Natalia didn't hesitate. She lunged from her seat, rushing to the boy with the glasses who was still staring, open-mouthed, at the empty space.

  "How do you know her?" Natalia asked, her voice low and urgent.

  The boy blinked up at her, then a proud grin spread across his face. He fumbled with his phone, his small fingers swiping clumsily across the screen. "I found a video on the internet last week! Look!"

  He thrust the phone at her.

  The video was shaky, shot on a phone in a brightly lit restaurant. The audio was a chaos of screams and the deafening pop-pop-pop of gunfire. But the subject was clear: a blur of motion in a dark beanie and darker clothes.

  It was her. The Ghost-girl.

  Two robbers, masked and waving pistols, were shouting at terrified customers cowering on the floor. Then she entered the frame, a pale specter of motion. One of the robbers spun, firing wildly. The muzzle flashed, the sound explosive in the confined space.

  Natalia gasped as she saw the bullets. They didn't hit her. They couldn't hit her. They struck the air around her and ricocheted with sharp pings, like hail off an invisible shield, gouging the walls and ceiling.

  The figure moved with impossible speed, a streaking afterimage. She grabbed the first robber, the one who had fired, and hurled him sideways. He didn't just fall; he flew, crashing through a drywall partition in an explosion of dust and splintered frame, vanishing from view.

  But the video wasn't over. The second robber, panicked, was also firing. A bullet, deflected from the girl's intangible aura, screamed on a new trajectory, straight towards an elderly woman frozen behind a toppled chair.

  In that same microsecond, the pale girl was already there.

  It wasn't just speed. It was as if she had rewritten the scene, inserting herself between the bullet and the woman in the space between heartbeats. Her hand, a blur, snapped up. The camera caught the glint of something 'a bullet' trapped perfectly between her thumb and forefinger, an inch from the old woman's terrified face.

  The girl didn't even look at it. Her head was tilted slightly, her intense gaze still locked on the remaining threat. She dropped the bullet. It clinked, innocuously, on the tile floor. Then she turned, and the video ended as the cameraman ducked for cover.

  Natalia stared, her breath catching in her throat. This wasn't just a one-time miracle on a train. This was a pattern. This "Ghost-girl" was a known entity in the world's shadows, a force of nature who moved faster than bullets and caught them with casual, impossible grace.

  Her eyes, sharp and analytical, devoured the frozen final frame before the video cut out. She wasn't just looking at the girl's face anymore; she was studying her. The dark, tattered clothes. The pale, determined set of her jaw.

  And the legs.

  Natalia's finger stabbed at the screen, pointing. "The light on her leg. It's red."

  On the train, during the impossible stop, the glow from her prosthetic knee had been a steady, powerful violet. In the restaurant, captured in the chaotic strobe of gunfire, the light emanating from the same joint was a bright, warning crimson.

  The boy with the glasses nodded vigorously, as if she'd just asked him about his favorite superhero's power. "Yeah! It changes! Sometimes it's blue! It's so cool!"

  Cool wasn't the word Natalia would have used. Significant was. Crucial.

  The colors meant something. They weren't just for show; they were a system. A status indicator. Was it tied to her power output? Her emotional state? The specific function she was using? Violet for immense, sustained force to stop a train. Red for... what? Combat speed? Lethal intent?

  The mystery of the man in the suit had just doubled in size. Natalia had a million questions, and the boy with the phone had just handed her the first, tantalizing clue.

  A hand, gnarled and heavy with silver rings, shot out and clamped around Natalia’s wrist. The grip was shockingly strong. Natalia flinched, the phone nearly slipping from her grasp.

  The owner of the hand was an old woman who seemed to have been woven from shadow and rumor. Her hair was a wild cloud of iron-gray, streaked with defiant white, and her ears were a gallery of old piercings. A faded, floral-patterned shawl was draped over her narrow shoulders, and layers of colorful skirts rustled as she moved. She gently but firmly pried the phone from Natalia’s grasp and handed it back to the wide-eyed boy. "Go on, shav," she said, her voice a low, melodic rasp. "Back to your mother."

