normal life, was literally going up in smoke. He grabbed the pan's handle—barehanded, and immediately yelped, dropping it back onto the burner with a clang. Swearing, he wrapped his sleeve around his hand and grabbed it again, lunging toward the sink.
He hit the tap with his elbow, cranked it on full blast.
And without a second thought, dumped the entire, smoking, blackened pan under the torrent of water.
The reaction was instant and violent. A deafening HISS like a furious serpent erupted from the sink. A colossal, blinding cloud of superheated steam billowed up and outward, engulfing his head, scalding his face, rushing into his nose and mouth.
"AGH—!"
Blinded, choking, Ace stumbled backward. His socked foot landed squarely in the slick, uncooked egg puddle from his second attempt.
His feet flew out from under him. Time didn't slow so much as fracture into a series of disastrous images: The ceiling spinning. His arm windmilling, catching the lip of the counter and sending a tall bottle of cooking oil crashing to the floor, where it shattered, spreading a viscous golden lake across the tiles. His body twisting, his shoulder glancing off a cabinet door. The loose, sun-faded curtain by the window, disturbed by the commotion, drifting inward on a breeze of his own making.
Its hem gently kissed the still-glowing burner he had never turned off.
A tiny, eager flame sprouted on the fabric, tasting the old cotton.
Ace didn't see it. His world was a carousel of pain and disorientation until the back of his head connected with the edge of the solid oak kitchen island.
The impact was a bright, white star of pain that swallowed all the others.
Then, nothing.
***
Lights out.
Ace opened his eyes.
Slowly.
Painfully.
He didn't sit up. Didn't move. Didn't even blink for a solid ten seconds. He just stared at the ceiling above him, at a familiar water stain shaped like a lopsided continent. A tiny crack ran from its coast, a judgemental river on a map of failure.
…Wow, he thought, the words forming slowly in the cottony silence of his mind. So this is where my life led me. Lying on my own kitchen floor, defeated by breakfast.
His head throbbed with a deep, resonant ache—not a sharp pain, but a profound, bass-note pounding, as if his brain was a disgruntled tenant pounding on the floor of his skull. His mouth tasted like a chimney: ash, smoke, and the bitter aftertaste of truly bad decisions.
He exhaled, a long, dusty sigh that stirred a faint smell of burnt curtain.
"Yeah," he muttered to the empty, wrecked room. "That checks out."
He tried to replay the last few minutes. It was a humiliating montage. Stove. Eggs. Fire. Steam. Betrayal by inanimate objects and basic physics. Somewhere in between, gravity had reviewed his life choices and decided to become his active enemy.
He let his arm flop over his chest and groaned, the sound pathetic even to his own ears.
I track psychic predators through dimensional lures. I put enchanted rounds between the eyes of things that wear human skin. I survived the Goatman's charge.
And an omelette took me out.
The irony was so thick he could choke on it. It was the Hidden World's last laugh.
He finally turned his head to the side, a monumental effort. Cold tiles pressed against his cheek. Something viscous and cooling was glueing his hair to the floor. He peeled his face up slightly.
"…Is that egg?" he whispered, disgusted.
He closed his eyes again, the darkness welcoming. He could just… stay here. The floor wasn't so bad. It was cool. Solid. It demanded nothing of him. Maybe he'd just become part of the kitchen, a permanent fixture of disaster.
That's when a voice, muffled by the front door, sliced through his surrender.
"Ace?" Darren yelled, his tone caught between concern and his default state of dramatic inquiry. "You there? Or you death?"
Ace didn't even flinch. He kept his eyes closed. "What the fuck do you want, Darren."
There was a pause from outside. Then, a note of discovery.
"Oh damn. He alive."
Ace sighed, the breath stirring a piece of eggshell near his face. He stared back at the ceiling continent. "Barely."
"Cedric's here!"
That got him moving—or at least, initiated the attempt. A spark of self-preservation, of not wanting to be found like this by his hunting partner, cut through the fog. Ace rolled onto his side, a movement that sent a symphony of complaints from his ribs, his head, his pride. He pushed himself up onto one elbow with a sharp hiss, then sat there, head bowed, while the room performed a slow, mocking pirouette. He ran a hand through his hair, encountering sticky egg white.
"…Come in," he called, his voice rough.
The front door opened. The sound was too loud.
Ace heard footsteps—two sets. One was Darren's familiar, slightly clumsy shuffle. The other was Cedric's, lighter, more deliberate. His partner's voice came first, already mid-sentence, breezy with assumed normalcy.
"Dude, why didn't you come to school today? Me and Marco were looking for you. Just wanted to make sure everything was oka—"
Silence.
It was a physical thing, a sudden vacuum of sound that sucked all the air from the hallway. Ace looked up, the world finally settling into a nauseating focus, just in time to see Cedric step into the kitchen doorway.
His best friend's eyes, usually sharp with sarcasm or hunter's focus, went wide. They did a slow, disbelieving scan of the apocalypse: the egg-splattered cabinets, the lake of oil shimmering on the floor, the snapped spatula, the broken bottle, the smoke-hazed air. His gaze finally landed on Ace, sitting in the middle of it all like the dazed king of ruin.
Darren appeared behind Cedric's shoulder, peered in, and immediately froze, his mouth forming a perfect, silent 'O'.
The kitchen wasn't messy. It was a war zone. A quiet, domestic, deeply pathetic war zone.
Cedric's head slowly turned on a stiff neck, his eyes locking back onto Ace. All traces of casual concern were gone, replaced by pure, unadulterated bewilderment.
"…What," he said carefully, each word measured and distinct, "the hell happened here?"
Ace opened his mouth. He had the facts. Stove. Eggs. A series of unfortunate events. But before any of that could form into an excuse, a new sound cut through the stunned quiet.
Crackle.
A soft, hungry, unmistakable sound.
Cedric's eyes, still on Ace, flicked upward, drawn by the noise. His brow furrowed.
Darren, following his gaze, slowly tilted his head back.
The cheap floral curtain swayed gently by the window, stirred by a draft from the busted front door.
And along its sun-bleached bottom hem, a line of cheerful, orange flame was crawling steadily upward, eating the fabric with little crackling bites. The firelight danced, painting moving shadows on the wall.
Cedric stared, his expression flatlining into something beyond shock.
Darren stared, his earlier 'O' of surprise now a silent scream.
Ace blinked, his brain sluggishly registering the new variable in the equation of his disaster.
The silence stretched, broken only by the soft, contented crackle-pop of the burning curtain.
Cedric's eyes slowly lowered from the flame to meet Ace's across the ruined kitchen. His partner's face was a masterpiece of deadpan judgment.
"…I was trying to make an omelette," Ace said, his voice utterly flat, devoid of all defense.
And as if in punctuation, a larger piece of curtain fabric curled inward, blackened, and the flame leapt a little higher, burning a little brighter, illuminating the full, glorious extent of his defeat.