A strange storm gathers above Kurants, and Lena, Leon, and Maya feel their powers reacting before they can understand why.
Kurants was never truly quiet, not even after midnight. Neon bled across the wet streets, music spilled from cafés and clubs, and the city kept moving as if it could outrun sleep itself. But that night something pressed against the skyline, heavy and wrong, and people kept glancing up as though they had heard a voice no one could quite name.
On the roof of an old stone building at the city’s centre, three young adults watched the horizon darken. Lena stood nearest the edge, flame-coloured hair snapping in the wind, her foot tapping out a restless beat against the concrete. Beside her, Leon held a pair of binoculars to his eyes, his face sharp with concentration. Maya leaned against the chimney with a leather glove in her hand, the blue stone set into it faintly warm against her palm.
"It’s coming," Lena said. Her voice was low, but she could not keep the strain out of it.
Leon lowered the binoculars. "Not just weather. Look at that line on the horizon. It’s like the sky is being swallowed."
Maya’s gaze stayed fixed on the growing wall of darkness. Lightning flickered inside it without sound, silent flashes that lit the clouds from within like something trapped and furious. Her grip tightened around the glove. "My power’s been surging for ten minutes," she said. "Something out there is pushing back. Or reaching in."
The air changed before anyone could answer. The rooftop went still. The city noise below seemed to vanish all at once, as if Kurants had been cut loose from the world. Then a white pulse swept over them, hard enough to make Lena stagger, Leon brace himself against the railing, and Maya inhale sharply as if she had been struck behind the eyes.
When the light thinned, a figure stood where there had been empty air a moment before.
It wore a hood pulled low over its face, but the shape of it did not belong to the rooftop, or the city, or anything Lena wanted to name. Leon lifted the binoculars again, then froze. Maya felt the stone in her glove throb once, violently, like a second heartbeat.
"Who are you?" Leon asked.
The figure raised one hand.
Marks of light flared across Lena’s skin first, then Leon’s, then Maya’s, bright and alive, pulsing under their clothes as if something inside them had just woken up. The roof shuddered. Wind tore across the stone. Far below, the bells of Kurants began to ring all at once.
And the hooded figure stepped forward, just as the darkness over the city opened wide.