The night was an abrasive weight, pressing down on the city with a damp, suffocating chill. In the labyrinthine heart of the Lower District, where the streetlights flickered like dying pulses and the shadows held a predatory thickness, Lunar was running.
His breath didn't just leave him; it tore itself from his lungs in ragged, burning bursts. Every inhale felt like drawing in splintered glass, a sharp, crystalline pain that radiated from his chest to the tips of his cold-numbed fingers. The air was biting, a winter's edge disguised as an autumn breeze, but sweat still slicked his skin, turning the thin, threadbare fabric of his oversized hoodie into a damp, heavy shroud.
He didn't dare look back. To look back was to acknowledge the impossible. To look back was to admit that the silence following him was louder than any footstep could ever be.
The alleyway was a graveyard of urban decay. He dodged around overflowing trash bins that wept oily liquids into the gutters, his feet skidding over slick, uneven cobblestones and cracked pavement. His shoes—beaten-down sneakers with soles so thin he could feel every sharp pebble—slapped rhythmically against the ground. The left sole was half-detached, a rhythmic flap-slap, flap-slap that sounded like a mocking heartbeat echoing off the brick walls.
He took a sharp corner, his shoulder grazing the rough masonry. The impact sent a jolt of white-hot pain through his arm, but he didn't slow down. Pain was a constant. Pain was a tether to reality. As long as it hurt, he was still moving. As long as it hurt, he wasn't a ghost yet.
A fit of coughing suddenly seized him, violent and deep, forcing him to hitch his gait. He staggered, one hand slamming against a damp wall to steady himself. His vision swirled—a kaleidoscope of greys, blacks, and the sickly yellow of distant sodium lamps.
Not now, he pleaded silently, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. Please, not now.
His other hand, buried deep in his pocket, tightened around a crumpled paper bag. With trembling, grime-stained fingers, he fumbled inside. He pulled out a heel of bread—hard, cheap, and half-crushed from the desperate pressure of his grip.
The bread was dry and tasteless, scraping against his parched throat as he swallowed. His stomach, a hollow pit that had been aching for days, roiled in protest and gratitude all at once. Even in the midst of a life-or-death flight, the primal, gnawing hunger was a beast that refused to be ignored. He shoved the remaining crust into his mouth, his jaw aching from the effort of breaking down the stale grain, swallowing hard as if the sheer act of consumption could fortify his crumbling resolve.
It didn't. But the momentary distraction of the burn in his throat kept the panic from boiling over.
He pushed off the wall, wiping a smear of crumbs and saliva from his lip with the back of his hand. His legs felt like leaden weights, his muscles twitching with the onset of exhaustion-induced tremors. But he kept going. He had to.
Because he knew. He knew that the moment he stopped, the distance between him and the thing following him would vanish.
"Running won't help, Lunar."
The voice didn't come from the distance. It didn't echo or bounce off the brickwork. It was just there—resonant, calm, and terrifyingly close, as if the speaker were walking a mere inch behind him, leaning into his ear.
Lunar froze. The world seemed to drop into a vacuum of silence. Even the distant hum of the city died away.
Slowly, his neck creaking with the effort, Lunar turned his head.
The alley was a void. The darkness behind him was absolute, stretching back into the maw of the city. No one was there. No looming shadow, no silhouette of a man in a long coat, no glint of eyes in the dark.
Empty.
His heart didn't just beat; it thrummed, a frantic vibration that made his teeth ache. "You're imagining things," he whispered, his voice a ghost of a sound, thin and reedy. "There's no one there. It's the hunger. It's the fever. It's the lack of sleep."
But the lie tasted like ash. He'd been hearing that voice for three days. He'd seen him—the man with the eyes like cold steel and the presence that felt like a looming storm. Always at the edge of his vision. Always standing at the far end of a subway platform or reflected in a shop window.
The Last Demon Hunter.
"No," Lunar muttered, a frantic mantra. "No, no, no—just get somewhere crowded. Somewhere with lights. Somewhere normal people go."
He stumbled out of the alley's mouth and onto a dimly lit side street. A few cars hissed by, their headlights cutting through the gloom and briefly illuminating the grime on the sidewalks. The city wasn't asleep, but it was indifferent—a sprawling concrete monster that didn't care about a shivering boy in a torn hoodie.
Then, he saw it.
Across the wide, cracked boulevard sat the precinct. It was a blocky, utilitarian building, but to Lunar, it looked like a fortress. The blue-and-white sign glowed with a clinical, heavenly light. The fluorescent tubes inside the lobby hummed with the promise of bureaucracy, rules, and—most importantly—safety.
He bolted.
He lunged across the street, ignoring the blare of a horn and the screech of tires as a taxi swerved to avoid him. He didn't care about the curses shouted after him. He reached the heavy glass doors and threw his entire weight against them.
The doors swung open with a hiss of pneumatic pressure.
The air inside was a shock—sterile, smelling of floor wax and old coffee. It was too bright, the white light reflecting off the linoleum floors and the glass partitions, making Lunar squint. He stood there, a ragged stain on the clean interior, his chest heaving, his breath coming in loud, wet gasps.
"Hey."
The word was flat, bored.
Behind a high, reinforced desk sat two officers. One was older, with a thick neck and a mustache that looked like a wire brush; he was leaning back, tapping a pen against a clipboard. The other was younger, his uniform crisp and his expression one of immediate, weary irritation.
They looked at him. They took in the dirt under his fingernails, the way his ribs were visible through the gaps in his hoodie, the trembling of his knees, and the wild, dilated look in his eyes.
