Morning arrived wrong.

Not late — wrong.
Baltimore’s winter dawn usually crept: a gray smear pushing cold into everything.
Today the light came too fast, too bright, too thin, like the sky forgot how to be sky and was faking it.

Lucraen Hollowpage noticed immediately.
He was already awake, already dressed, already clutching his worn satchel thick with charms, seals, warding talismans, and a battered rosary that worked once. Once. Two summers ago.

He stepped out of his apartment building in Reservoir Hill, feeling the air like a presence pressing on his ribs.
Not heavy — interested.

Children walked to school in coats too big, backpacks swinging. Cars hummed. A bus exhaled steam. Normal sounds — but hollow, like someone stole the meaning from them and left only their shapes.

Lucraen muttered under his breath. A protection verse his grandfather taught him.
It didn't land.
The world didn’t reject it — it just… didn’t hear him.

Hope wasn’t absent here.
Hope had been erased.

He turned the corner toward Calvert Street. His phone buzzed.

Draven: Working nth zone. No cavalry. Be smart.

Lucraen exhaled and texted back:

Lucraen: They’re hitting schools first.

Draven: Chaos likes efficiency.

Lucraen locked the screen and jogged toward Booker T. Washington Middle School — the first report. Whispered panic in the PTA chat:

Kids hearing voices.
Teachers crying between lessons.
A counselor who forgot her own name.

He pushed through the front doors.

And the moment he crossed the threshold, he felt it:

A demonic choir humming through the halls — not loud, not dramatic, but casual, like children practicing vowels.

Every fluorescent flickered in arrhythmia.
Lockers sweated condensation like bodies.
Paper on bulletin boards curled and yellowed in real time.

A teacher passed him.
Her pupils dilated too wide, swallowing brown into black.
She smiled, trembling.

“We did everything right,” she whispered. “We were good. We were hopeful. Why are they taking the children first?”

Lucraen opened his mouth.

Her smile widened until a tear rolled from its corner, as if her face wasn’t built to move that way.

“You can’t fix this,” she breathed. “None of you can. It’s already here.”

She walked away like she delivered a package and her part was over.

Lucraen swallowed bile. His pulse thrashed. He pushed into a classroom.

Twenty-three students.

All silent.

Staring forward.

Not catatonic — listening.

To something he couldn’t hear.

A little boy near the window raised his hand slowly.

“Mr. Hollowpage?” His voice was soft, polite, strangled at the edges.

Lucraen forced calm. “Yeah, champ?”

The boy’s throat vibrated like something was pushing from the inside to speak through him.

“Why does it hurt when the voices tell me I don’t matter?”

Lucraen froze.

One girl giggled — sharp, serrated, nothing childlike in it.

Lucraen set his satchel down. Hands shaking. He whispered another prayer.

It didn’t echo.
It didn’t resist.
It simply fell, like chalk breaking before touching a board.

A whisper slid through the vents:

No one comes to save you here.

Another voice — high, angelic, mockingly sweet:

Hope left. Only hunger remains.

Lucraen clenched his teeth, forcing his breathing steady — academic discipline hiding rising terror.

He placed a warding sigil on the desk.
It rotted to ash instantly.

The giggling girl leaned her cheek on her hand.

“You’re losing,” she sang softly.

Lucraen fled the room before the tremor in his hands showed.

The hallway floor rippled like something underneath shifted, impatient.

His phone buzzed again.
Ronan: You feeling the air shake?

Lucraen: The children heard them first.

Ronan: Course they did. Innocence echoes louder.

Lucraen: I tried protection. Nothing stuck.

Ronan: We ain’t winning today. Just surviving.

Lucraen stared at that.
His phone felt heavier than it should.

A door down the hall opened on its own.
The guidance counselor stepped out.
She was smiling calmly, hands clasped like in prayer — though no prayer lived in her eyes.

“You shouldn’t be here, Mr. Hollowpage,” she said gently. “The city is being unmade. We’re only the first bites.”

He stepped back. “You’re not her…”

“Oh, sweet boy,” she cooed. “Nobody will be ‘themself’ here much longer.”

A whisper slid under her voice, layered deep:

You fight the ocean with a teacup.

Lucraen bolted out the school’s front doors.

His feet hit pavement. His breath made ghosts in the air.

He didn’t stop until his lungs screamed and the world blurred.

Baltimore did not chase him physically.

It didn’t need to.

The city simply watching him run was enough to break him.

He collapsed against a rowhouse wall, chest heaving. He pressed his palms into his eyes hard.

“You can’t fall apart,” he whispered. “You don’t get to fall apart.”

But the truth slid out anyway, ragged:

“I can’t save them.”

The wind answered, like a child humming a playground song in reverse.

A mother dragged her kid down the street, whispering, “Don’t listen. Don’t listen. Don’t listen—”

The kid whispered back, monotone: “They already told me your prayers don’t work.”

Lucraen’s stomach twisted.

This wasn’t possession.
Not corruption.
Not haunting.

This was conceptual predation.
Evil not as an act — but as physics.
A principle, self-aware, expanding.

He pressed his head back against brick and let the cold bite.

In a city without Hope, the first truth took shape:

No matter how hard Lucraen ran, healed, organized, taught, warded, or fought…

He was never catching up.

Not here.
Not anymore.

---

Baltimore isn’t falling.
It fell — and they now notice.

Lucraen isn’t weak.
He’s simply human in a place where humanity has no jurisdiction.