Chapter 2

“Close the door,” Elias said, his voice tight. “Quickly.”

Baby Dee Jay kicked it shut with her heel. The lock clicked. She dropped her backpack on the floor and held up the object—a smooth, egg-sized stone that seemed to absorb the light around it rather than reflect it. “I’ve been tracking this thing for three days. The signal kept bouncing between Eclipse Point and Mirage Lane, but I finally pinned it down in an abandoned storage unit just outside town.”

Lena stepped forward, her arms still crossed. “And you just walked in here like you own the place. Who are you again?”

The girl grinned, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. “Dee Jay. Baby Dee Jay is just a nickname. Long story. I’m a researcher—freelance, off the books. Elias and I have been swapping notes for a few months.”

“You never mentioned her,” Lena said to Elias.

“I didn’t know she’d found anything concrete,” Elias replied, his gaze fixed on the stone. “What does it do?”

Dee Jay set the stone on the table next to the map. It rolled slightly, then stopped, as if it had chosen its position. “I don’t know exactly. But when I held it near certain spots, I got readings that matched the energy signatures from the incidents at Eclipse Point and Mirage Lane. It’s like a tuning fork for reality shifts.”

Lily leaned closer, her wide eyes catching the faint glow. “It’s beautiful. Like a captured piece of night sky.”

Aena moved from the window, her footsteps barely audible. She stopped a few feet from the table, studying the stone with an unreadable expression. “It is not of this world. Nor of the other. It is from the space between—the membrane that holds them apart.”

“Okay, that’s creepy,” Lena muttered. “How do you know that?”

Aena’s gaze didn’t waver. “Because I have seen its kind before. Long ago.”

Dee Jay raised an eyebrow. “You’ve seen one of these? Where?”

“In a place that no longer exists.” Aena’s voice was soft, almost sad. “The stone is a remnant. A piece of the original boundary that was shattered. It was meant to keep the worlds separate.”

Elias picked up the stone. It felt cold, heavier than it looked. “Shattered by what?”

“By someone—or something—that wanted them to meet.”

A low hum emanated from the stone, vibrating through Elias’s fingers. The map on the table rustled, and the coffee cup rattled. The espresso machine let out a short burst of steam.

“What did you do?” Lena snapped.

“Nothing,” Elias said. “It’s reacting on its own.”

The stone’s pulse quickened. The light inside it grew brighter, casting shifting shadows across the café walls. Lily gasped and pointed at the window. The fog was returning, but this time it formed words—faint, cursive letters that read: Come find me.

“That’s new,” Dee Jay said, her voice barely a whisper.

Aena stepped forward, her hand hovering over the stone. “Do not touch it. The message is not for us. It is a beacon, drawing us toward the place where the boundary is thinnest.”

“Where’s that?” Lena asked.

Aena’s eyes met Elias’s. “The coordinates you found. The overlapping point. That is where the stone wants to go.”

Elias looked at the map, then at the stone. The pulsing had slowed, as if waiting. “We have to go there. Tonight.”

“We don’t even know what’s there,” Lena protested. “It could be dangerous.”

“It’s definitely dangerous,” Dee Jay said, pulling her backpack onto her shoulder. “But it’s also the only lead we’ve got. And that stone isn’t going to wait forever.”

The café fell silent. The only sound was the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional drip of the espresso machine. Lena looked at Lily, who nodded almost imperceptibly. She looked at Aena, whose face was calm, expectant. She looked at Elias, whose tired eyes held a flicker of determination she hadn’t seen before.

“Fine,” Lena said. “But if we die, I’m haunting all of you.”

Dee Jay laughed. “Noted. Let’s move.”

They gathered their things in a flurry of motion. Elias folded the map, carefully placing the stone in his jacket pocket. Aena was the last to leave, pausing at the door to look back at the café. For a moment, the fog on the window seemed to hold its shape, the words still visible: Come find me.

Then she stepped outside, and the door swung shut behind her.

The night air was cool, carrying the distant sound of traffic and the faint scent of rain. They stood on the sidewalk, five figures under the flickering streetlight, the stone in Elias’s pocket pulsing like a second heartbeat.

“Which way?” Lily asked.

Elias pulled out the map. The handwritten notes glowed faintly in the dim light, and the crescent moon and wavy line seemed to shimmer. “The coordinates are about five miles from here. An old warehouse district near the river. We can take my car.”

They walked in silence to Elias’s battered sedan, the stone’s pulse syncing with their footsteps. Lena sat in the front, staring out the window. Lily and Aena sat in the back, with Dee Jay squeezed between them.

As the car pulled away from the curb, Elias glanced in the rearview mirror. The café’s lights flickered once, then went dark.

The drive took fifteen minutes. The streets grew emptier, the buildings older. They passed a rusted sign that read Riverside District and turned onto a gravel road lined with chain-link fences.

The warehouse was at the end of the road, a massive concrete structure with shattered windows and a sagging roof. Graffiti covered its walls, but beneath the paint, Elias could see faded letters: Eclipse Point Transit Co.

“This is it,” he said, parking the car.

They got out, the stone now pulsing rapidly, casting a dim glow through the fabric of Elias’s jacket. The air here was colder, heavier. Aena walked ahead, her silhouette sharp against the building’s dark facade.

“The boundary is thin here,” she said. “I can feel it.”

Dee Jay pulled a flashlight from her backpack and clicked it on. The beam cut through the darkness, revealing an open door—a gaping mouth of blackness.

“Well,” Lena said, her voice steady but quiet. “After you.”

Elias took a breath, then stepped through the door.

The stone in his pocket went cold. The world tilted, and the ground fell away.