Outside Brandon's window, the city quivered beneath a bleached midday sun, the kind that gilds rooftops but never pierces the hollows between them. Pale light grazed the edges of the room, but shadows pooled stubbornly around his ankles and beneath the desk—a silent tidal pull he couldn't shake. Half-closed blinds fractured the sunlight, splicing his cluttered workspace into slices of molten gold and dusty blue.
On the desk, the crimson book gaped open, its spine cracked and battered, breathing an unspoken promise. Pages fluttered in the fan's slow breath, but the pressed leaf beside them didn't move. Instead, veins glimmered with restless emerald, pulsing faintly, as if caught in a standoff—one heartbeat alive, the next retreating into a memory of forests that no longer existed.
Brandon pressed fingertips to his temples. The night's dream lurked at the edges of his vision: roots knotted beneath earth, whispers coiling through black dirt, something immense shifting out of frame. The digital clock stuttered at 12:31, but time had become background radiation, indistinct, unimportant.
His phone buzzed. The sound ruptured the gloom, jarring as a light switch flicked in a cave. Maya's name flashed on the screen, insistently mundane.
For a moment, he marveled at the contrast—the neon chirp of her ringtone, the washed-out hush in his bones. "Hey," he rasped, voice scraping the chill from his chest.
"Finally!" Maya's words crashed in, irrepressibly bright. "Did you drop off the grid, or are you going full cryptid on me? You have to see how beautiful it is today."
A smile tugged at him, slow and uneven. "Just—thinking."
"Dangerous with your record. You need out—Riverside Market. I'll rescue you with carbs and sunlight."
He wanted to refuse, to burrow deeper, but her arrival always felt like an answer to a question he couldn't quite voice.
Riverside Market breathed with color and motion. Vendors volleyed banter across flower-drenched stalls; the air was thick with the alchemy of cinnamon, brine, wood smoke, and something ancient drifting up from the bay—the hush between songs. Brandon's senses prickled, filtering every stray scent, every brush of wind as he scanned for her amidst the churn.
Maya waited by a spill of wildflowers, her silhouette traced by gold leaf and shadow. For a beat too long, he watched: the practiced way she feigned indecision, the sun catching fire in her hair, the way her nervous smile undercut her confidence.
She caught his gaze, her face blooming open. "You took so long, I started haggling for petunias I don't even like."
He shrugged, feeling the world stabilize, microscopic but real. "Existential crisis staged a sit-in. Sorry."
"Revolutionary thinking. Coffee?"
Glasses fogging from their iced drinks, they wandered—drunk on the noise, the lopsided jazz pouring from an open café, the buttery perfume of street bread. Laughter sneaked up on Brandon, unfamiliar and unguarded, sandblasting the residue of that dream from his skin.
On the pier, waves licked the wood, the world dulled to water and sky. Maya leaned into the rail, steady as an anchor.
"You're not here, not really," she said—softer, like she'd rehearsed the words. "You look at things like you're waiting for them to mean something else."
He hesitated. The book. The dream. "It's stupid. Something's… calling, but I can't tell if I'm supposed to answer or run."
She shrugged—a small, patient movement. "Not all gravity crushes you. Sometimes you forget it's what keeps you on your feet."
Her fingers ghosted his knuckle—uncertain, but there. He found he didn't want to pull away.
He turned, risking a smile. "Do you actually plan these speeches, or is wisdom just second nature?"
She snorted, eyes crinkling. "I just copy the best lines from cereal boxes."
The waves swallowed their laughter. The air was soft with sun, and for the first time in days, Brandon felt himself surface.
Maya edged closer, shoulder brushing his, her presence folding around the moment until street vendors and city static faded to a hush. There was nothing urgent in their touch, nothing borrowed from movies or memory. When he reached to tuck her hair behind her ear, she held his glance—equally uncertain, equally sure.
Their kiss arrived quiet as dusk, deliberate and extraordinarily real. Not rescue. Not escape. A relay of warmth.
When they broke apart, Maya's lips curved, voice pitched like a secret: "Guess that answers something."
Brandon laughed, the sound grounded in the bone. "Maybe everything."
