Rain struck the windows in a steady rhythm, the kind of relentless drizzle that soaked you through before you realized it. Eliara Voss stood behind the counter of Grind & Bloom, a quiet little coffee shop nestled in the corner of downtown Avondale. It was the kind of place people wandered into without thinking, lured by the smell of fresh espresso and the safety of soft lighting.
Eliara liked it that way—quiet, predictable. Boring, even.
She wiped down the espresso machine, barely listening to the low hum of jazz in the background. The bell above the door jingled. She glanced up.
The man who entered looked like a shadow that had taken human shape. Long coat, damp from the rain. Unruly black hair. A sharpness in his gaze that made her fingers tense around the cloth she was holding.
"Just coffee," he said when he reached the counter.
No hello. No smile.
Eliara nodded and moved to prepare it. But when she turned back, his eyes were still on her—not in the way customers sometimes watched baristas work, but like he was searching for something. Measuring something.
"Never seen you before," she said, more to fill the silence than out of interest.
"That's because I wasn't supposed to be seen."
Her hands froze mid-reach for the cup.
"…What?"
He smiled faintly, like he'd said too much. "Never mind."
She gave him his coffee. He dropped exact change on the counter without breaking eye contact, then turned to leave—but paused.
"You see them, don't you?" he asked.
Eliara blinked. "See what?"
But he was already gone.
That night, sleep was difficult.
Not because of the man—although his strange words did rattle around her head—but because something was wrong with the lights in her apartment. They kept flickering, dimming, brightening, then going completely dark for half-seconds at a time.
And every time the room went black, Eliara saw shapes. Not furniture. Not shadows. Shapes that didn't belong.
She'd lived in this tiny studio for two years and had memorized every curve of it. But when the lights blinked out, the air felt crowded. The kind of crowded that raises the hairs on your arms. Something watching. Something waiting.
At 2:13 a.m., she finally got up and grabbed a flashlight. When she flicked it on, the beam caught a shimmer—just for a second—in the corner of the room. Like light bouncing off glass.
But there was nothing there.
She didn't sleep after that.
The next morning, she didn't go to work. She sat in her apartment with every light on and curtains drawn.
Her phone buzzed. A message from an unknown number.
You're not losing your mind. Meet me where the city forgets itself.
Eliara stared at the message, read it twice, then deleted it. She didn't like puzzles. Didn't like strangers who said weird things and looked at her like she was supposed to know something she didn't.
But then the lights flickered again. And this time, she heard something whisper her name.
She grabbed her coat and keys.
Eliara knew where to go.
"The place where the city forgets itself" could only mean one thing: the Old Quarry Station. Abandoned twenty years ago, the city had grown around it and left it behind—a forgotten vein in Avondale's concrete anatomy.
She took the metro halfway there, then walked the rest of the way through streets that grew progressively more silent. The station was just as she remembered from the urban legends: crumbling stone, iron gates rusted open, graffiti covered walls.
She ducked inside.
The silence was different here. Thick. Heavy. Like the air didn't move.
And then she saw him again—standing on the broken platform, hands in his coat pockets like he was waiting for a train that hadn't come in decades.
"You came," he said, without turning around.
Eliara stepped closer, cautiously. "Who are you?"
"Rowen. Calder. I'm… like you."
"I'm not like anything," she snapped. "I'm normal."
"No, Eliara. You're Awake."
That word. Awake. It hit her like a bell in her bones.
"What does that mean?"
He turned now, and his eyes had changed. There was a faint glow to them. Not bright. Not human.
"You can see through the Veil. It's been thin for years, but now—it's tearing. The world you think you know? It's just a mask."
Eliara took a step back. "You sound insane."
"Do I?" Rowen raised a hand and, with a flick of his fingers, the air shimmered like heat on asphalt. And then—it bent.
The world behind him twisted. Like it was being peeled back. For a second, Eliara saw a shape behind the air. A figure too tall, too thin, cloaked in mist and shadow.
She gasped. The thing looked right at her.
Then the shimmer snapped closed. Normality returned.
"What—what was that?" she whispered.
"A Watcher. From the other side of the Veil. They're not supposed to cross—but some of them are trying."
"Why me?" she asked.
"Because your blood remembers what your mind doesn't." Rowen looked at her like he'd known her forever. "You come from a line of Veilkeepers. People meant to guard the barrier. But the old order fell, and the memory of it was… erased."
Eliara shook her head, but her body betrayed her. She wasn't scared.
She was curious.
"I don't believe you," she said. But even as the words left her mouth, something inside her said: You've always known.