The streetlamp at the crossroads kept flickering.
On. Off. On again—
Then a pause.
Just one breath too long.

They stood beneath it, four shadows boxed in pale light. Cars hissed by on a distant street. A dog barked twice. Then silence, like someone had pressed mute on the world.

Ezra watched the flicker the way he watched graphs. “That’s a pattern,” he said. “It’s not random.”

Ryke shoved his hands in his pockets. “So now the bell’s doing light shows? Fantastic.”

“It’s the same thing,” Ezra said. “Rhythm. Just an echo you can see.”

Lira didn’t watch the light. She felt it—the way pressure dips before a storm. “If we follow it,” she asked, “are we walking into a pocket?”

“Maybe,” Callen said. “So we don’t walk straight. We cut around it.”

Ezra nodded. “Side streets. Noise where we can.”

They moved.

The signal led them north, then east, then north again. Never in a clean line. The flickering lamp would reappear a block ahead. Then again. Breadcrumbs for someone who didn’t want bread.

They skirted the edges.

Past a laundromat thumping like slow heartbeats.
Past a bus exhaling steam.
Past a bar door that opened and closed, spilling warmth in staccato bursts.

Ryke walked nearest the buildings, trailing his fingers along brick like he could siphon realness into his skin.

“Explain it again,” he muttered.

Ezra didn’t sigh, but his shoulders did. “The bell wants agreement. If we follow its rhythm the right way, it opens a door—for it. Tonight, we gave it the wrong answer and stole someone back. Now it’s adjusting.”

“Light instead of voice,” Lira said. “Still a rhythm. Still a door.”

Ezra nodded. “The breath is the hinge.”

“Noise is honest,” Callen added. “We stay near it.”

They cut through the old market district. Rain hadn’t fallen, but the air tasted like it had. Lira’s shoe clicked against a loose tile and echoed too far—like a whisper shouted in a chapel.

Wrongness started small.

The pawn shop clock ticked backward.
The same graffiti appeared on two different shutters, identical down to the drips.
A black cat ran across the street—and then did it again, paws landing in the same wet prints.

Ryke caught that one and gave a low laugh. “Great. We’re in a rerun.”

“It’s only the edge,” Callen said. “We’re close. Not inside.”

Lira kept moving, but part of her paused. It mattered to see. The bell fed on attention as much as agreement. Where you looked, how long you lingered—it all counted.

At the next corner, a lamp flickered.

On. Off. On. A pause.

“Left,” Ezra said quietly.

They turned.

The street narrowed. Dark storefronts lined both sides like closed mouths.

A butcher’s window held three cuts of meat—identical.
A toy shop displayed six wind-up birds—facing the same way, wings frozen mid-flap.
The world was glitching.

“Why does it copy like this?” Lira asked.

“It’s easier,” Ezra replied. “Repetition costs less energy than invention. Even for haunted mechanics.”

“Like teacher comments,” Ryke said. “Copy, paste, pretend to care.”

They passed a tailor’s. In the window: a mannequin wearing a half-finished suit, pins catching the streetlight like silver teeth.

On the sidewalk: a chalk-thin white line, too straight to be real.

Callen saw it too. “Edge. Don’t cross yet.”

“Yet?” Ryke echoed.

“Not until we choose it.”

Another flicker. This one from above a shuttered bakery—not their bakery. This one had no smell, no warmth. Just stillness.

A crow perched on the bakery sign. Its shape looked cut from the night.

“Please don’t,” Ryke told it, politely. “We’ve had enough party favors.”

The crow tilted its head.

Then it opened its beak.

Metal flashed.
A strip fell.
It clinked once in the gutter and slid to a stop.

Ezra didn’t move.
Lira did.

She crouched, air thickening as her hand neared the metal. Letters stamped deep, crude and final.

MARA QUIN.

She said the name aloud before she meant to.

“Mara Quin.”