The workshop smelled of old paper and something sharp underneath, copper and burnt herbs maybe. Jared knelt beside the workbench, one hand bracing a copper casing while Michael traced a fine filament of binding wire across its surface. The charm glowed faintly at each pass, a pulse of blue light that caught the beads in Michael’s dreadlocks.
Jared’s fingers hummed with Dark, the familiar low thrum that lived in his bones. He kept his breathing even, matching Michael’s rhythm.
“Hold the angle,” Michael murmured. “Just there.”
Gobo hauled a wooden crate across the concrete floor twenty feet behind them. The goblin’s boots scraped, his breath came in grunts, and the crate thudded against a stacked pallet. He muttered something in his native tongue. Probably cursing the weight, or the world, or both.
Jared adjusted his grip. The copper casing was warm now.
“Good,” Michael said.
Then the universe tilted. Jared’s knees buckled. His hands flew from the charm and he caught himself on the edge of the workbench. The sound of rushing waters, but it came from inside his skull. The Dark Well convulsed. What had been a trickle became a tidal surge.
“Jared?” Michael reached out to him.
Jared was already on his feet. Erebus, curled on a shelf of old ledgers, lifted their head. The cat’s eyes caught the workshop light, yellow and luminous.
A Dark wire unspooled itself from his chest and whipped out into the world, stretching taunt and pulling. He grunted, putting his hand over the place where it connected.
"Aelith," Jared whispered. "Not again."
He scooped Erebus into his arms. The cat did not resist.
“Emergency. We have to go. Now. ” Jared started running towards the front of the warehouse.
Michael did not argue. He set down his tools, rose from his stool with that careful economy of movement that always betrayed his body’s limits. “Where?”
“Harborview Park.” Jared was already at the door.
The goblin dropped the crate. It cracked on impact, but he did not look back. His long, uneven strides carried him across the workshop faster than his bulk suggested possible.
Gobo demanded. “What’s happening?”
Jared did not answer. He was already calculating distance. Five minutes by car. He pressed his hand against the panel beside the door. The garage door rattled open. Michael’s sedan sat in the narrow bay, black and unremarkable, the kind of car that disappeared in parking lots. Jared slid into the passenger seat, Erebus curled in his lap. The cat’s fur was warm through his jeans.
Gobo folded himself into the back. His knees pressed against the front seat, his tusked jaw tight, his amber eyes fixed on Jared through the rearview mirror.
Michael's hand glowed blue and he snapped his cane down hard against the concrete floor, striding into the blue light that bloomed around him. He appeared next to the car and got into the driver's seat, tucking his cane between the seat and he door as he started the engine.
“West entrance. Park loop," Jared said, pointing ahead of them as if they could already see the location.
The car rolled forward. The garage door groaned shut behind them. Jared stared through the windshield. The street looked ordinary. People walked dogs. A bus hissed at a stop. Nothing seemed wrong. But the wire spun out in front of him and pulled hard against his chest. The roar of the River screamed in his ears. His bones thrummed.
Michael’s hands were steady on the wheel, but his jaw carried a tension. Gobo kept his mouth shut. That was unusual. Erebus pressed their thin body against Jared's stomach and purred.
Harborview Park rose at the edge of the district, a stretch of green that had survived Seattle’s endless redevelopment. Old oaks and pines, concrete paths, a playground that had been renovated three times in Jared’s lifetime. Michael turned into the entrance loop. The car rolled past the first benches.
Then Jared saw him.
The man was on his knees. Middle of the concrete walkway. Head thrown back. Arms flung wide. Dark poured from him. This was a storm breaking open. Black coils of rope spun out from his mouth and eyes, stretching out into the sky. His long blong hair whipped in the torrent and swirled with black smoke. Shadow wrapped up his arms and wraithed off his fingers. It poured off of him, thickening the air into something almost solid. The Dark thread stretched from Jared's chest to this man's chest, taunt and humming.
A lean man was clinging to the Dark user. His pink hair was wild, loose from its ponytail, falling across his face as he screamed. Jared could not hear the words yet. The roar of the Dark swallowed everything. But he saw the man's hands pulling at the Dark user's collar, gripping his shoulders, shaking him.
He’s trying to bring him back. Erebus's thought touched his mind softly.
Jared opened the door before the car stopped. Erebus leaped from his lap, landed on the pavement, and followed without a sound.
“Jared!” Michael called. “What are you doing?”
Jared did not answer. He walked. The Dark pressed against him. It was cold and hungry and lost, spinning without direction, without a vessel. It recognized him. It tasted his presence and pulled. He raised his hands, palms open. Jared did not stop walking. He opened himself to the Dark. The Dark rushed to meet him. It poured from Isaac like water finding a drain.
