Hariharan's words hung in the air between them, heavy with implication and unspoken meaning. Eve and Angela stood in the strange restaurant, surrounded by fresh food that had no business being there, waiting for answers that seemed to perpetually dance just out of reach.
"We will go to him," Hariharan said, his tone shifting from mysterious to more practical. He gestured vaguely toward the back of the restaurant, though whether he meant someone was literally back there or somewhere else entirely was unclear. "I think he is very close. Perhaps he will give you the information I've left out."
Eve let out a long sigh another programmed human behavior that her synthetic body performed even though she had no biological need for it. The sound carried her frustration and exhaustion in equal measure. "Alright," she said, her voice flat with resignation. "Where is he?"
Hariharan paused. The silence stretched uncomfortably long, and something shifted in his posture a subtle stiffening that suggested embarrassment or uncertainty. His scarred face was difficult to read, but the undamaged side showed clear discomfort.
"Uhhh..." he began, drawing the sound out in a way that immediately raised red flags. "I don't remember exactly where he is right now."
Angela's head snapped toward him, disbelief and irritation written clearly across her face. "You don't remember?" Her voice rose with each word. "Then how the hell are we supposed to find him?"
"Don't worry," Hariharan said quickly, raising one gloved hand in a placating gesture. "He's nearby. I can sense his presence. He should be very close, actually—"
He stopped mid-sentence, his entire body going rigid. His brown eye widened fractionally, and even the damaged eye seemed to focus more intently, as if he were perceiving something the others couldn't.
Angela felt her pulse quicken "What happened now?" she demanded, her hands unconsciously clenching into fists. "What's wrong?"
"He's nearby," Hariharan said softly, almost reverently.
"Huh? Who?" Angela looked around the empty restaurant, seeing nothing but tables of untouched food and flickering candlelight.
"Your companion," Eve answered for him, her voice distant and distracted.
Because something was happening to her.
It started as a sensation in her chest
impossible, because she didn't have a real chest, just a synthetic framework designed to house her power core and various mechanical systems. But the feeling was undeniable, intense, almost overwhelming. It felt like pressure building from the inside, like something was expanding within her ribcage, pushing against her artificial organs and threatening to burst through her skin.
Eve's hands flew to her chest, clutching at the fabric of her clothing as if she could somehow contain whatever was happening inside her. Her crimson eyes went wide with shock and confusion. Her mouth opened, gasping for air she didn't need, her synthetic lungs working overtime even though oxygen wasn't necessary for her survival.
"Eve!" Angela's voice seemed to come from very far away, muffled and distorted.
Eve's legs gave out. She dropped to her knees with a heavy thud, her hands still pressed desperately against her chest. She tried to speak, tried to explain what was happening, but no words would come. Only gasps sharp, desperate, entirely reflexive gasps that her body performed because that's what human bodies did when they were in distress, even if the distress made no logical sense.
*What is this?* she thought frantically, her processing systems flooding with error messages and diagnostic alerts. *I can't have a heart attack. I don't have a real heart. This shouldn't be possible. This shouldn't—*
**Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.**
The sound cut through everything else
through Angela's concerned questions, through Hariharan's calm observations, through Eve's internal panic. It was the sound of a clock, mechanical and precise, each tick and tock perfectly spaced, perfectly measured, perfectly inexorable.
But there was no clock in the restaurant. Eve had scanned every inch of the place with her enhanced sensors. There was no timepiece anywhere, no mechanism that could produce that sound. Yet there it was, growing louder with each passing second, filling the space until it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere simultaneously.
**Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.**
Angela's head whipped around, searching for the source of the sound. "Clock?" she muttered to herself, confusion and fear mixing in her voice. "What? What is this now?"
Her mind raced through possibilities, each more alarming than the last. *Is this some kind of attack? A Sinner ability? Some kind of temporal manipulation?* She'd heard rumors about certain individuals who could affect time itself, though she'd always dismissed them as exaggerated war stories. Now she wasn't so sure.
She gasped heavily as another possibility occurred to her one that made her blood run cold despite the synthetic nature of her circulatory system. *Either it can be a Sinner... or it's his companion. And if his companion can do this, what else can they do?*
The ticking grew louder still, and Eve's distress intensified. She was bent nearly double now, her forehead almost touching the floor, her entire body trembling with whatever was coursing through her systems.
Then Angela saw them.
Crows.
At first, it was just one a large black bird that appeared at the window, its dark eyes gleaming with unsettling intelligence as it peered into the restaurant. Then another joined it. And another. Within seconds, dozens of crows had gathered outside, perched on the windowsills, on the sign hanging above the door, on the eaves of the roof. They made no sound, didn't caw or flutter their wings. They just watched with those unnervingly intelligent eyes, their heads tilting in unison as if they were all controlled by a single consciousness.
