Chapter 1: Concrete Jungle, Celestial Shadows
The New York City skyline wasn’t in any postcards James had seen. The buildings were jagged monoliths, their monstrous shadows cutting swathes of twilight across the streets even at midday. A year out of the service, and the oppressive weight of concrete and glass felt almost as stifling as the Iraqi desert had been. The stench of hot asphalt and stale exhaust fumes replaced the acrid tang of sand and gunfire, a different kind of sensory warzone.
Beside him, Rick let out a low whistle. “Didn’t figure we’d trade sand for skyscrapers, did ya?” His Texas drawl was a familiar sound in the unfamiliar din, but it did little to ease the knot in James’ gut.
It wasn’t just the claustrophobia. Something pulsed beneath the roar of traffic, a dissonant hum that scratched at the edge of his hearing, setting his teeth on edge. Anya shifted next to him, her fingers clenching the strap of her worn travel bag. Her eyes, the color of a stormy sea, darted nervously around them. Whatever strange connection she had to her… companion as she called it, was tingling just as loud as his own nerves.
“We following the map, or is this a sightseeing tour?” Jackson’s voice, gruff as ever, broke through the cacophony around them. Grizzled and scarred from decades James didn’t want to imagine, he was their anchor, the closest thing to normal in their ragtag crew.
James fumbled in his pocket, unfolding the scrap of paper. The address was scrawled in jagged handwriting they’d all come to recognize as Maggie’s. Their bond had been forged in the bizarre, otherworldly incident last year—the one that left each of them tethered to beings of impossible power. It was Maggie, with her fractured visions, who led their way.
“It’s not far,” he said, squinting at the street names. The hum throbbed beneath his skin, making him twitchy. It wasn’t the city itself; the feeling concentrated as they neared the address, an old brownstone wedged into a row of sleek, soulless apartments.
Anya gasped, her hand flying to her throat. “It aches…like a bruise.” The fear in her eyes echoed the cold knot twisting in his own gut. Whatever waited inside wasn’t like the other threats they’d faced. This thrummed with a wrongness that echoed the day their lives had tilted off-kilter, the impossible made real.
Jackson swore, his broad hand falling to the hilt of the ornate dagger hanging at his hip—a souvenir from whatever cosmic entity he refused to talk about. “We goin’ in or what? Just ’cause I got this fancy new letter opener doesn’t mean I’m not itchin’ to use it.”
“Recon first.” Rick shouldered his pack, a leftover habit from his years as a sniper. “See who’s home, make sure we aren’t bein’ welcomed with a shotgun.” Despite his usual easy grin, there was a tightness around Rick’s eyes, a hunted alertness that told James they all shared the same unease.
James shared a look with Anya. She nodded, the tension of her shoulders relaxing slightly. Rick, with his quiet competence, was the most dependable of them all.
The brownstone was dim, a single dusty window overlooking the street. As Rick slipped around the corner, James caught a strange flicker in the air beside him. It shimmered, like heat distortion, but wrong. Anya whispered a single word, harsh and foreign. It was the language of her companion, the song of starstuff that pulsed in her veins. Her fingers glowed, faint blue tendrils wrapping around her wrists.
James closed his eyes, focusing on his own strange link. The connection let him glimpse flickering threads of possibility—fractured futures he could only sometimes manipulate. They twisted and shimmered in his mind’s eye now, agitated, sparking like a live wire about to snap. Something was definitely happening inside.
“Incoming,” James hissed, not a moment before the brownstone door burst open…
Let me know if you’d like even more – this scene has so much potential to explore!
…and a figure hurtled out. It was a woman, her hair a wild, fiery tangle around a bruised face streaked with tears. She wore jeans and a tattered band shirt, looking jarringly ordinary against the gathering twilight.
She stumbled, and for a heartbeat, James thought she might fall directly into their path. Then, as if sensing their presence, she whirled, her eyes wide and frantic. A flicker of recognition, a brief flash of hope, crossed her features before she gasped, visibly steeling herself.
“You have to help me,” she blurted, voice raspy with desperation. “They’re coming. They’ll come for all of us!”
Rick had materialized, silent as ever, blocking the path back towards the brownstone. “Who’s comin’, darlin’?” His smile was gentle, disarming, but his stance was pure predator.
“The Chasers,” the woman said breathlessly, and a bolt of icy recognition shot through James. Maggie’s fragmented prophecies had been riddled with references to those impossible hunters—figures of warped shadow and impossible angles. “They found me. I thought I was safe, they always…they…” Tears choked her, the words replaced by raw, gasping sobs.
A metallic clang echoed from inside the brownstone. Jackson cursed, his hand flying to his dagger. “Hide,” was all James had time to shout to the woman before the first unearthly shadow flickered into existence on the stoop. It was less a figure and more an absence of light, contorted and shifting.
“Well now…” Rick’s easy grin was replaced by a grim determination, rifle appearing in his hands with an efficient click. “This sure as hell ain’t no regular welcome party.”
Anya was already chanting, the air sizzling with strange energy as the blue glow from her hands intensified. Beside her, Jackson muttered under his breath, his fingers twisting around the hilt of his dagger. It glowed a faint green, echoing the unnatural luminescence that seemed to seep from the impossible angles of the Chaser.