The pink haired man screamed. “Don’t touch him.! ” He grabbed at Jared.
Gobo moved. The goblin crossed the distance in four long strides. His thick arms wrapped around the man's torso and pulled. The man fought him, clawing, kicking, his glasses flying from his face. “Let me go! Let me go, he needs me! ”
“Quiet,” Gobo snarled. His voice was rough, commanding, the voice of a berserker who had held lines against worse than this. “You interfere, we all die. You understand? Let him work. ”
The man did not go quiet. But he stopped fighting. He sagged into the goblin's arms, sobbing and clutching at him.
Michael’s voice rose behind Jared, sharp and precise. He raised his hands in the air and let his cane fall to the ground. A blue dome of light bled across the sky. The Dark pressed against the boundary, found it solid, and churned inside the seal.
Jared reached the Dark user. Up close, the damage was visible. Fine fractures webbed beneath his skin, dark lines spidering through his veins. Cracks in glass. He was breaking, crumbling into motes of shadow that peeled from his shoulders and hair and fingertips.
The pink haired man sobbed. “Isaac. Isaac, please. Come back. ”
Gobo grunted and continued to hold him back. Michael leaned against the front of the car, holding up his arms and chanting.
A thin black wire stretched between Jared’s sternum and Isaac’s. It trembled. Vibrating with strain, pulled tight between two collapsing stars. This was gravity. This was a maw opening. He reached out. His hand touched Isaac’s shoulder. The moment skin met skin, the wire flared. Dark surged through Isaac, drawn to Jared, iron to a star. Isaac’s mouth opened. A sound came out that was not quite human, a note of release, of something pulled free from his bones. The Dark unraveled from him in strands of shadow.
The Dark rush out in an uncontrolled torrent that washed over Jared. Erebus stood behind him with his mouth open and drank the Dark that Jared was not able to absorb. As his body filled with the Dark it grew.
And then Isaac poured into Jared. A flood of sensation, of memory, of everything Isaac Baird had ever been. Jared felt it all in a single impossible instant.
A warehouse in the industrial district. Rain hammering a tin roof. Isaac’s hands, steady on a rifle he never wanted to fire. A small apartment. Morning light through cheap curtains. Someone’s laughter in the next room. A promise made in shadow, whispered into someone’s hair. I’ve got you. A child’s face. A woman’s voice. A door that closed and never opened again. Fear. So much fear. Not of dying. Isaac had made peace with that. But of failing the people who trusted him. And then, clear and bright and final: Take care of Kenan. A single thought. A trust. Then Isaac’s essence thinned. His form dissolved. The shadow that had been his body flowed forward, silver and dark and warm, pouring into Jared’s core. The fractures in the air vanished. Not healed. Empty. No Dark left to tear him apart.
Jared opened his mouth. The sound that came out was not a word. It was a scream of a vessel suddenly too full. He collapsed. His knees hit the concrete. His hands pressed flat against the ground. Erebus stood beside him, huge and still, yellow eyes fixed on his face. The Dark settled inside him. Vast and quiet and full. The wire snapped into nothing. Where Isaac had stood, only silence remained. Ash fell with the rain that had begun to fall, thin and cold.
The pink haired man, Kenan, stopped struggling against Gobo’s arms. He stared at the empty space.
“Isaac?” His voice was small. “Isaac, where did you go?”
Michael’s ward flickered, held, then dissolved. He let himself fall forward onto one knee, one hand raised, his blue eyes scanning the air for residual traces. Nothing.
Gobo released Kenan. The goblin’s tusked jaw worked, his eyes fixed on Jared, confusion and something like awe shifting behind them.
Kenan fell to his knees. “Isaac! ”
The name tore through the park. It hit the trees, the empty benches, the slide in the children’s playground. Nothing answered. Jared sat on the concrete. His chest heaved. His hands shook. He felt Isaac. Not as a ghost. Not as a presence hovering nearby. Inside. Folded into the space where his own Dark lived, warm and heavy and impossibly clear.
I’ve got you. Isaac’s own promise, returned to him. Jared opened his eyes and he looked at Kenan who was on his knees, searching the park with his eyes.
The rain fell harder.
Jared forced himself to stand. His legs shook. Erebus pressed against his side, warm and solid and grounding. Jared laid his hand on Erebus's back, realizing then hoe large they had become.
Gobo picked up Kenan’s fallen glasses. He held them out, tarnished and bent, and did not speak. Kenan took them. His hands were still shaking. He didn't look at them, just placed them on his face and continued to scan the park.
Jared pressed his palm to his sternum, where the black wire had lived, where the thread between two collapsing stars had anchored itself. Isaac was in there. Quiet. Waiting.
