Behind Nocturne's crumbling skyline lies another city's shadow—a war fought in whispers and symbols, waiting to swallow everything whole.
The message burned on Asher's phone like a live wire.
"The Eye awakens. Velvora's gates are weakening."
He didn't need more context. The words were clear enough—and dangerous enough to jolt something primal inside him.Asher shoved the phone into the inner pocket of his coat, breath visible in the cold air as he stepped away from the half-collapsed storefront where he'd eavesdropped on Rosa and Lucien. That moment—brief, haunted—felt like the final calm before something monstrous cracked open beneath the streets.
Nocturne City was never quiet. Even at its quietest, it pulsed—sirens screaming like banshees in the distance, neon lights flickering out promises no one believed anymore, drunk laughter from alleyways laced with the wrong kind of magic.
But tonight?Tonight, it was too quiet.The city felt like it was holding its breath.
His boots echoed as he cut through backstreets and service alleys. Every corner felt tighter than the last, every darkened window like an eye half-lidded with ancient memory. Asher's mind reeled back through years of fragmented case files and encrypted chatter that nobody in the higher-ups wanted to touch.
Velvora.
To the uninitiated, it was a myth. A name passed in murmurs, scrawled in graffiti behind dead-end streets, and muttered in the final words of cultists as they bled out in precinct interrogation rooms. It was the punchline of every madman's warning.
"The gate beneath Nocturne remembers."
"The Eye watches from underneath."
But Asher knew better now.
Velvora wasn't a slum.It wasn't a place you could map.It was a mirror city—a phantom twin layered beneath Nocturne like mold beneath a rotting floorboard.Where Nocturne had sold its soul to corporations, Velvora had bartered with older devils. Cults, black-market blood traders, necromancers, and entities that even the demonic syndicates feared—they all found sanctuary there.
And now, that sanctuary was splitting open.
A secret war had always existed.
But it wasn't waged with bullets. It was fought with symbols, rituals, memory.
Velvora's cults had once been scattered—small, hungry, fragmented. But now they had a name. A purpose.
The Eye.
An entity? A movement? A myth that became real through enough blood?
Asher wasn't sure yet.
All he knew was this: whenever the city cracked, whenever riots burned, whenever serial killers appeared in patterns only he could see—Velvora was beneath it. Whispering. Feeding.
And someone, somewhere, wanted that whisper to become a scream.
He lit a cigarette, shielding the flame with a cupped hand. The taste of smoke settled on his tongue like burnt parchment. The first droplets of fresh rain fell, hissing against the concrete like warnings too late to heed.
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Across Town – The Smoking Room, District 9
The kind of bar that only existed because no one had the guts to shut it down.
Succubi played pool lazily under stained chandeliers. A Minotaur bartender wiped glasses that never seemed to get clean. And in the corner, where the shadows were deepest, Lucien and Rosa sat in a booth that smelled like forgotten confessions and cheap gin.
Their earlier conversation had left a rawness between them. Not tension—just exposure. The kind that made silence more comfortable than words.
Lucien leaned forward, removing his coat and rubbing his temples. The heat in the bar made his scars itch.
"You think Asher's ready for what Velvora really is?" he asked without looking at Rosa.
She tilted her glass, watching the amber liquid catch the low light like memory.
"No one's ever ready." She took a sip. "Not even us."
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Meanwhile – Beneath Nocturne
The Gate shifted.
Far below the city, deeper than even the corporate sanctums or Syndicate blood pits, lay an old subway tunnel that hadn't appeared on maps for decades. Somewhere within that tunnel stood a stained-glass door, twelve feet tall and ringed with iron prayer glyphs.
Velvora's Gate.
It was breathing.
Hairline fractures now spiderwebbed through the colored glass. Each pulse from the gate sent new symbols rippling across the surface like an oil slick of memory and magic.
A serpent eating its own tail.A city skyline crumbling into ash.An eye—unblinking—surrounded by jagged flame.
And behind that door, beyond the veil, voices chanted in a language that didn't exist in this century. Not human. Not demonic. Something older.
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Cut to: Asher's Apartment – Uptown Ruinblock
Because even in the middle of a creeping apocalypse, Nocturne couldn't stop being ridiculous.
Asher opened his apartment door, soaked and sour, and was immediately greeted by the scent of burnt butter and incense.
"You're late!"A cushion hit him square in the face.
Lilith—his informant, sometimes-friend, full-time chaos agent—lounged on his couch wearing one of his shirts and zero shame. Her horns were polished. Her legs were stretched across the coffee table like a queen awaiting an audience.
A massive bowl of popcorn sat beside her on the couch. Some of the kernels moved. One growled softly.
"I made snacks!" she declared, grinning.
Asher dropped his coat onto the floor with a heavy thunk."For what? A ritual movie night?"
Lilith's grin widened. "No. For when Velvora's gate collapses and the world ends. Figured we could enjoy the last hours with snacks and maybe a B-movie."
Asher gave her a tired glare. "You're unhinged."
She fluttered her lashes. "I'm festive."
He sighed, falling into the armchair with a groan, letting the absurdity wash over him like a cleansing fire.It was always like this. When the pressure mounted, Nocturne insisted on breaking the moment with a demon on your couch and cursed popcorn wiggling in a bowl.
For the briefest moment, he smirked.
"...I hate this city."
Lilith threw another kernel at him.
Then—The apartment lights flickered.Power surged. The walls trembled like something massive had just breathed behind the drywall.
Lilith's playful expression dropped like a mask. Her tail stiffened. Her voice lowered.
"Asher…" she whispered, eyes narrowing."The Eye's already watching."
Outside, down in the alley below, the shadows no longer moved naturally. They stretched and twitched against the neon glow—elongated, sentient.
And faintly, somewhere between the silence and the rain, the chanting began again.
[End Of Chapter 98]
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Chapter 99 – When the Eye OpensThe symbols awaken. The lines between Nocturne and Velvora blur.Asher, Rosa, and Lucien converge on the gateway as cults begin their final ritual.And the Eye? It doesn't just see.It remembers who betrayed it.