NYX's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

The cobra's trail cut through a district where the buildings leaned close enough to swallow the moonlight. NYX followed the cold wake between shuttered shops and empty doorways, nose low to the cracked pavement. Then the warmth stopped. Not faded. Not scattered. Gone. NYX's paws slowed as he crossed into a street where the air felt stripped, like something had peeled away every trace of heat the drag queen had left behind. The neon signs still glowed above a club with lion statues perched on its roof, but the warmth that should have clung to the doorway, the steps, the walls—it wasn't there. Someone was erasing it. And they were still working. NYX's ears flicked toward a squat structure wedged between two buildings at the end of the block. A shack with a fox's face carved above the door, neon tubes pulsing orange along its frame. The erasure radiated from there, spreading outward like frost. Through the narrow window, he caught movement—a figure holding something tall and burning, sweeping it through the air in slow, deliberate arcs. The staff flared with each pass, hieroglyphics crawling up its length in fire and light. Wherever it pointed, the warmth vanished. NYX didn't hesitate. He crossed the street in three bounds and slammed his full weight into the shack's door. Wood splintered. The figure inside spun, staff raised, but NYX was already moving. He lunged, jaws closing around the staff's shaft, and wrenched it sideways. The cultist stumbled, tried to pull it free, but NYX twisted hard and felt the wood crack. The hieroglyphics flared once, then died. The erasure stopped. The cultist cursed and bolted through a back door, disappearing into the dark. NYX let them go. The staff lay broken at his paws, still smoking. The drag queen's warmth was gone from this street, but NYX had stopped it from spreading further. And now he knew what the cult was using.