Chapter 37

The city didn’t know. It moved and breathed like it always had—cars weaving through traffic, someone shouting across the street, the smell of roasted coffee and engine exhaust curling together in the warm air, a typical day. Or at least it tried to be. But the tether hummed beneath my skin like a live wire. Quiet, but pulsing. Present.

Kael walked at my side, shoulders squared and steady, though his eyes scanned every rooftop, every reflection in passing windows. We didn’t speak. We didn’t need to. Something had shifted after the basement—the sigil, the tether flaring, the way our skin steadied the storm when nothing else could. It felt like the world had gone opaque, and we were walking behind the glass. Everyone else moved in real time. We walked through it like ghosts.

At the corner of 4th and Mercer, I paused. A lamppost flickered beside the crosswalk, and just under the rusted base of the pole, a mark burned faint and gold, thin lines twisted in layered spirals, barely perceptible unless you were looking directly at them. I stepped closer. It shimmered when I raised my hand.

Kael was already beside me. “You see it too.” It wasn’t a question.

I nodded. “That’s the third one since we left the apartment.”

“Someone’s either tracking or guiding us,” Kael said.

I didn’t say what I thought, and maybe it was the tether itself. Or worse, that someone else tethered had passed this way before us.

We kept walking. The street changed as we moved north, glass storefronts turned to brick walls, sleek offices to older buildings with hand-painted signs. Still clean. Still full of people. I passed a bakery I hadn’t thought about in years. Back when sprinkles and paper napkins had the power to fix everything, I used to go there on Saturdays with my mom. I slowed without meaning to.

Kael noticed. “You know this place?”

“Yeah.” I hesitated. “Used to be my favorite. Until it wasn’t.”

He didn’t press. I just held my gaze long enough to make the silence feel safe, not empty. As we crossed a pedestrian bridge overlooking the train tracks, the wind caught my hair and lifted it from my shoulders. The city below glittered in glass and sunlight, oblivious. Somewhere far away, a siren blared and cut off just as fast. I turned my hand over and watched the tether flicker faintly across my skin. It was longer now. Curving toward the inside of my elbow like a map being drawn in real time.

“I feel it again,” I murmured. “It’s pulling.”

Kael didn’t speak for a beat. Then: “It’s not dangerous this time. It’s… direction.”

The tether pulsed again, like a heartbeat syncing with our own. We followed it down two blocks, past a florist, a bookstore, a bus shelter lined with faces I didn’t recognize. The city was alive. But the space between Kael and me buzzed with something no one else could see. And then we found it. A narrow alley between two shops—one a boutique with dusty mannequins in the window, the other a boarded-up tax office. The alley looked unremarkable. A place most people pass without a second glance. But to us, it shimmered. Not visibly. Not exactly. But I could feel the way the light bent ever so slightly at its entrance, like air made of silk.

A brick wall stretched up like a forgotten relic at the far end of the alley. And there it was—a sigil, just like the ones I’d been sketching. Bigger this time. Brighter. The lines curled outward like a blooming flower, edges sharp and strange. It wasn’t burned in or drawn. It simply hovered, woven into the space itself, a symbol made of magic.

Kael stepped closer. “It recognizes you.”

I nodded, throat tight. “I think they all do.”

“I don’t think this is a trap.”

“Neither do I.”

I was about to raise my hand when a voice behind us spoke.

“Because it was made for her.”

We both turned, fast. A figure stood at the mouth of the alley. Unarmed. Calm. Dressed in a long gray coat, their hands in their pockets. I couldn’t place an age, somewhere between twenty and ancient. Their face was smooth and unreadable, framed by windblown curls and eyes that saw too much.

Kael moved in front of me instantly. Protective, instinctive. His hand hovered over his blade. The tether sparked between us.

But the stranger only lifted a hand. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

“That’s usually what people say before they do,” I said flatly.

They smiled, but it didn’t reach their eyes. “Fair enough.”

They took a step forward, slow and unthreatening. “You’re tethered,” they said. “And I don’t mean magically. I mean bound. Threaded through time itself.”

My breath caught.

Kael’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”

“A witness,” they said simply. “A survivor.”

They looked at me. “You feel it changing, don’t you? The tether. It’s not just reacting anymore. It’s remembering.”

I didn’t reply.

“You’re not the first to be tethered,” the stranger said softly. “But you might be the last.”