  She turned her gaze to Natalia. Her eyes were the most arresting thing about her: one was a sharp, dark brown, the other a milky, sightless blue, both set in a web of deep lines. The look in the seeing eye layered a physical weight of urgency in the air between them.

  "Do not ask questions that make the bird spirits lean in to listen," the woman whispered, the words smelling of woodsmoke and bitter herbs. "That girl is a shuvani of the new world. A guardian. You know what happens to those who catch the eye of angels? You draw the gaze of the things that prey on them."

  Natalia froze, her blood running cold. She stared at the woman's lined face, at the one piercingly aware eye. "What things?"

  The woman's frown deepened, the lines around her mouth carving into canyons of grief. "The quiet ones. The ones who do not hunt with claw and fire, but with silence." Her seeing eye glistened with a furious, helpless love. "They un-stitch you. My son... my Lasho, he saw a door that was not a door, opened in an alley wall. He was a curious boy." Her voice broke. "Now, his birth certificate is blank paper. The photos he was in, he is just a blur. Even the scar on my knee from when he was born... it is gone, as if his little hand never gripped me."

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  A spark of defiance, fed by the clue of the colored lights, made Natalia press. "How can that be?"

  The old woman’s grip on her arm tightened, the silver rings biting into Natalia's skin. She pulled her half a step closer, her face now inches from Natalia's. She didn't speak, she hissed, the words a venomous, ancient curse.

  "Because they do not kill you. They pluck your thread from the tapestry. They make it so your mother's womb remembers only a stillness."

  She released Natalia's arm and turned, her colorful skirts swirling as she melted back into the crowd of stunned passengers like a ghost returning to a forgotten story.

  Natalia stood rooted to the spot, her heart hammering against her ribs. The colors were a language, and she was starting to learn the alphabet. She wanted to dismiss the woman as a superstitious crone, but the specificity of the horror was too visceral, too intimate. The loss of a scar. The woman wasn't just talking about looking; she was talking about the very fabric of memory and existence. And her warning was clear: to notice was to have your life unraveled at the seams.

  Her eyes swept across the other passengers. A mature woman in a business suit met her gaze for a fraction of a second, then quickly looked down, folding her arms tightly. A man by the door gave a slight, almost imperceptible shake of his head, his expression grim. They knew. They’d seen things, too. They lived with this knowledge every day, and their silent counsel was the same: Don't look.

  "Un-stitched," the words echoed in the sudden, mundane hum of the restarting train. The chase was over for now, but the question was now permanently etched in her mind, a silent, pulsing signal in a spectrum only she seemed to notice, a signal that felt less like a clue and more like a target. The old woman’s warning wasn't a threat; it was a mother's desperate mercy.

  A low hum vibrated through the carriage. The lights flickered back to full brightness. Miraculously, impossibly, the train gave a smooth lurch and began to move again, as if the last five minutes of terror and wonder had never happened.

  The spell was broken. The mundane world reasserted itself with the quiet efficiency of resumed travel.

  Natalia turned away from the boy, from the whispers, from the ghost of the girl. She walked back to her seat on unsteady legs and sank into it, the plush fabric feeling less like comfort and more like a cage.

  She had a good life now. Her mother was safe. Her future was bright. She wanted to be alive to enjoy it. For now, the chase was over.

  ***

  The chandelier above Butter’s head shivered, its crystal teardrops catching the morning light and scattering it in fractured rainbows across the marble floor. She stood there, swaying slightly, her body a map of exhaustion: dirt-streaked, her prosthetic leg humming faintly blue, her knuckles bruised from the fight with Maze. The mansion smelled of polished wood and bergamot, a stark contrast to the blood and ozone still clinging to her skin.

  A tremor ran through her, subtle and deep. It wasn't from the fight. It was the aftershock of the train. In her mind’s eye, she saw it again: the screaming metal, the terrified faces pressed against the glass, the certain, messy death in that tube of steel. And one face in particular. A woman. Light brown skin, dark curly hair, a beautiful face with sharp, intelligent eyes frozen in fear.

  She looked like Winter.

