The apartment lights were low when Lucraen came in, the kind of low that meant Tess was home but hadn’t bothered to brighten anything. The living room smelled faintly of ginger tea and some cheap sandalwood candle she’d burned halfway down until the wick drowned itself. Tess sat on the edge of the couch, her shoulders hunched, hands cupped around her mug even though the steam had stopped rising hours ago.

Lucraen knew that posture.
The world had gotten inside her again.

He set his keys quietly on the counter and crossed the room, boots soft on the worn rug. Tess didn’t look up immediately—she was staring at a case notebook open on her lap, the pages filled with scrawled notes, clipped photos, printed incident reports. She was supposed to close the book at home. She never did.

“You okay?” he asked gently.

A beat.
Then her voice, low, tired, almost cracked.

“No. Not tonight.”

Lucraen sat beside her, not touching yet, not pushing. Tess swallowed and closed the folder with a trembling exhale.

“Three of my kids didn’t show up this week,” she whispered. “Not sick. Not suspended. Just… gone. Their teachers thought they transferred. Their parents said they left early with an uncle. Luc… they don’t have uncles. Not even on paper.”

He felt a cold pulse through his chest. The kind that meant the darkness his world dealt with was sliding into hers.

She rubbed her forehead. “One girl—eight years old—was talking to someone none of us could see. And the drawings…”
She opened the folder again, slid out a picture.
A child’s crayon sketch.
A long, towering shape with too many arms, leaning over a small stick figure in a school hallway.

Tess’s hand shook. “She said it follows her home. That it hums songs she’s not allowed to sing.”

Lucraen touched her knee softly. “You’re carrying all of this alone.”

Her voice cracked harder. “I have to. I’m their only advocate.”

“You’re not alone,” he said. “Not here. Not with me.”

She leaned into him then, forehead against his shoulder, letting out a shaking breath she’d been holding all day. Lucraen wrapped an arm around her and let her rest. He didn’t promise her safety. He didn’t tell her he could fix any of it. But he was warm, and quiet, and she needed that more than the truth.

His phone buzzed.

Tess tensed against him.

Lucraen sighed, pulled it from his pocket, checked the screen.

DRAVEN: You up? Need you.
SEREN: Tell Luc I found something. Basement. Not human.
RONAN: Bro answer your phone. This one’s old. And loud.

Tess pulled back slightly. “You’re going out again.”

Lucraen kissed her forehead. “Not yet. Let me help you first.”

“You can’t help with this,” she whispered.
But she didn’t move away from him.

He held her until her breathing steadied, until her shoulders unclenched. The city outside buzzed with sirens and faraway shouts; Baltimore trying, as always, to swallow its own noise.

His phone buzzed again—two words this time.

DRAVEN: We move.

Lucraen’s chest tightened. He squeezed Tess’s hand. “I’ll come back.”

“You always say that,” she murmured. “And every time you leave, I feel like the city takes another piece of you.”

“I’m still here,” he said.

But they both knew it wasn’t a guarantee.

---

Later That Night — The Meet-Up

The abandoned lot where they met was lit only by a half-broken streetlamp buzzing with dying electricity. Draven stood near a graffitied wall, coat pulled tight against the cold, aura so heavy the air around him felt thick. Ronan leaned against a rusted dumpster, flipping a coin. Seren paced like a woman walking through invisible threads of danger only she could see.

Mira arrived moments after Lucraen did—and froze the second her eyes landed on Draven.

She went silent.
Then red.
Then stiff as a board.

Draven turned his head slightly. “Evening, Mira.”

She nearly dropped her knife. “H-hi—Draven. I—uh—I didn’t know you’d be here. I mean, obviously you’d be here, you’re always here, I just—didn’t—um—wow you look—different. Good. Great. Strong. Uh—tall?”

Ronan snorted. Seren hid a smirk behind her hand.

Draven raised an eyebrow. “You alright?”

Mira nodded rapidly. “Mm-hm. Yep. Totally. Fine. Never better.”

Lucraen whispered, “Smooth.”

She elbowed him in the ribs.

Draven gestured toward the alley entrance. “Two problems tonight. One haunting near Greenmount. One Leviathan entity trying to push out of the void near the library. We split.”

