The wind shifted.
Not hard. Not dramatically. Just enough to make the hum of the ventilation units change pitch, like a note sliding slightly out of tune.
Aren felt it before he heard it.
That pressure behind his eyes sharpened, the way it did when something nearby was holding itself together by force rather than by design. The warped metal at the base of the unit seemed to twitch—not move, exactly, but reconsider its shape, like it couldn't remember what it was supposed to be.
Mira took a cautious step closer. "See? That's not normal wear and tear."
Jace stayed where he was. "Nothing about this is normal. We should go. Like, now. Before we're the idiots in the news."
The metal creaked again.
This time, the sound was deeper. Thicker. Like stress traveling through something much larger than the rooftop.
Aren's stomach tightened.
"Something's under us," he said quietly.
Both of them looked at him.
Mira's eyes narrowed. "Under the building?"
"Under the city," Aren said. He didn't know how he knew. He just did. The feeling wasn't coming from the vent. The vent was just… reacting.
The concrete beneath their feet shuddered.
Not enough to knock them over. Just enough to make the dust near the wall jump and the distant skyline blur for a split second.
Jace swore. "Okay. That's our cue."
They turned toward the door.
It didn't open.
Mira tried again, pulling harder. The handle rattled, but the door didn't move.
"That's not funny," Jace said, stepping in to help.
Together, they pulled.
Nothing.
Aren felt it then—a tightness in the air near the door, like invisible hands pressing it into place.
"This isn't a lock," he said. "It's… stuck. Like the frame doesn't want to move anymore."
"Great," Jace muttered. "The building's having a mood."
The rooftop shook again.
This time, it wasn't subtle.
A low, rolling tremor passed through the concrete. Somewhere below, something cracked—glass, or stone, or both. The warped metal near the vent twisted a little further, folding in on itself with a sound like tearing cloth.
Mira took a step back. "Okay. That's new."
The air grew colder.
Not because of the weather. Because something was leaking into the space—something that didn't belong in the open.
Aren's chest felt tight. His ears rang faintly, like he'd just come down from a high place too fast.
Then the ground near the vent bulged upward.
Just a little.
Like something underneath had pressed a hand against the concrete to test it.
Jace stared. "Nope. Nope. Absolutely not."
The concrete split.
A thin, jagged crack raced outward from the vent's base, spiderwebbing across the rooftop. Dust puffed into the air. The bulge rose again, higher this time.
And then the rooftop broke.
Concrete shattered outward in a rough circle, chunks skidding across the roof. Something dark and slick forced its way up through the hole, dragging fragments of metal and stone with it.
It wasn't a creature in any normal sense.
It was too wrong for that.
It looked like a mass of folded shadows and half-formed shapes, as if someone had tried to build a body out of smoke and forgotten where the edges were supposed to be. Parts of it clung to the broken concrete. Other parts didn't seem to care about gravity at all.
The air around it warped, bending light in subtle, nauseating ways.
Mira froze. "What… is that?"
Aren couldn't answer.
Because his body was screaming at him that this thing was stress given form. A knot in the world. A pressure that had finally pushed through.
The thing shifted.
Where its head should have been, something opened—like a tear in fabric revealing more darkness behind it.
The rooftop lights flickered.
Then went out.
Jace grabbed Aren's sleeve. "We're leaving. Right now."
The door behind them groaned.
The frame twisted inward, metal bending like it was soft. The surface rippled, as if the door itself had forgotten how to be a door.
Mira's voice was tight. "That wasn't like that before."
The thing in the hole moved again.
And the pressure in the air spiked so hard Aren felt it in his teeth.
The concrete near the edge of the roof cracked. A piece the size of a backpack broke free and tumbled over the side, vanishing into the street far below.
Somewhere in the distance, a car alarm started screaming.
Aren's heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat.
They were trapped.
The thing turned toward them.
Not by rotating. Not by stepping.
It just… reoriented. Like the idea of "front" and "back" didn't apply to it.
The air between it and the three of them grew heavy, like wading into deep water.
Mira swallowed. "Aren… you said you can feel when things are about to break, right?"
"Yes," he said. His voice sounded far away to his own ears.
"Can you… do anything about it?"
He looked at the warped door. The cracked roof. The way the concrete around the hole was straining, not to collapse, but to stay the way it was.
He could feel it.
The same way he always did.
Everything here was screaming to either give up… or be held together by force.
"I don't fix things," he said. "I just… keep them from falling apart."
Jace stared at him. "That sounds really useful right now."
The thing lunged.
Not fast.
Not slow.
Just… suddenly closer, its shape stretching and folding in a way that made Aren's eyes hurt to follow.
Mira stumbled back. Jace dragged her sideways, barely avoiding a sweep of shadow that carved a deep groove into the concrete where she'd been standing.
Aren didn't think.
He moved.
He ran toward the door.
The air fought him. Each step felt like pushing against a strong current. His lungs burned. The pressure in his head spiked until his vision blurred.
He reached the twisted frame and slammed his hand against the metal.
The world went quiet.
Not silent.
Still.
The pressure he'd been feeling snapped into focus, like lines in a blueprint only he could see. The door wasn't broken. The wall wasn't broken. The rooftop wasn't broken.
They were just… being told to be something else.
Aren pushed back.
Not with strength.
With intent.
He didn't try to fix the door.
He didn't try to reshape it.
He just told it to stay what it was.
The metal screamed.
Not like a sound—like a feeling. Resistance. Tension. The sensation of two decisions colliding.
Then the frame stopped twisting.
The rippling surface smoothed.
The door shuddered… and held.
"Aren!" Jace shouted. "Behind you!"
The pressure spiked again.
Aren turned just in time to see the thing's shadow stretch toward him, tearing another chunk out of the rooftop.
His chest felt like it was going to burst.
He could feel the building now. The roof. The walls. The hidden supports. All of them straining. All of them close to failing.
He couldn't hold all of it.
He knew that.
But maybe…
Maybe he could hold enough.
He slammed his palm against the concrete.
And told the rooftop to stay.
The impact wasn't loud.
It was heavy.
Like the entire building had decided, all at once, to remember how it was supposed to exist.
The cracks stopped spreading.
The concrete stopped buckling.
The air snapped back into place.
The thing shrieked—not in sound, but in distortion, its shape stuttering like a broken image.
Mira and Jace stared.
"Aren…" Mira whispered.
His knees buckled.
He barely stayed on his feet.
The pressure didn't go away.
It just… shifted.
Because somewhere below them, something much bigger had noticed that the world had just pushed back.
And it did not like that.