The walk to the hospital felt longer than it should have.

  The city had settled into that gray stretch between evening and night, when the sky stopped pretending it was blue but had not yet committed to darkness. Streetlights flickered on one by one, washing everything in pale amber. Cars passed. People laughed. Someone argued on a phone a few steps ahead of us.

  Normal things.

  I hated them.

  Tatsuya walked beside me, hands in his coat pockets, posture loose in a way that meant his mind was already ten steps ahead. He had not spoken since we left the office. Neither had I. Words felt fragile right now, like they might crack something if used wrong.

  The woman was awake.

  That was the only thought that mattered.

  Alive. Conscious. Able to speak.

  A breakthrough.

  I told myself not to expect too much. Not to build it up. But my mind reached anyway, filling in gaps it had no right to touch. A name. A voice. A detail that mattered. Something that would finally give shape to the man who had been orbiting my life like a blade just out of sight.

  The hospital loomed ahead, all glass and clean lines, light spilling out through its windows like it was trying to convince the world it was safe.

  The automatic doors slid open.

  The smell hit first. Disinfectant, recycled air, something faintly metallic underneath it all. The sounds followed. Footsteps, murmured voices, the distant beep of machines keeping time with lives that refused to stop.

  We checked in without resistance. Too many things had happened recently for anyone to question us too hard.

  Room 714.

  The elevator ride was silent.

  I watched the numbers climb, feeling that familiar itch under my skin. Doom stayed quiet. Not suppressed. Not resisted. Just waiting, like it understood this was not its moment.

  The doors opened.

  The hallway was dimmer than the rest of the hospital, lights lowered for rest hours. A nurse passed us, nodded, and kept walking. No alarms. No panic.

  Hope crept in anyway.

  Room 714 sat at the end of the hall.

  I hesitated with my hand on the door.

  “She’s stable,” Tatsuya said quietly. “Doctors say she’ll remember.”

  I nodded once and pushed inside.

  The woman lay propped up against pillows, wrapped in white bandages and tubes. Bruises still showed where healing magic and medicine had only slowed the damage, not erased it. Her face turned toward us the moment we entered, eyes widening.

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  Fear flickered first.

  Then recognition.

  “You,” she said, voice hoarse. “You’re the one.”

  I stepped closer. “Yes.”

  Her breathing quickened, then steadied as she forced herself to calm down.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I thought… I thought I was going to die.”

  “You almost did,” I replied. Honest. Calm.

  She nodded, swallowing hard. “They said I could talk. If I felt up to it.”

  Tatsuya moved to the side of the bed, already pulling out his tablet. “We’ll take it slow,” he said. “Just tell us what you remember.”

  She took a breath.

  “My name is Hana,” she said. “I live alone. I was coming home from work when he grabbed me. He didn’t wear a mask. He didn’t hide his face.”

  My pulse picked up.

  This was it.

  “He talked,” she continued. “The whole time. Like we were having a conversation. Like I was supposed to understand.”

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  Her eyes flicked toward the window.

  “He said I was… practice,” she whispered. “That I was loud, but not important. That someone else would hear about me.”

  The air changed.

  Not sharply. Not violently.

  It thickened.

  Breathing suddenly felt harder, like the room had grown smaller without moving an inch. Doom stirred, not in hunger, but in instinctive warning. Something else pressed in alongside it, heavier, older, suffocating.

  Tatsuya felt it too. I saw it in the way his shoulders locked.

  “Hana,” he said carefully, “did he say his name?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  Her voice steadied, like she was proud of herself for holding on this long.

  “He said I should remember it. That I wouldn’t be allowed to forget.”

  Her mouth opened to speak again.

  A shadow crossed the window.

  The glass tapped once.

  Soft. Deliberate.

  I turned.

  A man stood outside the seventh-floor window as if gravity were optional. He looked young, unsettlingly so, with neat black hair and sharp, handsome features that felt wrong on something like him. His eyes were gray, calm and curious, studying us the way someone examines a puzzle they already know how to solve.

  The pressure intensified.

  It pressed against my chest, my throat, my thoughts. Not Doom. Not magic as I understood it. Something overwhelming, asserting itself simply by being present.

  The man smiled.

  Bright. Excited.

  “Oh,” he said, voice carrying easily through the glass. “So this is what you look like up close.”

  Hana screamed.

  The sound barely finished forming.

  The man lifted one finger and flicked it downward.

  Hana’s body jerked violently. Blood bloomed across the sheets. The machines shrieked, spiked, then flatlined.

  Silence collapsed inward.

  I moved.

  Doom surged up my arm on instinct, reality already bending around my hand, but the man tapped the glass again.

  Once.

  “Ah,” he said, almost apologetic. “Let’s not rush things.”

  I froze.

  “You see,” he continued, excitement clear now, almost childlike, “this building, three others nearby, and one underground parking structure are all rigged.”

  He tilted his head, studying my expression like this was fascinating.

  “So if you try anything…”

  He mimed an explosion with his hand.

  “Boom.”

  My teeth ground together.

  Tatsuya didn’t move. His eyes were locked on the man, absorbing everything.

  I spoke instead.

  “Why are you here?”

  The man’s smile widened, delighted.

  “Oh,” he said, “isn’t it obvious?”

  He leaned closer to the glass.

  “I wanted to meet you. In person. My future successor.”

  The word hit harder than the pressure.

  “To introduce myself properly,” he continued. “Manners matter.”

  He pressed his palm to the window.

  “Call me Moloch.”

  The name settled into the room like something ancient and hungry.

  “I don’t hate you,” Moloch said. “I don’t even dislike you. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  His eyes flicked briefly to Hana’s body.

  “She was too loud,” he added lightly. “Noise ruins good experiments.”

  Something inside me cracked, slow and silent.

  “You killed her for noise,” I said.

  “For excess,” Moloch corrected. “Same thing.”

  Sirens began to echo in the distance. Staff shouted down the hall. Chaos was arriving.

  Moloch straightened, satisfied.

  “I’ll leave now,” he said pleasantly. “So our little game can progress naturally.”

  He stepped back from the window.

  “We’ll talk again soon,” he said. “I think you’re finally ready to play.”

  Then he was gone.

  The pressure vanished with him, leaving the room feeling hollow, wrong. Machines beeped uselessly. Footsteps thundered closer.

  I stood there, staring at the empty glass, Doom coiled tight and silent inside me.

  This time, it wasn’t whispering.

  It was listening.

  Waiting for its turn.