The pull came as he reached the car.
Jared had taken only a few steps away from the abandoned site when his chest constricted, not with pain, but with a sudden inward pressure, as a breath being drawn from somewhere behind his sternum. He stopped, hand still resting on the cold metal of the car door, and closed his eyes.
Something tugged.
Not on his body, but through it.
He opened his eyes and saw the thread.
Impossibly thin. Finer than a hair. Black, without shine or texture. Pure emptiness pulled into a line. It came from his chest, not breaking skin, not causing pain. Just there, where nothing should be. It extended into the night, moving on a current he could not see. Winding between puddles and gloom. Always forward.
Jared stared at it, breath shallow.
Erebus stiffened beside him, ears flattening, eyes focused on the thread.
“This is not the site,” Jared whispered.
“No,” Erebus replied. “This is not the place.”
The thread fluttered once, a gentle insistence.
Jared closed the car door without getting in.
He followed.
The thread drew him from the main road. Into narrow back streets, the kind that never made it onto maps. Alleys wet from rain and oil. Light faded between buildings and did not return. Old logos, faded and stuck to the brick. Graffiti: Not All Dark. Reclaim the Light. Dumpsters spilling rot. Cardboard shelters collapsed in the rain, pressed against a clinic with windows so dusty you could write your name. These streets kept stories no one spoke. The neglect remained thick, nearly alive.
The city appeared hollow here. Not dangerous. Not charged. Just forgotten.
The thread tugged. Unspooling, endless. Slipping around corners, over broken concrete. Jared followed. Each step steady, deliberate. His attention focused on the path, nothing else. Heart beating, in sync with the thread’s pull. The beat became louder. No fear, only the sound of his footsteps, each one magnifying the dread that settled, slow and heavy, deep into his bones.
He knew, somehow, that he was late.
The thread led him to a cramped alley barely wide enough for two people to pass. A lone flickering light buzzed overhead, casting uneven illumination over wet brick and strewn debris. A cardboard box rested against the wall, collapsed on one side, rain seeping through its layers.
The thread ended there. It did not connect to a place. It connected to a person.
A young man lay on his side, curled next to the box. Knees drawn up, looking for warmth that was not there. Clothes loose, stained, worn thin. Hair covered with dirt and rain. Face pale. Lips blue. Chest rising and falling, shallow, uneven.
Jared dropped to his knees beside him.
“No,” he whispered.
The boy’s eyes fluttered open, unfocused. They did not see Jared. They did not see Erebus. They stared past them, pupils dilated wide, mirroring nothing.
The Dark clung to him, faint. A weak thread stretched from his chest, connecting to the thread Jared followed. Thin. Fraying. Barely holding.
There was no surge. No manifestation. No power gathering. Just recognition without understanding.
A gasp. Wet, rattling, torn from his throat. Fingers jerking once against the concrete.
Jared reached for him, sliding an arm under his shoulders, pulling him gently upright.
“It’s alright,” Jared said, even though it was not. “I’m here.”
The words meant nothing. His body convulsed once. Then stillness. The last breath slipped, a soft sigh. Resignation, not struggle. Jared felt it when the thread broke. It did not snap.
It crumbled.
The fragile Dark Thread dissolved. Fine black dust scattered on the moist air, vanishing before it touched the ground. No recoil. No backlash. The Dark did not remain. It left nothing behind.
Jared sat, holding a body already cooling. Rain soaked into his knees. His hands trembled. The alley felt empty. Not cleansed. Not resolved. Empty.
“This is it,” he spoke quietly.
Erebus said nothing.
The body in his arms looked ordinary. No wounds. No violence. Jared brushed matted hair from the boy’s forehead. Jared’s hand shook. No injuries, only the deeper pain. Hardship. Loneliness. Fists curling against the cold. Holding the torn edge of his jacket. Thin clothes, small frame. Neglect was written inside his bones. An aged bracelet on his wrist, suggesting affection once held. Within the quiet, Jared noticed the weight of it all. A life ending in silence.
No anchor. No threat. No monster. Just a person who had aligned and never realized what that meant.
Jared bowed his head, pressing his forehead briefly against the boy’s temple. He did not cry. His grief was too heavy, too dense for tears. This was what happened when someone like him was ignored. This was what happened when alignment went unnoticed. No alarms. No containment. No protocols initiated.
Just another death. Another number in the system. Another body taken from the streets. In the records, his life would be reduced to a single line. A code to mark his end. Cold detachment. Erased by official words. Loss recorded, never felt.
Draco Industries would never know about this unless he told them. And even then, they would not care in the way that mattered. They would ask what could be learned from the remains. They would ask if there had been a risk. They would not ask who he had been.
Jared sat for a long time. Rain seeping through his clothes. Holding the dead weight of a system that had failed this boy long before the Dark ever touched him.
Not all Tuners became Dark Anchors. He knew that now with an absolute conviction that settled like stone in his chest. Some of them simply died. And suddenly, painfully, he understood. The Dark had not forced him to become what he was. Draco Industries had.
They had taken a frightened, injured young man and wrapped him in protocols and fear and obligation. They had told him that exposure was inevitable, that manifestation was a certainty, that without them he would be a danger.
They had kept him close to the Dark, pushed him toward it again and again, reinforced the very pathways they claimed to fear. They had made him into infrastructure. They had needed him.