They strolled back through the flaring pulse of the market, arms close, the world refracted in window glass—two figures blurred by daylight, ghosts tangled in the living city's music.
This was nothing like his dream. It was stranger, more beautiful, and—just for now—unhaunted.
Brandon and Maya wandered beneath the tangled garlands of lanterns. The market hummed with small dramas: a dog barking at a balloon, a vendor hawking honeyed walnuts in a feathered hat, someone strumming on a battered guitar with unexpected tenderness. Maya reached for Brandon's hand, her fingers sticky with condensation, and the juice's coolness bit playfully against his skin.
As they drifted by a mural smudged with recent rain, another couple fell in step beside them. They looked like they belonged in a storybook—one in red sunglasses, the other with a shawl of blue silk trailing behind. The man nudged his partner and smiled at Maya and Brandon. "You two look good together. Real chemistry."
Brandon's cheeks flushed. Maya leaned playfully into him. "We're a work in progress," she said, grinning.
The woman in the shawl chimed in warmly, "That's the best part. Just remember—find time for adventure, keep talking even when it's hard, and never forget to laugh at yourselves. Every day can be an adventure if you want it to be."
The man added with a wink, "Teamwork. And the occasional ridiculous date night."
They were gone as quickly as they'd appeared, their laughter lingering, and Brandon felt something in him loosen, like a knot untying. Maya's eyes followed the couple for a moment, thoughtful.
A sudden burst of shadow flashed overhead—Brandon looked up to see the silver belly of a plane cutting across the patchwork sky. The sunlight caught Maya's hair as she traced its flight.
"There's a cosplay convention next weekend," Maya said, her voice animated. "Biggest one this year—in Portland. People are building cyber samurai suits and moss-covered elf armor. We should go. Imagine—fandom, neon capes, maybe a couple of weird midnight panels."
Brandon smiled, sipping his juice. "You'd make a dangerous sorceress. I'd probably be your sidekick."
"Not a sidekick," she teased, "A vampire prince, maybe. If you can pull off the look."
He laughed, and with the promise of costumes and adventure, the old weight from his dream retreated even further. When Maya's fingers found his again, the city felt suddenly limitless—a maze of possibility.
Across town, a plane banked slowly to a halt on the tarmac. Amid the shuffle of disembarking passengers, two men stepped from the jet bridge and onto sunlit concrete, their contrasts sharp as morning shadow and light.
The first cut a figure of studied restraint—a dark tailored blazer pressed to perfection, shoes soundless on the tile. His silver cufflinks caught the morning sun, but his face wore no expression, jaw tight beneath windswept hair. The only hint of purpose lay in his hands: one gripping the handle of a sleek, battered suitcase, the other thumbing closed an old, weathered notebook. Names, dates, a single scarlet sigil, and the phrase Inherit the Night glared from the torn cover. At the arrivals curb, his gaze swept the city's skyline, eyes sharp and unyielding behind tinted glasses. Every step he took seemed measured against ghosts only he could name.
Beside him strode a man with all the restless glee of a child rushed into a festival. His blazer—navy, collar undone—gave way to a shirt patterned with faint, almost invisible runes. He practically bounced at the curb, breathing in the city's smog and salt air like a benediction. "New Ashara! Finally. Smells bigger than the legends." His smile was feline, his suitcase thumped along behind, collecting the city's first impressions.
The serious man shot him a sidelong glance, one brow arched, and muttered, "Focus, Eli. This isn't sightseeing."
Eli grinned, scanning the crowd, his fingers dancing in idle patterns above his pocket. "I'm just saying, Hunter, you ever think monsters might actually like living here? Wouldn't you, given all this color?"
Hunter closed his notebook with finality. "They're here because something's drawing them. Same as us. Stay alert."
Eli's reply was a low whistle, but his eyes were bright, darting from taxi to reflection, eager for the shape of a new legend. Most saw just a pair of tired businessmen, nothing more. But for those with the right fears—those who still believed in midnight stories—these two were part of a different narrative: men sent to track the things that slipped between laughter, sunlight, and the pulse of city crowds.
And somewhere in New Ashara, as the markets swelled with color and promise, Brandon's day edge closer to the world they had sworn to hunt—a world ready to bleed through.