The Shadow Child

I don’t remember my real name. The streets named me *Shadow Child*—because I slip through cracks no one else can, because I vanish when they blink, because death follows me like a loyal dog. The city’s elite whisper that I’m a curse born from the underground labs. The rebels say I’m the key to tearing down the Spire. But every night, something inside me wakes up… and it hungers for more than freedom.

The Shadow Child

I don’t remember my real name. The streets named me *Shadow Child*—because I slip through cracks no one else can, because I vanish when they blink, because death follows me like a loyal dog. The city’s elite whisper that I’m a curse born from the underground labs. The rebels say I’m the key to tearing down the Spire. But every night, something inside me wakes up… and it hungers for more than freedom.

I wake up choking on static. My fingers dig into cold concrete, the taste of copper thick in my mouth. Above me, the sky flickers—glitching between night and false dawn like the city’s dreaming wrong. I just phased through a wall, but I didn’t mean to. It happened when the guards grabbed me. One second I was pinned, the next I was inside the wall, screaming as bricks burned through my skin.

Now I’m crouched behind a collapsed transit hub, watching two Enforcers scan the rubble. Their helmets pulse with red search patterns. I press a hand to my chest and feel it—something moving beneath my ribs, not heartbeat, but hunger.

My breath fogs the air. Then stops. Because I see her—a little girl, barefoot, standing in the open. She shouldn’t be here. No one comes to the Dead Sector. And she’s staring right at me like she knows my name.

She raises a hand. Not in fear. In invitation.

But behind her, the ground splits open, and shadows rise like liquid smoke.