Johnny West sat on the floor of a cold room and stared at his stringless guitar. The black body lay across his knees like a corpse holding a weapon. Soon he would break into the storm-smith god's workshop and steal the lightning strings. Without them, the guitar was nothing. Without it, his reckoning was nothing. The humming started again at dusk. Not from the guitar itself, but from the air around it. A dark, swirling absence had been gathering in the corner for weeks now, edged in colors that should not exist. It watched. It waited. Each night it pressed closer to the bed where he tried to sleep. He pulled out the carved wooden figure the dead craftsman had left behind. A small woodland woman, shaped from branches and leaves, her painted eyes still sharp. Inside her hollow back were the maps and the words that proved the strings were real. He had read them a thousand times. Tonight he read them once more. Outside his window, the old weathered statue in the field leaned further sideways. Once it had been a proud carved vegetable, a farmer's strange monument. Now its purple skin was scorched black down one side, struck by storms that came from nowhere. The storm-smith's reach had already touched this place. The unseen presence in the corner hummed louder in answer. Johnny stood up. He could not wait another night. He packed the lead-lined case, slung the dead guitar across his back, and stepped out into the dark. Behind him, the swirling void filled the empty room. Ahead of him, sixteen minutes and a god's workshop. He started walking.

Johnny's boots hit the road hard. Behind him, the void rolled out of the house and onto the asphalt. It was bigger now, wider than the doorway should have allowed. He gripped the black rubber fist clipped to his belt, the old talisman that had always pointed him forward. Tonight it felt dead in his hand. No pull. No promise. Just weight. He ran. The void hissed at his heels, and where it passed, the world bent. A gaunt figure crouched on the shoulder ahead, hollow-eyed, twitching, half-swallowed already. The man's fingers were sunk into the gravel like roots. Johnny did not stop. He could not help what the void had touched. He could only outrun what it still wanted. Then he saw it. A small, square shelter squatting under a buzzing light. Blue and yellow walls. A sturdy metal door. A gas station restroom, plain and ugly and standing. He remembered something from the dead craftsman's notes — thresholds older than gods held. He did not know if this counted. He ran anyway. The void reached. His shoulder slammed the door. It swung. He fell inside and kicked it shut. The humming stopped at the threshold. Johnny lay on the cold tile, chest heaving, the lead case still strapped to his back. Outside, the void pressed against the door and could not enter. Inside, the rubber fist on his belt had cracked clean down the middle. Whatever had been guiding him was gone. He was sheltered. He was also lost.