The girl stared at him for a bit longer. She squinted her eyes slightly and opened her mouth barely. It looked like she was trying to process what she'd just heard. The look on her face was somewhere between confusion and mild disbelief.
"Excuse me?"
She tilted her head slightly and folded her arms.
"There are threads around you. They move—and stop."
Vayne's expression remained as distant and unreadable as ever.
The girl's left eye twitched. She scanned the area to check for any people near them before she spoke.
"...Are you fucking stupid?"
She spoke softly, without heat, like she was stating a fact instead of throwing an insult.
"...What?"
His voice came out softly after a slight pause. His gaze shifted for a moment. Not fully away from her, just not exactly focused on the same spot.
She exhaled, like she was already done with this conversation.
"You're either messing with me, or you hit your head on something."
His gaze shifted back towards her. This wasn't the reaction he expected. Not that he knew what to expect. His eyes moved to the space around her again. The threads were still around her. Getting close, only to be pushed backwards.
"…Wait."
The girl stared at him.
"You're telling me you can see the Veil?"
Vayne tilted his head slightly.
"Is that what it's called?"
A trace of annoyance crept into her expression.
Her eyes narrowed just a fraction more. She examined him head to toe. His clothes looked worn and loose. His skin was deathly pale and he looked malnourished.
"That doesn't make any sense—you don't even look like you'd know what that is, and you're saying you can see it?"
"I didn't say I know what it is," he said. "I said I can see it."
"..."
Her tone flattened.
"What are the threads doing right now?"
Vayne's gaze shifted slightly, following something near her shoulder.
"They move when you move," he said. "And slow when you stop."
She watched his pale eyes slowly.
"And?"
"When they get close to you, it's like something pushes them back."
Her expression didn't change.
"How close do they get to me?"
He lifted his hand slightly, hovering a few inches from her.
"About here."
"Do they ever touch?"
"No."
A brief silence followed. She didn't move this time. She just watched him. He felt as if she knew a lot more about this than him.
"Hmm."
She rested one arm across the other, bringing a hand to her chin. A quiet hum escaped her.
"Have you ever had an unbearable headache—something that just didn't feel normal?"
"Just now I had one."
Her eyes widened a little.
"But you're not—"
A brief silence settled between them. She didn't complete her sentence. Vayne was curious to what she was going to say, but before he could speak up she added,
"…One more thing."
"Are they reacting to you? Like do they move towards you or away?"
Vayne lowered his gaze to his feet. Threads gathered there, drawing in close—almost touching—before snapping back violently, far harsher than they did around her.
"...I'm not sure what's happening."
Her eyes sharpened immediately.
"…That's—"
The word didn't finish. They both froze. The world distorted.
A shudder ran through them, not of the body, but deeper. Their soul recoiled, as if something unseen had brushed against it. Not wrong in any way the mind could grasp—but wrong in the way silence feels when it shouldn't exist. Something like that should never be able to reach that deep.
A faint ringing crept into Vayne's ears.
No—not ringing.
His senses faltered. Like something had reached in and taken hold of them. Like everything he perceived was… wrong.
The sound of the city and the whirring electronics around them faded away.
Both of them froze. Not by choice. Something in them refused to move. A quiet certainty settled in their gut: if they moved, they would lose something they wouldn't get back. They couldn't tell if it was fear. The word felt distant. Hollow. Like something they used to understand. The silence pressed in.
Vayne's eyes shifted around. The threads were in a jumbled mess. But they weren't moving at all. Every single one of them had gone still. The girl inhaled sharply. She hadn't realized she'd stopped breathing. Their hearts pounded—the sound reverberating through something deeper than flesh.
Vayne took a step back.
Or... he tried to. His foot moved. But the ground beneath him felt like it moved with him. His expression didn't change—but his eyes widened, just slightly.
"…What…"
His voice came out slower than it should have. Like it had to push through something heavy. The girl's eyes were moving now, they were scanning everything around them.
Their surroundings didn't feel real. Almost as if reality was fractured.
Cutting through the deafening silence her voice came out.
"...Don't move too fast."
Her voice sounded almost muffled and slow.
Vayne noticed way more threads around them.
No.
It felt unreasonable to call them threads at this point. The place was practically enveloped in threads. It felt more like energy than anything.
This must be the Veil.
Taking a good look at his surroundings he noted an observation.
"The threads," he said. "They stopped."
Her eyes widened—like the realization was finally settling in.
"I… see. This must be—"
Her eyes narrowed slightly. Like she had confirmed her fear being true.
"…a Veil Zone."
Vayne looked at her. She had the appearance of someone who was well off. Vayne could tell that much. He could tell she knew more than he did in this situation.
"...What is that?"
She ignored Vayne. She lost herself in her thoughts. Like she was trying to remember something.
"...is this a distortion. Have we been severed from it...?"
A brief pause. It felt less like she was speaking to him, and more like she was just thinking out loud. She didn't sound certain. It felt as if she was repeating something that she had heard before. The girl's fingers tightened slightly at her side.
"The area we're in doesn't seem to line up properly. We need to exit fast. But how? Shit."
Vayne rotated his head towards her slowly.
He couldn't understand what was happening right now. No—he didn't need to understand it. If something was wrong—truly wrong—there was always a flaw somewhere. When it came to people, architecture, and even reality itself. He always knew, there was always a weak point. He didn't survive in the Lowline all his life just to lock and freeze up here.
"There has to be a point where it all intersects. Where it breaks. A weakness."
The girl snapped out of her daze, her thoughts still churning and looked at Vayne.
His eyes examined their surroundings. Just at the edge of where his vision settled. There was a gap in an alley. He focused his line of sight in that area.
The moment he did, his vision dimmed. Something had pressed down on his sight and forced it back. His body froze. This time he didn't have a choice and it wasn't fully mental. He lost all feeling and control of his body in an instant. His body locked in place without warning, every muscle tightening at once as if something had reached into him and held him there. His breath caught halfway in his chest and stayed there, refusing to release. The darkness in the alley deepened.
The edges of his vision started to collapse inward until everything outside that single point faded into a dull, suffocating black void. His eyes were open—he knew they were—but it didn't matter. His perception was diminishing.
Something occupied the space in front of him.
No—
was it a thing... or someone.
He couldn't really tell. His sense of sight was almost gone.
But he knew it was looking at him.
His heartbeat slammed hard against his ribs, loud for a second, then distant, as if it had been pushed away from him. His fingers didn't respond when he tried to move them. His legs felt like they had been cut loose from his control entirely.
And the longer he looked, the clearer it became—
it wasn't hidden in the dark.
The dark was coming from it.