The single, bare bulb in the sub-basement hummed like a dying insect, its weak light a mockery of the dawn that was surely breaking outside. Time had become a slippery, meaningless thing, measured only by the frantic clicking of Jax's keyboard and the slow, aching creep of exhaustion through Maya's bones.
Leo had been silent for over an hour, hunched over his tablet, his face a pale mask of concentration in the screen's glow. The only sounds were the rustle of digital pages and Chloe's soft, irregular breathing as she sat with her eyes closed, trying to trace the fading echo of Alastor's pain.
Jax finally broke the silence, his voice raspy. "I'm in. It's a mess. Their internal chatter is... chaotic. They've lost him. Completely." A grim smile touched his lips. "He's a ghost. Vanished after that... light show. They're scrambling, expanding the search grid into the sewers, the subway tunnels."
"So he's underground," Maya said, a sliver of hope piercing the dread.
"Or he's a pile of ash," Jax countered, ever the pragmatist. "That blast looked... final."
"He's not ash," Chloe whispered, her eyes still closed. "He's hiding. The pain is less sharp now. It's a dull throb. Like a wound that's been bound. He's... conserving energy."
Leo let out a sharp, sudden breath. "Found it." He looked up, his eyes wide with a mixture of triumph and disbelief. "It's not much. A fragment. In a digitized copy of a 14th-century bestiary that was dismissed as pure fantasy." He turned his screen towards them. It showed a faded, intricate drawing of a massive, three-headed dog, its fur etched with spirals, standing guard before a sealed, monolithic door. The script below was Latin.
"Custodes Infernum," Leo read, his voice hushed. "The Hound-Keepers. Guardians of the 'Porta Interdicta'-the Forbidden Gate. It says they were a tribe of warrior-shamans from a 'lost, golden city beyond the setting sun' who bound their souls to the 'Spiritus Canis'-the Hound Spirit-to stand eternal watch against the 'Tenebrae Primordiales'... the Primordial Shadows."
He looked at Maya, the weight of the words hanging in the dusty air. "It's him. It's exactly what we saw."
The confirmation was a seismic shift. They were no longer chasing a mystery. They were chasing a legend.
"Guardians," Maya repeated, the word tasting like hope. "Not weapons. Guardians."
"The text says 'bound their souls,' Maya," Leo cautioned. "That implies a cost. A sacrifice. This power he has... it's not natural. It came with a price."
Before she could answer, Chloe's eyes snapped open. "He's moving. The current... it's shifting. He's coming closer."
"Where?" Maya was on her feet instantly.
Chloe pointed a trembling finger towards the far wall of the basement. "That way. It's faint, but it's there. A... pull."
It was all they had. They gathered their meager supplies-Jax's laptop, a bottle of water, the crushing weight of their new reality-and slipped back out into the city.
The world outside was a study in cruel normalcy. The sun was up, casting long, sharp shadows. People were heading to work, clutching coffee cups, their faces bored and ordinary. The contrast was jarring.
Maya felt like a ghost walking among the living, her every nerve screaming that she was being watched, that at any moment a hand would fall on her shoulder.
They followed Chloe's intuition, a ragged, nervous group trying to look like hung-over students. She led them away from the main thoroughfares, into a quieter, more residential area of old brownstones and small, fenced-in parks.
"He's close," Chloe murmured, her brow furrowed in concentration. "The signal is... clearer here. He's stopped moving."
They found themselves in a tiny, forgotten community garden, tucked between two buildings. It was overgrown with weeds, the plots neglected. In the center was a gnarled, ancient oak tree, its branches a skeletal canopy against the brightening sky.
And there, sitting with his back against the massive trunk, was Alastor.
He looked... smaller than he had in the trench. His head was bowed, his arms resting on his knees. The magnificent, otherworldly armor was caked with mud and something darker-soot, or maybe blood. His long, black hair was matted and tangled. He was the picture of utter defeat.
He didn't look up as they approached, but his posture tightened, a hunted animal sensing presence.
Maya held up a hand, stopping the others. "Wait here."
She approached alone, her steps slow and deliberate, the way one might approach a wounded wolf. The grass crunched under her feet. He flinched at the sound.
She stopped a few feet away, close enough to see the fine tremors running through his frame. The early morning light caught the angles of his face, highlighting the sheer, impossible weariness etched into his features. He smelled of ozone, cold earth, and old metal.
"Alastor," she said softly.
His head snapped up. Those molten amber eyes, now clouded with pain and exhaustion, locked onto hers. There was no recognition this time, only a deep, primal wariness. He looked from her to the others, his body coiling, ready to bolt or fight.
Maya slowly, carefully, knelt down in the grass, putting herself at his level. She made no sudden moves. She just looked at him, trying to project calm, trying to bridge the impossible gulf of time and terror between them.
He watched her, his breathing shallow. He was a creature of stone and shadow, and she was a flickering, confusing flame from a world he could not comprehend.
She had an idea. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the only food she had-a half-crushed protein bar from her backpack. She held it out on her open palm, an offering.
He stared at it, his head tilted in confusion. He looked from the wrapped bar to her face, then back again.
"Food," she said, her voice gentle. She mimed bringing it to her mouth and eating.
Understanding dawned slowly in his eyes. It was a basic, universal need. Hunger. He reached out a gauntleted hand, his movements hesitant. His fingers, surprisingly graceful despite the armoured gloves, plucked the bar from her palm. He studied it, turning it over, sniffing it cautiously. He looked at her one more time, a silent question in his eyes.
She nodded encouragingly.
He fumbled with the wrapper, his unfamiliarity with the plastic frustrating him. With a low grunt of annoyance, he simply crushed the bar in his fist, wrapper and all, and brought the crumbled mess to his mouth. He ate it in two quick, hungry bites, grimacing at the taste but swallowing it down.
It was a small, ridiculous victory. But it was a connection. A shared moment of need.
When he was done, he looked at her again. The wariness was still there, but it was now edged with a flicker of something else... curiosity.
His gaze lifted from her, over her shoulder, and his eyes widened. Maya turned to follow his look.
He was staring at the city. The sun had climbed higher, glinting off the glass and steel of the skyscrapers in the distance. A plane carved a white scar across the blue sky. The distant wail of a siren, a sound so commonplace to her, made him tense. The sheer, overwhelming scale and alien nature of this new world was reflected in his stunned, horrified expression.
He wasn't just a man out of time. He was a seed from a dead forest, dropped into the heart of a metallic jungle.
He looked back at Maya, and the confusion in his eyes was so profound it was heartbreaking. This was the guardian of a forbidden gate, the last warrior of a golden city, and he was sitting in the dirt, terrified by an airplane.
He spoke again, that same, ancient, guttural language. But this time, it wasn't a rasp of pain or a roar of defiance. It was a question. A single, plaintive, lost syllable that hung in the morning air between them.
It was the first brick in the bridge. And as Maya looked into his lost, ancient eyes, she knew there was no turning back. They were his keepers now.