Darian Ashford's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Darian woke to shouting in the street. He sat up fast, still dressed from the night before, and grabbed Matthias's book from the table. The sun was already up—later than he'd meant to sleep. Outside, people were running toward the square, voices tight with fear. He stepped into the garden and saw it: fog, thick and gray, rolling down the hill from the bell tower. He ran. The fog had already reached the poor quarter, turning flower patches into bleached gray shapes that crumbled when he passed them. The bell tower stood silent ahead, its door hanging open. Inside, the space was empty except for a piece of leather on the floor, marked with a six-pointed star drawn in precise lines. Matthias's work. Darian picked it up and saw boot prints in the dust leading to the window, then nothing. No struggle. No blood. Just the sigil and silence. The fog pressed closer outside, and Darian felt the familiar pull beneath his skin—the same hunger that came with sunset, but wrong in daylight. The rift wanted him. It recognized what he was. He could follow Matthias into it, let the beast loose to track him through whatever space the fog had opened. Or he could run back to the orphanage and lock the gates before the children woke up to this. Darian folded the leather sigil and put it in his pocket. He would not follow Matthias into the fog. Not because he didn't care, but because Matthias had trusted him to understand the rift—and what Darian understood was that the fog took people who went into it unprepared. Matthias had a plan when he came here. Darian would find it in the book, close the rift the right way, and bring Matthias back whole. He ran for the orphanage, the promise from yesterday still holding even though everything else had changed.