"Crows?" Angela breathed, genuine fear creeping into her voice for the first time. "What does that mean? What the hell does that mean?"
She'd seen strange things in her life and had experienced impossibilities that would have broken most people's understanding of reality. But there was something deeply unsettling about those silent, watching birds. They felt wrong in a way she couldn't articulate, as if they represented something that shouldn't exist, something that violated fundamental rules of nature.
Hariharan remained calm, unbothered by the birds or the ticking or Eve's distress. He simply stood there, waiting, as if all of this was expected and normal.
The ticking reached a crescendo, each tick and tock crashing through the restaurant like thunder, and then
It stopped.
The sudden silence was almost painful in its completeness. The absence of that mechanical rhythm left a void that seemed to echo louder than the sound itself had been.
And into that silence came something else.
Music.
A flute, played with exquisite skill, each note clear and pure and hauntingly beautiful. The melody was unfamiliar not from any culture or tradition Angela recognized but it carried an emotional weight that transcended understanding. It sounded like longing and joy and sorrow all woven together, a musical expression of something too complex for words.
The crows suddenly took flight, all at once, their wings finally making sound as they scattered into the sky. But they didn't flee far
they circled overhead, forming patterns in the air that seemed almost deliberate, almost meaningful.
"Here he is," Hariharan said simply, and there was a note of genuine fondness in his voice.
Eve, despite the lingering pressure in her chest and the confusion clouding her thoughts, looked up. Her crimson eyes tracked toward the source of the music, and as she did, something stirred in her memory
or what passed for memory in her synthetic consciousness.
That voice. That sad, desperate voice that had promised to try again, to give her a good life. The tone was different now expressed through music rather than words but the essence was the same. The feeling behind it was identical.
She knew this person. Somehow, impossibly, she knew them.
Angela followed Eve's gaze, looking toward the same spot, and her reaction was far less contemplative. "What the fuck is this?" she muttered, her usual composure cracking under the weight of too much strangeness in too short a time.
The three of them Eve still on her knees, Angela standing tensely beside her, and Hariharan calmly observing looked toward the source of the flute music.
There, standing on a thick branch of one of the massive trees at the edge of the clearing, was a figure.
He was tall taller than Eve's 5'11" frame, probably around 6'1" or so. He wore a black waistcoat over a purple shirt that seemed to shimmer slightly in the dappled sunlight filtering through the canopy. Black pants and a dark blue top hat completed the ensemble, along with a black cape that hung from his shoulders and moved with a life of its own, swaying even when there was no breeze to justify the motion.
As they watched, he lowered the flute from his lips, and the music faded away, leaving only the natural sounds of the forest birds singing, leaves rustling, the distant sound of wind through the trees.
He opened his eyes.
They were purple. Not the muddy purple-brown that sometimes passed for purple in human eyes, but genuinely, vividly purple
the color of amethysts, of twilight skies, of flowers that bloomed in impossible gardens. Those eyes were striking against his tan skin, which suggested ancestry from somewhere warm and sun-drenched, though Angela couldn't pinpoint exactly where.
His hair was purple-black short and slightly messy, as if he'd just run his hands through it, styled in a way that was deliberately casual yet somehow still elegant. The color matched his eyes perfectly, creating an otherworldly appearance that made it clear he was no ordinary human.
He looked down at them from his perch on the branch, those remarkable purple eyes taking in Eve and Angela with obvious interest. A slow smile spread across his face charming, playful, with just a hint of mischief that suggested he was someone who didn't take life too seriously.
"Hello, ladies," he said, his voice smooth and pleasant, with an accent that was even harder to place than Hariharan's. It seemed to shift subtly as he spoke, as if he could speak every language perfectly but had forgotten which one he was supposed to use.
Angela, still on edge from everything that had just happened, responded with her characteristic directness. "Who are you?"
As if on cue, one of the crows that had been circling overhead descended, landing gracefully on his left hand. The bird settled there as comfortably as if it had done so a thousand times before, and the man absently stroked its glossy black feathers with his right hand.
He opened his cape with a flourish, letting it flow freely behind him in a way that should have looked ridiculous but somehow didn't. The fabric caught the light, and for just a moment, Angela could have sworn she saw stars glittering in its depths actual stars, entire galaxies compressed into the weave of the cloth.
"I'm a magician," he announced with obvious pride, his purple eyes gleaming. "From a different world. And my name is Nityen."
Before anyone could respond to this extraordinary claim *a different world?* he shifted his weight slightly, and the branch beneath his feet gave an ominous creak.
For a split second, his expression changed from confident showman to genuine alarm. His eyes widened, his mouth formed a perfect 'O' of surprise, and his arms windmilled comically as he tried to maintain his balance.