  The thought was a sucker punch to the gut, so sudden and acute it stole her breath. The same profile. The same defiant set of the jaw beneath the terror. Butter’s heart gave a painful, familiar squeeze. She missed her. So much. Especially on days like this, when the weight of it all felt like it would crush her. The battles would be so much easier with Winter’s strength and calm skill beside her.

  But she was dead. Gone. Because their world was a meat grinder that chewed up the good ones and spat out the broken.

  Butter shut her eyes tight, pushing the thought down, locking it away. This was no time to break down. The weight of it settled on her shoulders, a heavier burden than any opponent. She hadn't just stopped a train; she had held a hundred fragile lives in the psychic grip of her octopus, felt their panic as a physical pressure against her own mind. Every scream had been a needle prick. The effort had left a hollow, aching fatigue in her bones that a thousand fights never could.

  From the lounge, the tinny laughter of a cartoon echoed, Prism was sprawled on the velvet couch, his kaleidoscope eyes flickering with the screen’s glow, his fingers absently tracing the shifting colors of his own tattoos. He didn’t look up.

  A shriek from the right. "BUTTER!"

  A blur of cherry blossoms and wild curly locs, Mango launched herself across the room, her pineapple earrings swinging wildly, her arms squeezing Butter’s ribs so tight she wheezed.

  "You’re not dead!" Mango shrieked, her voice too loud, too bright, but her hands, trembling.

  Butter stiffened, the sudden contact jarring her out of the memory. She felt the phantom strain in her temples from holding the train, the echo of a hundred heartbeats not her own. Then she melted into the hug, her own arms rising slowly, as if she’d forgotten how to hold someone, the simple human comfort feeling alien after such a vast, mechanical act of salvation.

  "Yeah," she murmured. "Not dead."

  Her eyes scanned the room automatically, skipping over Prism’s quiet form, the empty armchairs, the grand staircase... No Brad.

  A cold knot tightened in Butter’s stomach. The mansion felt wrong, unbalanced. Her gaze flicked back to Mango, who was now fussing with Butter’s shirt, trying to brush off non-existent dirt. That’s when she saw it: Mango’s hands were shaking.

  It was a fine, almost imperceptible tremor, but Butter saw it. She knew Mango’s every tell. This wasn't just post-battle adrenaline. This was a deep, rattled fear. Mango was never this quiet, this... fragile. And Brad was always with her. Always. He was her anchor, her steady ground. For her to be here alone, vibrating with this kind of anxiety...

  The cold knot turned to ice.

  "Where's Brad?" Butter asked, her voice low and steady, but the question hung in the air like a guillotine blade.

  Mango’s cheerful facade shattered. The smaller girl pulled back, her usual grin faltering, her trembling hands stilling for a moment as she wrung them together. Her voice dropped to a broken whisper.

  "He’s..." Mango’s voice cracked. "Brad’s dying. And we can’t help him."

  The words landed like a hammer.

  Butter’s breath caught in her throat, before Mango could blink she was already moving, her boots clicking too loudly on the marble, her pulse a drumbeat in her throat.

  The oak doors loomed ahead, heavy and dark, the carvings of serpents and thorns worn smooth by time. Butter pressed her palm to the wood, hesitated for a while, then pushed.

  The room beyond was shrouded in twilight, the curtains half-drawn, the air thick with the scent of antiseptic and something darker, sickness.

  Lóng Yán sat at Brad’s bedside, his massive frame hunched in a chair too small for him. He wore a sleeveless vest... his arms, usually a canvas of swirling, living ink, were now bare and vulnerable, the skin pale where the tattoos had been. His lip piercing glinted as he turned, his shoulder-length hair shadowing his face, but not enough to hide the red-rimmed exhaustion in his eyes.

  Then her eyes fell to him. Brad.

  Butter’s stomach dropped. He was pale as a corpse, his cheekbones sharp enough to cut, his skin stretched too tight over his frame. The rune on his chest, once a pulsing black sigil, was now a gaping maw, its edges rotting inward, devouring him. His breath was shallow, wet, each inhale a battle.