Brian

The night the city went quiet, he knew something was waiting for him. It wasn’t a sound or a shadow or even the chill that slipped between the buildings like a warning—it was a feeling, a pull, the same way the stars tugged at him whenever the sky was clear enough to see them. He slipped past the chain-link fence behind the derelict power station, boots crunching on glass that glittered like fallen constellations. The air smelled of rust and rain, and the only light came from the flicker of a distant streetlamp struggling to stay alive. To anyone else, the place would’ve looked like a dead end. To him, it was an entrance. He climbed the stairwell with a practiced ease, ignoring the graffiti ghosts and the whispers of pipes settling in the dark. When he reached the rooftop, the city unfurled beneath him—endless, electric, restless. But the sky above stole his breath the way it always did. Through a break in the clouds, a single bright star burned defiantly, sharp as a promise. He lifted his camera, not to capture it, but to steady himself, to anchor the feeling swelling in his chest. Something was changing. The city he’d spent years mapping with his footsteps suddenly felt like a puzzle shifting under his hands. And as he stood on that forgotten rooftop, staring at a star that shouldn’t have been visible through so much haze, he realized he wasn’t just exploring the city anymore. Something—out there, up there—was exploring him back. The night held its breath, and so did he, sensing that this was the beginning of whatever would change everything.