It didn't work.
The branch snapped with a sharp crack, and Nityen plummeted toward the ground, his cape billowing around him like broken wings. He landed with a heavy thud and a distinctly undignified grunt, sprawling on the forest floor in a tangle of limbs and fabric.
The crow took flight just before impact, cawing what sounded suspiciously like laughter as it returned to its perch in the trees.
Eve, still recovering from whatever had happened to her, looked down at the fallen magician with genuine concern. "Are you okay?" she called out, her voice shaky but sincere.
Angela's response was considerably less sympathetic. "What a clown," she said flatly, her earlier tension transforming into exasperated disdain.
From beside the restaurant's entrance, Hariharan let out a quiet laugh the first genuine amusement he'd shown since they'd met him. "He always does stupid things like this," he said, shaking his head with the fond exasperation of someone who'd witnessed such scenes many times before.
Nityen pushed himself up from the ground, brushing at his pants with exaggerated motions even though there was clearly nothing on them. The forest floor was covered in pine needles and moss, neither of which left visible residue, but he made a show of dusting himself off anyway.
"Uhh, there's no dust," Eve pointed out, confusion evident in her voice.
Nityen froze mid-brush, his hands still hovering over his thighs. Then he straightened up, and when he spoke, his voice carried a note of embarrassment that he was clearly trying to hide. "I know that. I just need to show... you know, maintain appearances."
"Ohh," Eve said slowly, and despite everything despite the confusion and the fear and the strangeness of the situation she felt something that might have been amusement. "So you really are a clown."
"No, I'm not!" Nityen protested, his dignity clearly wounded. "I'm a great magician!"
"Only clowns do things like this," Eve pointed out with impeccable logic.
"It was an accident!" His voice rose slightly, defensive now.
"But I think you're a clown."
Nityen threw his hands up in defeat, his cape swirling dramatically around him. "Fine! Whatever you think! Believe what you want!" He paused, then seemed to remember something. His expression shifted from defensive to playful, and he looked at Eve with renewed interest. "But now that I actually look at you properly... you're really beautiful, aren't you?"
The compliment was delivered with such casual charm that it took a moment for Eve to process it. When she did, her response was automatic. "I'm not human," she said, as if that explained everything, as if that negated any possibility of beauty.
Angela had heard enough. She stepped forward, her patience finally exhausted, and pointed her thumb over her shoulder toward where the restaurant had been though she still wasn't looking back at it. "Enough now," she said sharply, cutting through the banter. "Hey. Tell me what you know. Starting with what the hell this restaurant is."
Nityen's playful expression shifted to genuine confusion. His purple eyes tracked to where Angela was pointing, his head tilting slightly. "What restaurant?" he asked, and his confusion sounded entirely authentic. "What do you mean by that?"
"Don't try to act foolish," Angela snapped, her voice hardening with suspicion. This had to be some kind of trick, some kind of game. The restaurant had been right there just moments ago.
"But..." Nityen gestured behind them. "Look behind you."
Something in his tone made Angela pause. It wasn't the voice of someone playing a trick
it was the voice of someone genuinely baffled by what was being asked of them.
All three of them Angela, Eve, and even Hariharan turned to look back at where the restaurant had stood.
It was gone.
Not destroyed, not collapsed, not burned or dismantled. Simply gone, as if it had never existed at all. The clearing was still there, the trees surrounding it were unchanged, but the building itself had vanished without a trace. Even the ground where it had stood showed no signs of construction no foundation, no disturbed earth, nothing to suggest that anything had ever occupied that space.
Angela felt her breath catch in her throat. "What is this trick?" she demanded, though her voice lacked its earlier conviction. She whirled back to face Nityen, fury and fear mixing into something volatile. "You think this is a joke?"
"I don't even know what you're talking about!" Nityen protested, holding his hands up in a gesture of innocence. "I genuinely have no idea what restaurant you mean. I arrived here about five minutes ago, and there was nothing but forest."
"He's right," Hariharan interjected, his calm voice cutting through the rising tension. "He may call himself a magician, but his tricks are worse than a ten-year-old's. If he'd made a building disappear, he'd probably tell everyone about it for weeks."
"Hey!" Nityen objected, looking genuinely offended.
Angela's hands were shaking now not from fear, exactly, but from the sheer cognitive dissonance of the situation. "Now what's going to happen?" she asked, her voice rising with near-hysteria. "A ghost is going to appear? Is that what's next?"
"Uhh, there are no ghosts," Eve said hesitantly, trying to be helpful despite her own confusion.
Nityen also chimed in, laughing as if the very suggestion was absurd. "Don't be ridiculous! Ghosts don't exist. That's just superstition and fear of death manifesting as—"
Before he could finish his explanation, a sound cut through the forest. A voice, distant but growing closer, calling out with unmistakable urgency.