Seren stepped forward. “I’ll take the haunting with Lucraen. He knows the sigils. Ronan takes the perimeter.”

Ronan shrugged. “And the Leviathan?”

Draven’s eyes hardened. “Mira and I.”

Mira’s knees almost buckled.

Lucraen muttered, “Try not to faint.”

“I WILL FAINT IF I WANT TO, LUC,” she whispered furiously.

Draven didn’t notice. Or he noticed and pretended not to.

“Let’s move,” he said.

---

Mission One — The Haunting

Lucraen and Seren climbed the cracked steps of a three-story rowhouse, its windows fogged from the inside. Ronan stayed outside on watch, pacing the sidewalk.

Inside, the house moaned like something settling—except nothing inside moved. The air felt wrong, thick with old breath. Lucraen traced a sigil across the doorway.

“Not normal,” Seren whispered, eyes widening. “The walls… they’re listening.”

He nodded. “Let’s make them scream instead.”

The haunting wasn’t a ghost. It was a memory parasite—an echo of something that should’ve died decades ago. They tore it apart piece by piece, fighting through collapsing staircases, shifting rooms, and whispers that tried to convince Lucraen to open his wrists.

Seren fought like a storm.
Lucraen fought like a man too stubborn to die.

In the end, the house spat them out onto the street in a coughing fit of dust and black sludge.

Ronan tossed Lucraen a water bottle. “House still standing?”

“Barely,” Lucraen rasped.

“Good.” Ronan grinned. “We need it to find the next one.”

---

Mission Two — The Leviathan of Stories

Draven and Mira approached the cracked ground behind the old library. The air shimmered like heat waves though the night was freezing. A massive fissure pulsed with pale light, and from it rose shifting shapes—pages, words, half-formed narratives dragging themselves free.

A Leviathan of the void.
A beast made of unfinished tales.
A creature whose existence fractured reality with every syllable it uttered.

Draven stepped toward it calmly.

Mira stepped toward Draven in a state of hopeless emotional ruin.

“Stay close,” he said, drawing his blade.

“Yes—absolutely—I can stay close—like right here? Or closer? Or—”
She shut up when the Leviathan roared.

The battle was violent, unreal, a tug-of-war between fiction and flesh. Draven carved through its narrative limbs with cold precision. Mira covered him, throwing herself at anything that got too close to him—whether or not it was dangerous.

At one point she yelled, mid-swing, “DRAVEN WATCH OUT—NOTHING IS ALLOWED TO TOUCH YOU BUT ME—uh—I MEAN—THE GROUND. OR A WALL. OR—JUST—MOVE.”

Draven blinked at her once. Mira nearly dissolved on the spot.

Together they forced the Leviathan back into the crack, sealing it with a blow that made the earth shudder.

When it was over, Draven finally spoke.

“You did well.”

Mira’s expression went through seventeen emotional stages in three seconds.

“Thank you,” she whispered, trying not to die.

---

End of the Night — Back Home

Lucraen got home just before dawn.

Tess sat on the couch, lights still dim, waiting. Waiting with fear coiled so tightly around her that it looked like she was trying not to shatter.

The second he walked in, she stood. “You almost didn’t come back.”

Lucraen locked the door behind him. “Tess—”

“No,” she said, voice trembling. “I can’t do this. I can’t sit here wondering if your friends will text me instead of you. I can’t wait while the city tries to swallow you. I can’t watch you leave over and over and not know if—if this is the time you don’t come home.”

He stepped forward.

She stepped back.

That hurt more than any demon, any church, any expanse.

“Tess,” he whispered. “I’m trying.”

“You’re dying,” she said. “Piece by piece. And I’m so scared I’m going to lose you before I can even catch you.”

Lucraen reached for her hand, and after a long, thin second, she let him take it.

He pulled her into his arms, and she buried her face in his chest, shaking.

“I will come back,” he murmured. “I don’t promise anything else. But I promise that.”

Her voice broke. “I need you to keep that one.”

He held her tighter.

Outside, dawn crept between buildings.
Inside, the weight of their world pressed in from all sides.

But for now, Lucraen Hollowpage was home.

And that had to be enough.