"…What do you want, kid?" the younger one asked, his voice laced with the tone people used for stray dogs they weren't sure were rabid.
Lunar swallowed, his throat feeling like it was lined with sandpaper. He stepped forward, his hands gripping the edge of the high counter so tightly his knuckles turned white. He needed the counter; without it, he would have folded into a heap on the floor.
"I—I want to report something," he gasped out, the words tumbling over each other. "There's… someone following me. He's been following me for days."
The two officers exchanged a look—a quick, practiced glance that spoke volumes of shared cynicism.
"Following you?" the older officer repeated, his voice a low rumble. He didn't stop tapping his pen. Click. Click. Click.
"Yes," Lunar said, nodding frantically. "He's everywhere. He just… appears. I'll be in a crowd, and he's there. I'll be in an alley, and he's behind me."
The younger officer leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk. He looked Lunar up and down again, lingering on the boy's sunken cheeks. "Did you steal something? You run off with someone's stash? Because if you're here because some dealer is looking for his money, you're in the wrong place for sympathy."
"No!" Lunar's voice cracked, a high, desperate sound. "I didn't steal anything! I've never seen him before this week! I don't even know who he is!"
"Mm-hmm." The older officer finally stopped tapping the pen. "Then why would a guy spend all this time chasing a kid who looks like he hasn't had a square meal since the last election? What's the motive?"
Lunar opened his mouth, then closed it. He felt the weight of their judgment, the heavy, suffocating blanket of their disbelief. How could he say it? How could he utter the words in this room of cold facts and police reports?
"He—he says…" Lunar's voice dropped to a whisper. His fingers dug into the wood of the counter. "…he says he's a demon hunter."
The silence that followed was different from the silence in the alley. It wasn't predatory; it was mocking.
Then, the younger officer let out a short, sharp burst of laughter.
"…A what?"
"A demon hunter," Lunar repeated, the words feeling ridiculous even as they left his lips. But they were the truth—the only truth he had. "He said he's the last one. He said… he said I have to go with him."
The older officer exhaled a long, slow breath, shaking his head. "Right. A demon hunter. Fighting the forces of darkness in the Lower District, is he? Is he wearing a cape? Maybe carrying a magic sword?"
"I'm telling the truth!" Lunar shouted, the desperation finally breaking through his exhaustion. He slammed a fist onto the counter, a weak thud that didn't even make the officer flinch. "I'm not crazy! I've seen things—things he's done! He won't leave me alone!"
"Kid," the younger officer cut in, his voice hardening, the boredom replaced by a sharp, jagged edge of annoyance. "Demons don't exist. This isn't a comic book. This isn't some Netflix original series. This is the real world."
"I know how it sounds, but please, you have to help me! Just put me in a cell! Just for tonight! He won't come in here, he can't—"
"No," the officer said, standing up. He was tall, his presence filling the space behind the glass. "There is no 'but.' You're coming in here, high on whatever garbage you found in a gutter, talking about monsters and hunters. You're wasting our time and the city's money."
"I'm not high!" Lunar's eyes filled with hot, stinging tears. "I'm scared! Why won't you just listen to me?"
The older officer leaned forward, his expression shifting from amusement to a cold, blunt finality. "Listen to me, kid. Look at yourself. Look at where you are."
He gestured vaguely at Lunar's entire being. "You're telling us some legendary warrior is stalking you. Some hunter of the supernatural is spending his nights chasing you around the city." He paused, letting the weight of the next question hang in the air. "Why?"
"I don't know…" Lunar whispered.
"Exactly," the officer said. "You don't know because it's a hallucination. You're weak. You're underfed. You look like you'd blow away in a stiff breeze." He tilted his head, his gaze sweeping over Lunar's shaking frame with clinical disdain. "No offense, kid, but you're not exactly special. If there were demons and hunters in this world, they wouldn't be interested in a gutter rat like you."
The words hit Lunar with the force of a physical blow. His breath hitched, his lungs seizing. Not special. It was the refrain of his entire life—the background noise of his existence. He was the boy no one saw, the person who didn't matter. And now, even his terror was being dismissed as a delusion of grandeur.
"I'm not lying," he said one last time, but the strength had drained out of him. He felt hollowed out, a shell of a person standing in the middle of a brightly lit room.
The officers exchanged one final, definitive glance.
"You're done here," the younger one said, gesturing toward the door. "Go find a shelter. Go find a soup kitchen. But get out of here before I decide to charge you with filing a false report or public intoxication."
Lunar stood there for a heartbeat longer. He looked at the officers—men who were supposed to protect, men who were supposed to be the line between the light and the dark. They were already looking past him, the older one returning to his clipboard, the younger one checking his watch.
He was already gone to them.
"Out," the younger officer snapped.
Lunar's shoulders slumped. His fingers slowly uncurled from the counter, leaving damp, grey smudges on the polished wood.
"…Okay," he whispered.
He turned around. The glass doors loomed ahead, the dark street waiting on the other side. The "safety" of the precinct felt more hostile now than the alleys ever had. At least the alleys didn't pretend to be anything other than what they were.
He pushed the doors open. The cold air hit him like a slap, biting through his hoodie and stealing the last of the building's warmth.
He stepped out onto the sidewalk. The blue-and-white sign hummed above him, but it offered no light to his path. He was alone. He was exhausted. He was starving.
And as he turned the corner, back into the shadows where the city's indifference was absolute, he heard it again.
A soft, rhythmic step.
A presence that felt like the coming of winter.
Lunar didn't run this time. He just kept walking, a small, dark figure disappearing into the night, while behind the glass, the officers laughed at a joke he would never hear.