The sky over Y City had become a treacherous thing. Since the emergence of the Great Frog, the atmosphere had thinned into a pale, sickly violet, and the clouds often curdled into shapes that defied meteorological logic.
For Evan, the rooftops were no longer just a place of solace; they were a vantage point from which he monitored the fraying edges of reality.
He was perched on the skeletal spire of an unfinished skyscraper in the financial district, two hundred stories above the whispering anxiety of the streets. He felt the ripple before he heard it.
Then came the shriek.
It was a sound of rending metal and predatory hunger, a high-pitched vibration that shattered the heavy glass panes of the floor below him. Evan stood, the darkness instinctively pooling around his boots, coiling like a loyal hound.