"ANGELA! EVE! WHERE ARE YOU?"
It was Carmilla.
Hariharan and Nityen exchanged a quick glance, some unspoken communication passing between them in that moment. Nityen's playful demeanor vanished, replaced by something more serious, more purposeful.
"Well then," Nityen said quickly, "we have to go."
He stepped toward Eve with fluid grace, taking her right hand in his before she could react. His touch was warm surprisingly warm for someone who claimed to be from another world and gentle. He lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, a gesture that seemed to come from another era entirely.
"Bye-bye, beautiful," he said with a wink, his purple eyes twinkling with mischief.
Then he snapped his fingers.
The sound was sharp and clear, and with it came a burst of red petals camellias, dozens of them, appearing from nowhere and swirling around both men like a miniature tornado. The petals glowed faintly, as if lit from within, and carried a scent that was sweet but also somehow metallic, like flowers growing in a garden made of copper and iron.
When the petals fell and they fell quickly, drifting to the ground like snow Hariharan and Nityen were gone. Vanished completely, as if they'd never been there at all. The only evidence of their presence was a small pile of red camellia petals scattered across the forest floor, and even those were beginning to fade, their color leaching away until they looked like ordinary fallen leaves.
Eve stood frozen, staring at her right hand where Nityen had kissed it. The sensation lingered warmth on her synthetic skin, the ghost of a touch that shouldn't have registered so strongly. "What just happened?" she whispered, more to herself than to Angela.
Angela had no answer. "I don't even know," she admitted, her voice hollow with exhaustion and confusion.
The sound of footsteps crashing through the undergrowth grew louder, and moments later, Carmilla burst into the clearing. She was breathing hard actually breathing hard, which was unusual for her and her carefully maintained composure had cracked. Her hair was disheveled, her coat streaked with pine needles and bark, and her eyes were wide with concern that she didn't bother to hide.
"What happened?" she demanded, looking between Angela and Eve with obvious worry. "I heard shouting, and you've been gone for nearly twenty minutes, and—" She paused, taking in the strange scene. Eve sitting on the ground, Angela standing nearby looking shell-shocked, both of them in an empty clearing with no explanation for why they'd run into the forest in the first place. "What's going on?"
Angela took a deep breath, trying to organize her thoughts into something coherent. "We found two weirdos," she began, and even as she said it, she realized how inadequate that description was. "One was a knight from some unknown empire that doesn't exist in any historical record. The other said he was a magician from another world."
Carmilla stared at her for a long moment, then laughed. It wasn't a mocking laugh, exactly, but it carried clear skepticism. "Maybe they were con artists," she suggested, though her tone indicated she was trying to be diplomatic. "Taking advantage of your confusion and the strangeness of the situation."
"I don't think so," Angela said quietly. She looked back at the empty space where the restaurant had stood, where impossible things had happened, where nothing made sense. "I really don't think so."
"Well, we can't waste time on this now," Carmilla said, her voice taking on the brisk, practical tone that meant she was back in planning mode. "The systems are ready. We need to go now. Whatever you saw or think you saw. We'll figure it out later. Right now, we have a deadline to meet."
She turned and started back toward the landing platform, clearly expecting them to follow. After a moment, Angela helped Eve to her feet, and they began walking back through the forest, leaving the mysterious clearing behind them.
The scene shifted.
High above the clearing, perched on the uppermost branches of two massive trees, Hariharan and Nityen sat comfortably, their enhanced senses allowing them to hear the conversation below with perfect clarity.
Nityen was grinning, clearly pleased with himself, his purple eyes gleaming with satisfaction. "You're a big liar, aren't you?" he said, nudging Hariharan with his elbow.
Hariharan's scarred face showed a hint of amusement. "At least I said my real name," he countered. "Unlike someone I know."
"Well, another truth then,"Nityen conceded with a shrug. "What about the restaurant? You summoned it, didn't you?"
Hariharan paused, his expression shifting to confusion. "Wait. I thought you vanished the restaurant. I didn't summon it in the first place."
Now it was Nityen's turn to look confused. His grin faded, replaced by genuine uncertainty. "I didn't summon anything," he said slowly. "I just arrived in this forest about ten minutes ago, and there was no building anywhere near here."
They stared at each other for a long moment, the implications of what they were saying settling over them like a cold fog.
"If you didn't summon the restaurant," Hariharan said carefully, "and I didn't summon it..."
"Then who did?" Nityen finished, his voice dropping to barely a whisper.
Below them, unaware of this conversation, Angela, Eve, and Carmilla made their way back through the forest. The clearing behind them remained empty and silent, showing no signs of the impossible restaurant that had briefly existed there.