The rain went on falling, soft and relentless.
He made the call. Reluctant, but it was necessary. He could not bring himself to leave the boy here in the alley alone, even though he knew that it was the kindness. That was what would allow him a measure of peace. But he could not force himself to walk away from him, as if he didn’t matter.
When the cleaners arrived, their boots rang too loudly in the narrow space. They wore protective gear, masks obscuring their faces, gloves snapping into place with trained efficiency. "Biohazard logged," one of them muttered, barely a glance at the scene, the words breaking through the silence with a sharp finality.
They did not look at Jared.
They did not speak to him beyond confirming the retrieval. They took the body from his arms without ceremony, lifting it as if it were an object, not a person. The rustle of plastic merged with the wet air as the body was slid into a bag; the cold material crackled below a gloved hand. When they zipped it closed, the harsh, metallic hiss cut sharply through the humid, rain-soaked silence, making Jared flinch.
The bag was handled carefully, but not gently. As if it were hazardous. As if it were refuse. Jared watched silently as they carried it away. He knew where it would go. Down into the research levels. Onto a table. Into pieces.
Cold incandescent lights would shine on the stainless steel research table. The boy’s body would be placed there, below the harsh light, waiting for the careful examination to come. His body would be recorded in the plain language of research, turned into numbers and facts. No one would talk about who he was or what he could have been. Instead, his story would likely disappear into endless reports, just one more forgotten case.
The alley remained empty.
Jared stayed on the wet ground, beside the collapsed box. Legs numb. Erebus pressed against his side. He ran his fingers through the cat’s fur, centering himself in the familiar texture.
When Adrian arrived, he stopped a few feet away, taking in the scene with wide eyes.
“Jared,” he whispered.
Jared did not look up.
Adrian crouched near him, worry carved into every line of his face. He saw something fragile, something on the brink of collapse.
That was not what Jared felt.
Rage. Raw heat licking up from chest to throat. It simmered, a contained explosion. His jaw trembled with unspent energy. Clear, sharp, and focused. He felt betrayal forming into something solid. Draco Industries had not saved him. They had trapped him. They had put a leash on him and called it protection. They had made him destroy things that were more like him than the people who claimed ownership over his existence.
Adrian reached out tentatively. “Are you coming home?”
Jared finally looked at him. His eyes looked strange. Deep and dark, showing nothing. City lights fading into night, hiding what was real. The Dark in his eyes, not power, but truth. Surrounded by light, full of shadow. Something huge behind everything. Creation and destruction, tied to the lives that go unseen.
He said nothing. He stood, joints stiff, and followed Adrian to the car. The ride home passed in silence. Jared stared out the window, city lights melting into meaningless streaks. Adrian drove carefully, glancing at him every few moments, fear tightening his grip on the wheel.
Jared wondered, distantly, if Adrian was as safe as he wanted to believe. Adrian believed in Draco Industries. So had Jared. Could he blame him for that?
When they reached the apartment, Jared went to his room without a word and lay down on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Erebus lay down beside him, warm and solid, and Jared rested a hand on their back, stroking slowly.
Adrian waited in the doorway before stepping inside.
“Are you alright?” he asked quietly.
Jared turned his head toward him. His voice was barely more than a breath. “No.” It was the only truth he could manage.
Adrian swallowed. “What’s going on?”
“It’s coming undone,” Jared said.
Adrian frowned. “I don’t understand.”
Jared held out his hand. “Do you want to?”
Adrian stared at it. He remembered Qhall’s warning. That Jared and Erebus could pull him into their world, if they chose. Seeing it would change him. He hesitated only a moment. Then he took Jared's hand.
Fractures spider-webbed through Adrian’s mind. The world, held together by careful constructs, suddenly came undone. The finest strands of a dream falling to dust. The realm cracked open. Fine glass under strain. Truth revealed underneath layers of illusion.
Adrian fell into Jared’s memories. Into the alley. Into the cold rain. Into the empty ache of holding a dead boy whose only crime was being unseen. Absence of threat. Absence of power. The intolerable weight of meaninglessness.
He saw the lies exposed.
He saw every creature Jared had killed for the sake of containment. One loss after another appeared. Gunshots broke the silence, each fired out of fear and duty. Lives ended again and again, not by mistake, but because someone else decided who should live and who was a threat. A single empty bullet casing lay on the wet pavement, the brass dull in the rain. It was forgotten but still there, a quiet sign of the violence done in the name of protection, hinting that its effects would last long after.
He felt the rage and the grief and the dawning clarity that burned through Jared like a firestorm.
When Jared released his hand, Adrian moved back, gasping, heart pounding.
They stared at each other.
Wow, the scene where Jared follows the invisible thread and finds the young man in the alley is so powerfully written the way you describe the thread crumbling into "fine black dust" rather than snapping makes the loss feel so quiet and final. I'm really curious about the boy's bracelet you mentioned; was there any specific story or meaning behind it that Jared might have sensed in that moment?
He didn't sense anything, just noticed that it was something that suggested he had someone that cared about him once.
That makes it even more heartbreaking just a small detail showing he was loved once. You write emotions so beautifully. Btw, how long have you been writing?
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed. :) I've been writing since I was a kid, so about 40 years!