The cold seeped through my clothes, a welcome anchor to reality. Kephriel was still on his knees, staring at his hands as if they'd betrayed him. The faint, sputtering glow of his chains was the only light on the deserted street besides the flickering orange lamp above.
A door creaked open down the alley. A man stumbled out of a bar, fumbling with a cigarette. He lit it, took a drag, and then his eyes focused on us.
He didn't scream. He didn't run. He just stared, his bleary eyes wide, the cigarette dangling from his lip.
"The hell?"
he slurred, squinting.
"You guys doin' a… a cosplay? Those chains look… pretty real, man."
Kephriel's head snapped up. The hollow shock on his face was replaced by pure, undiluted horror. He looked at his hands, at the faintly glowing chains, and then back at the drunk man who was seeing him.
Really seeing him.
"My mana," Kephriel whispered, the words barely a breath.
"It's too low. I can't… I can't phase to the spirits. I'm… stuck here."
The drunk, bored or freaked out, shuffled back inside, muttering about "weird kids."
We were exposed. Kephriel, a terrifying god of death, was now a visible, glaring anomaly in the normal world. And we were both powerless.
A new kind of panic set in. We couldn't stay here.
"We need to move,"
I said, pulling myself up. Kephriel followed, unsteady, his usual grace gone. He kept looking around as if the very air was attacking him.
We stumbled out of the alley onto a slightly busier street. A couple walking hand-in-hand gasped and quickly crossed the road. A car slowed down, the driver's face a mask of confusion before he sped off.
Kephriel was a ghost made flesh, and he was terrified of his own visibility.
"I need energy," he hissed, clutching his chest.
"Anything. A flicker of sorrow, a spark of rage… I'm fading."
An idea, dark and terrible, formed in my mind. The Mindbreaker power. The cold serpent in my chest uncoiled, intrigued.
"Then let's go farming," I said, my voice cold.
I led him to the mouth of a different, louder bar. People spilled out, laughing, arguing, flirting, drowning their sorrows. A buffet of negative emotions.
I didn't need to do much. I just stopped trying to hold it in.
I let the aura spill out of me. The profound, century-weighted loneliness. The despair of a life lost. The Mindbreaker field washed over the crowd.
It wasn't an attack. It was an infection.
The laughter died. A couple mid-argument fell silent, their anger evaporating into a sudden, inexplicable hollow ache. A woman celebrating a promotion suddenly felt like it was all meaningless. The wave of quiet despair rolled through them, and for a moment, the street was dead silent, every person touched by a shadow of my truth.
And Kephriel… fed.
It was subtle. No dramatic lights. But I saw it. The faint blue glow of his chains strengthened, just a fraction. The tension in his shoulders eased. He took a deep, shuddering breath, his form solidifying. He was siphoning the dregs of the despair I'd created.
It was working. We were parasites. And it was the most alive I'd felt since being dragged back.
We did it again. And again. Moving through the night, a plague of quiet sadness, with Kephriel growing steadily stronger behind me, a shadow growing more substantial.
After the fourth bar, he finally spoke, his voice regaining a sliver of its old strength.
"Enough. I am stable. For now."
We stopped in a quiet plaza, away from people. The night air was clear. And that's when I saw it.
Hanging in the sky, perfectly full and impossibly large, was the moon.
But it was wrong.
It wasn't the waxing crescent that had been in the sky the night of the festival, the night this all began.
It was a full moon. Brilliant, complete, and utterly out of place.
My blood ran cold. I hadn't just been gone for a day in the void. The time dilation… it was worse. So much worse.
"Keph," I said, my voice tight. "How long were we in the void?"
He followed my gaze upward, his enhanced eyes taking in the lunar phase. He calculated, his brow furrowed. Then his face went pale again.
"The chase felt like hours…" he muttered.
"But the transition… the energy between dimensions…"
His eyes widened. He looked from the moon back to me, a new, different horror dawning on his features.
"Rafael,"
he said, the name a grim pronouncement.
"A full moon cycle."
He swallowed, the truth a physical weight.
"A month. We've been gone for a month."