Chapter 1 — The Invitation
Warehouse rumor • Neon in the rain • A promise in the dark
The rain hasn’t let up, and the walls still carry the throb of the bar below, but he ignores it tonight. He’s already decided he’s not staying in this apartment, not with the weight in the next room and the silence pressing in like a hand over his mouth. He pulls on a clean-enough shirt, runs a hand through his hair, and tells himself he just needs air. Space. Noise loud enough to drown out everything else.
He opens the closet and pushes aside the stolen shirts. The sketchbook is there, staring back at him like an accusation, but he doesn’t touch it. Not tonight. He grabs his jacket instead, the one that still smells faintly of cigarettes and rain, the one that makes him look harder than he feels.
The monitor flickers behind him. Another IM appears, sharp and red against the dark.
L: 11pm. Costumes optional. Bring your darkness.
A second message drops a beat later, just an address. No explanation. No name. No question mark.
Down by the old cold-storage warehouse near the pier.
The words make his stomach twist. He knows that place too well. Everyone does. The old cold-storage building where the refrigeration units never fully shut down, leaving the whole place cold even in July. Kids say the walls sweat in winter, and the concrete hums if you press your ear to it. There’s a story about a DJ who vanished during a New Year’s rave, last seen slipping into one of the back corridors that shouldn’t have existed. Some nights, people swear you can hear music coming from inside even when the building’s locked up and dead.
He stares at the messages, jaw tight. He’s got the darkness they’re asking for—he wears it like armor, black nails, black eyeliner, the scuffed boots that have seen more fights than friends. But it’s a costume too, and he knows it. Underneath the black, he still feels like a poser, someone playing at menace while barely holding his own pieces together.
Across the street, under the busted lamp, the figure is still there. Watching. Waiting. Like it already knows where he’s going.
The cursor blinks on the screen, patient now, like it’s sure of him.
He pockets his lighter and reaches for the long black leather coat he dragged out of the closet earlier, the one that still smells faintly of dust and cold air, now draped across his bed like it has been waiting for him. The heavy thing swallows his frame when he pulls it on, the sleeves creaking softly, familiar and almost grounding. His rings catch the weak monitor light, silver and cheap metal glinting like teeth, and the layered necklaces at his throat shift coldly against his skin. He pauses at the door, torn between marching across the street to confront the stranger under the busted lamp and following the pull of the warehouse and its message, wondering with his hand on the knob which threat is worse, the one watching him or the one calling him.