?CHAPTER 2 — The first knock

  The night was colder than it should’ve been.

  The Afterglow District was usually wrapped in warmth—

  holo-lantern ads cycling comfort palettes, food drones idling above shuttered stalls, voice-clips looping laughter that no one was actually making.

  But tonight, the color felt padded.

  Sound felt muted.

  Every shadow stretched too long.

  Yuna tugged her hoodie tight, rubbing her thumb anxiously over the signature on her ribbon.

  Lylia.

  Stella paced beside her, silver-blue fur shimmering faintly with each step. Five tails swayed behind her like slow-moving comets.

  “You’re doing it again,” Stella murmured.

  Yuna blinked. “Doing what?”

  Stella’s ears twitched, her tails slowing.

  “You’re daydreaming. Don’t worry so much.”

  Her gaze sharpened, tracking something just beyond the lantern light.

  “Stay sharp. We’re not alone.”

  A pause.

  “…I feel something nearby.”

  A pot of broth simmered somewhere in the dark — soy, ginger, garlic.

  Ingredients of the old world, carried through two centuries of scarcity and heat. It almost felt normal.

  Almost.

  Then she heard it.

  A crack.

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  Like distant glass breaking.

  She froze.

  “Stella… did you—”

  “Yeah.” Stella’s ears twitched hard.

  “Not from here. From under here.”

  Before Yuna could ask, a shape stepped out of the shadows ahead.

  A familiar one.

  “Yuna.”,

  Sungho walked into the lantern glow, hands in his jacket pockets but shoulders tight — too tight. His eyes scanned the street before settling on her.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he murmured.

  “It’s my neighborhood,” she said lightly.

  He didn’t smile.

  “Not tonight.”

  Another crack split the air — louder.

  The pavement trembled underfoot.

  A heat-like shimmer rippled in the space between them—

  —then tore open.

  “Thin black shapes spilled out, like ink trying to remember how to stand.

  The streetlights didn’t reflect on them, like reality refused to render them properly.”

  Human-like silhouettes, but wrong — their limbs jittered in half-frames, their shadows moving separately from their bodies.

  Sungho’s arm snapped out, dragging Yuna behind him.

  “Void Stalkers,” he said.

  Her stomach dropped.

  She’d heard that name once — whispered by a security manager, like a curse.

  A taller Stalker tilted its head, violet eyes flickering like broken LEDs—

  Then it lunged.

  Stella hit first.

  A flash of silver and flame, slamming into it with a crack that sent tiles flying. Her tails whipped golden arcs that burned through the creature’s shadow until it shrieked and recoiled.

  “Still think this is nothing?” Sungho called, bracing himself.

  Yuna swallowed. Her vision swam when she tried to count how many there were.

  “No… it’s worse,” she said, pressing a hand to her temple. “My head’s spinning just looking at them.”

  The Stalkers moved glitchy, like the world wasn’t rendering them properly. Every time one dissolved, its static body crawled back into the shimmering breach.

  Stella was merciless, tails blurring like whips of light.

  Sungho fought with brutal efficiency — a single baton in his hand, each strike cracking through static like shattering glass.

  Minutes later, the last Stalker flickered, broke apart, and melted back into nothing.

  The shimmer remained.

  Stella stood at its edge, fur bristling, light reflecting in her narrowed eyes.

  “Someone engineered that breach,” she said coldly. “Stay sharp.”

  “They needed us here?” Yuna echoed quietly.

  Sungho wiped blood from his knuckles. “Void Stalkers don’t wander. I’m with you on this one. Someone sent them.”

  “Why now?” Yuna asked.

  Stella’s tails stilled.

  “Because time here was already under strain.”

  Sungho stepped beside them, voice low.

  “We’re running out of time.

  Whatever’s coming… this was the first knock.”

  The shimmer rippled like a heartbeat — then snapped shut.

  The street fell silent again.

  Too silent.

  Yuna tightened her grip on her ribbon. For the first time, she understood:

  The world wasn’t breaking.

  It was warning them.

  Yuna’s ribbon pulsed with Recognition.

  She gasped, fingers curling instinctively around her wrist as a pressure bloomed behind her eyes, sharp and sudden like a note struck too hard.

  “Stella—”

  “I know,” Stella said at once. Her ears flattened.

  “That pressure came from somewhere deeper,” Stella said. “From under the city.”

  The street wavered.

  For a few heartbeats, Yuna wasn’t standing in the Afterglow District anymore.

  She saw metal corridors slick with condensation.

  Heard gears turning far too deep to be part of any normal building.

  Felt a pulse that wasn’t hers try to sync with her heartbeat—and fail.

  Someone else was there.

  “The figure sprinted past her without slowing.”

  Yuna’s breath hitched. “Hey,” she whispered, not sure who she was speaking to. “If you can hear this—”

  The ribbon flared, threads snapping taut like a broadcast line finally locking.

  Her voice fractured, stretched across something invisible.

  “You’re not alone.”

  The words finish echoing before Yuna realizes what she’s done.

  They don’t fade the way sound should.

  They linger.

  Not in the air—but inside her chest.

  The shard doesn’t cool.

  It tightens.

  Yuna swallows, suddenly aware of how far her voice might have traveled. She sent a holographic broadcast almost by accident.

  Then, through something thinner.

  Her pulse stutters.

  The silence around her lingered, attentive. As if the city leaned in a fraction.

  That wasn’t comfort, she thinks.

  That was a signal.

  A flare fired into a sky she doesn’t understand.

  Yuna froze.

  She pressed a hand over the shard.

  The silence does not answer.

  But it does not let go.

  And for the first time since the concert, Yuna felt it clearly:

  Another shard was awake.