Kael hadn't moved for hours.
The box sat on his desk like a sleeping animal—silent, inert, but undeniably alive. He could feel it now. That low, almost subconscious pressure in the air. A sound without sound. A beat without rhythm.
His fingers still tingled from touching the obsidian shard earlier. Not from pain, but from something stranger. As if something had woken up and stretched through his skin.
Ren had fallen asleep curled on the rug, a blanket tangled around him like he was reenacting a slow-motion fight with a spiderweb. Kael sat on the edge of his bed, one eye on his brother, the other fixed on the box.
He had tried to ignore it. Honest. Tried to read. Tried to scroll through the same meme account for the third time. Tried to pretend that the moment he touched the obsidian, he hadn't seen things—felt things—he couldn't explain.
But he had.
Cities that bent light like rivers. Towers that pulsed with breath. People who weren't people.
And the worst part?
It hadn't felt wrong.
It had felt...familiar.
He finally stood, padding barefoot across the worn floorboards toward the box. He opened the lid slowly, as though speed might provoke it. But the shard was quiet now. It lay in its soft nest of black velvet, dull and matte, like ordinary stone.
Kael reached for it. Then paused.
No dreams. Just curiosity. And maybe, just maybe, the ghost of fear.
He stepped back. Sat down again. Stared.
Then there were footsteps outside.
At first, he thought they belonged to Mr. Dova from the second floor—renowned thermostat warlord and local conspiracy theorist. But these steps were too steady, too deliberate.
Someone walking slow enough to think between each step.
He stood quickly. The box snapped shut as he moved. He crept to the door, pressing his ear to the cold wood.
Silence.
Then—
A whisper of paper. A soft flutter.
He yanked open the door.
No one.
Just a single folded sheet lying on the doormat like a dead butterfly.
He bent to pick it up, eyes scanning the empty corridor.
Inside, he unfolded it.
You touched it.You bonded.They will feel it soon.You should run.
No signature. No address. No explanation.
Kael stared down the hallway one last time. The lights flickered slightly overhead.
He shut the door, locking both the handle and the chain.
Back in his room, the note still in his hand, he whispered, "I'd run, but where do you run when the thing after you might already be inside your skin?"
Ren snorted in his sleep.
Kael sighed and crumpled the paper.
Sleep would be a negotiation tonight.