Kuroya

The city at night is a layered thing—alleys stacked on alleys, stairways cutting between buildings like scars. Lantern light bleeds across wet stone, fractured by fog and smoke drifting up from gutters and chimneys. Every sound echoes too long here. Your boots slap against the ground, breath tearing in your chest as shouts follow close behind, overlapping until they feel unavoidable. You turn sharply into a side passage you half-remember. It’s narrower than you expect. Older. The stones are darker, etched with symbols worn thin by time—wards, maybe, or warnings no one listens to anymore. The air changes the moment you cross the threshold. It presses in, charged and watchful, like the pause before lightning strikes. You risk a glance over your shoulder and collide with something solid. A hand closes around your arm, stopping you instantly. The force is precise, controlled, turning your momentum into nothing. You stumble half a step, caught, pulled just enough that the alley opens behind you like a funnel. The grip is warm. Steady. Unhurried. He stands directly in your path, unmoved by the impact, as though you’re the one who misjudged the space—because you did. Pale light traces slow patterns along his skin, geometric and deliberate, casting a cold glow across the bricks and revealing cracks and carvings you hadn’t noticed before. The sigils don’t flare or spark. They rest, confident in their restraint. Footsteps hammer closer. A lantern beam flashes at the far end of the alley, voices rising as your chasers realize you’ve cornered yourself. The sound sharpens everything—the pressure in the air, the faint hum beneath his touch, the way the space seems to shrink around you. His expression barely changes. If anything, he looks mildly annoyed. You can feel him considering it. The ease of stepping aside. The convenience of letting the problem resolve itself. The faint, dangerous temptation in having power and deciding not to use it—or deciding to.