The first shot echoed through the narrow street. The Chaser recoiled, a screech of static-like sound ripping from its impossible maw. But it wasn’t enough. It slithered forward, the warped shadow resolving into a grotesque imitation of a human form—too many limbs, eyes blazing with a malevolent light that seemed to suck in the life around them.
James focused, forcing his splintered visions to solidify. He saw futures flicker – Jackson slashed to ribbons by those impossible claws, Anya withered under the Chaser’s alien gaze. But there was one thread, thin and fragile, where they fought back. Where the woman with the fiery hair somehow made a difference.
“Cover her!” he shouted, surging forward. The world around him melted away, replaced by a network of shimmering possibilities. He grasped the most likely strand, focusing his will into bending its trajectory toward the outcome he saw.
Time twisted. His outstretched hand caught on a flicker of movement just as the Chaser lunged for the terrified woman. The impossible weight of the shadow slammed into him, sending both of them tumbling to the pavement. The woman screamed, but over the ringing in his ears, James heard the sharp crack of Rick’s rifle, the guttural roar of Jackson, and the surging hum as Anya unleashed a torrent of star-born energy.
Chapter 2: Symphony of Shadows
The subway car rumbled beneath the city, a metal beast groaning through arteries of concrete. James clung to a greasy handrail, the familiar press of bodies around him a strange contrast to the desolate ache in his chest. Even during rush hour, the crowd seemed to part around him, an invisible bubble of unease. He couldn’t really blame them; between his haunted eyes and the faded Army tattoo peeking from beneath his sleeve, he screamed “trouble” louder than any shouted profanity.
Anya stood beside him, posture deceptively relaxed. Only the faint, constant hum beneath her breath revealed the energy she constantly held in check. The starlight pulsed stronger inside the city’s steel and stone veins, and the constant thrum threatened to overwhelm her sensitive nature.
“Shouldn’t have let Salene take the good apartment,” Rick muttered from across the car. With his lanky frame and easy smile, he could have just been another Texan transplant on his morning commute, except for the way the worn leather of his sniper’s case gleamed faintly in the gloom.
Home was a generously used term for their squat—a converted warehouse space above a Chinatown noodle shop reeking of fish sauce and sizzling garlic. Salene’s knack for the arcane somehow snagged them the place, its location warded with enough sigils and protective cantrips to make James’ hair stand on end. It was better than the rat-infested flophouse they’d crawled into after Maggie’s summons led them to the city, but only barely.
A wave of guilt crashed over him. Maggie, with her fractured visions and gentle madness, was still holed up in that upstate asylum. Her frantic note—scrawled on the back of a stolen napkin and delivered by a flickering, amorphous shadow that made even Jackson flinch—was how they knew the Chasers hadn’t given up the hunt.
“Maggie’s next,” Lyrion’s voice echoed in James’ head, a ghostly whisper from the connection they shared. Since that first terrible night, echoes of Lyrion’s thoughts bled through—fractured whispers of impossible geometry and shifting timelines. James was learning to compartmentalize them, but the constant hum beneath his skull made it just that bit harder to pretend he was still normal.
The subway screeched to a halt, and a surge of commuters tumbled out. James’s eyes flickered across them, cataloguing potential threats, escape routes, the way the shadows clung just a bit too heavily to that gaunt woman shivering on the platform. Vigilance was exhausting, but it was the only thing keeping them alive.
A flicker of movement caught his eye. A man in a faded business suit, hunched over a crossword puzzle, but his eyes weren’t on the grid. They were fixed on Anya, widening with a mix of hunger and unease. The starlight that wreathed her like a barely-contained aura was, apparently, quite visible to those who knew what to look for.
“Tourist,” Jackson grunted, following James’ gaze. “Probably sniffin’ out a supernatural sideshow. Reckon I should entertain him?” The gleam in his eye spoke of a predatory nature that had nothing to do with the arcane dagger at his hip.
“Not yet,” James replied. Violence drew attention. Attention drew the Chasers. It was a dance they’d been stumbling through since arriving in the city—staying under the radar while desperately searching for clues on how to protect themselves and Maggie from those impossible hunters. Nights were spent poring over grimy, leather-bound texts Salene unearthed in shadowy occult bookshops, or trailing figures who whispered of otherworldly alliances in cobwebbed speakeasies.
The suit twitched, reaching into his jacket. James’s hand hovered near the makeshift sheath at his waist, an uncomfortable compromise of steel and arcane energy that was their best shot against the Chasers. A tense moment stretched, but the man just withdrew a worn paperback, spine cracked. He scurried off at the next stop, casting one last, fearful glance over his shoulder at Anya.
“This ain’t sustainable,” Rick hissed as the train lurched away from the platform. “We’re sittin’ ducks, waitin’ to get plucked.”
“We’re working on it,” Anya said, her voice clipped. But beneath the brave words, there was a tightness around her eyes, the echo of a thousand nights spent staring into the darkness, waiting for the shadows to take form.
New York was a sprawling hunting ground, and they were starting to realize they might be the prey.