The Author's Draft

Chapter 96 - 15: Before the Storm

The journey home was stranger than the journey out. The sky was still black, still split by the red veins of rift lightning, but it felt closer now—more insistent. The city thrummed with a kind of suspended panic, not the noise of an active riot but the mutter and pulse of people expecting something far worse. Every streetlamp that still worked cast double shadows. The rift’s horizon shimmered, barely contained.

Aiden keyed into the flat, the familiar sticky resistance of the lock and then the faint chemical smell of the lobby. Their building looked no different than before, but the tension in the air was such that even the cockroaches seemed subdued. They climbed to the third floor in silence, Callum glancing at every stairwell window as if the next flicker of light might be the harbinger of invasion.

Aiden let them in and locked the door behind. The leaking ceiling over the kitchen table was still leaking—this time with a lazy, metronomic drip that was almost comforting.

He called out: "Mum, we’re back."

A rustle from the bedroom, then the door cracked open and their mother stepped out, eyes wide and dark-circled, her cardigan misbuttoned in her rush. She saw Callum first, relief and anxiety warring across her face, then clocked the mask and stilled.

Aiden removed it, setting the demon face on the battered countertop, and for a moment there was nothing but the drip and the traffic sirens outside.

"How did it go?" she asked, voice thin with worry. "They said the systems might be down, we couldn’t get through—"

Aiden lifted his hands, palms out. "We’re okay. It went fast. Nobody got hurt." He glanced at Callum, letting him decide how much to reveal.

Callum clutched his ID card, then handed it over with both hands as if it were an exam paper. "I awakened," he said. "Summoner. They don’t know what rank yet. The machine broke or something."

His mother stared at the card, lips moving silently as she read it twice, then looked up. "Summoner? Like your—like your cousin on Dad’s side?"

Aiden shook his head. "Different. The system couldn’t even assign a rank. We’ll have to see what comes of it. But he’s definitely awakened."

She covered her mouth, blinked hard, and made a noise halfway between a sob and a laugh. She held Callum tight, then turned and grabbed Aiden by the sleeve and pulled him into the circle too, as if both boys were still seven and ten and in danger of being swept away by an undertow. She was shaking, but her grip was iron.

"Everything will be all right," she whispered, and in that moment it was clear to both sons that she knew it probably wouldn’t be, but would say it anyway for their sakes. "Everything will be—" She couldn’t finish. She just held them, drawing tight enough that the air squeezed from their lungs.

Callum let out a long breath and said, "Mum, you’re squashing me."

She didn’t loosen up. Instead, she tucked her chin over his head, then shifted and did the same for Aiden, like some mammalian ritual that would keep monsters at bay.

The flat was small, and the walls were thin, but in that moment it became a bunker, a denial of everything the world outside intended.

After a while, Aiden extricated himself, gently, and set water to boil for tea. The mundane motion restored something like order. He kept his hands busy with mugs and teabags while Callum slumped into the chair and let himself be fussed over—sleeves straightened, hair smoothed, motherly muttering about how his father should have been here to see this.

Aiden said, "Dad’s safer where he is," before she could voice the thought. "You know the protocols. Nobody gets in or out of St. Jude’s until after the seventy-two hours." He poured the water. "But he’s proud of you. He’ll call as soon as he can."

They sat at the kitchen table, three cups of tea steaming between them, and for a brief time the conversation returned to the familiar: which shop still had bread, whether it was worth going out to get more toilet roll, who was in charge of the building’s emergency alarm. But every topic circled back, unavoidably, to the two brothers now officially in the system.

"So what does this mean?" his mother asked, eyes fixed on Aiden as if daring him to sugarcoat. "You’re both hunters now. They’ll send you to fight when this all goes to hell, won’t they?"

Callum fidgeted with his mug. "They said the guilds will assign us training and a place to stay. Like an orientation but fast-tracked."

Aiden said, "I’ll be registered as independent. I’ll have more say in where I go." He didn’t mention the SS-rank in front of Callum—there was no point adding to the anxiety until it became relevant. "We’ll stick together. No matter what."

She looked at both of them, then gave a decisive nod. "Then that’s what we’ll do. We’ll stick together. Just like before."

Nobody spoke for a time. The drip in the ceiling counted the seconds.

From the street, a siren rose and fell, followed by the low pulse of a Hunter Association warning: "Please return to your designated safe zone by midnight. All nonessential travel will be restricted until further notice."

Red lightning flashed through the curtainless window, briefly turning all their shadows a vivid blood-orange.

Callum glanced at it, then at his brother. "When do you think it starts?"

Aiden said, "They’re estimating just over sixty hours, but with the way the rifts are acting, it could be sooner."

Their mother took both their hands, one in each of hers, knuckles white. "Then we’re going to have a good night tonight. The best we can. We’re going to laugh and eat and if the world wants to end, it can damn well wait until morning."

Aiden smiled, and this time it reached his eyes.

They made dinner—pasta from a box, the sauce a patchwork of whatever was left in the fridge. They ate, and told stories, and when the power flickered twice and the internet went out for an hour, they played cards by candlelight. Callum showed his new ID three more times, and each time his mother pretended it was the first, cooing over the hologram and the thumbprint and the little logo at the bottom. Aiden washed the dishes, Callum dried, and they left the window open just enough to smell the rain but not the city.

Later, after his mother and brother had gone to bed, Aiden stood in the darkened living room, looking out at the rift horizon. The city glimmered under the corrupted sky. Some buildings burned, some stood whole, some already gone dark and silent as tombstones.

The war would come, as sure as dawn. But for tonight, the flat held against the universe.

Aiden watched the red lightning fork and fade, and then he closed the curtain, and allowed himself, for a little while, to believe that everything would be all right.