The city exhaled its nightly breath, a sigh of sirens and distant traffic that rattled the single pane of glass in Elara’s kitchen window. It was a sound she had come to associate with duty. Inside apartment 13B, the air was still and cold, a pocket of unnatural silence that defied the metropolis outside. The cold emanated from the pantry, from the hairline fracture in the plaster that was not a flaw of construction, but a tear in the fabric of worlds.
It whispered to her. Not in words, but in feelings—a silken promise of rest, a velvet suggestion to simply step aside. Elara ignored it, her movements precise as she measured out a line of coarse salt onto a silver dish. Her grandmother, Annelise, had used a dish just like it, worn smooth by the thumbs of a hundred forgotten matriarchs. Elara’s was a cheap replica she’d bought online, but the salt didn’t seem to mind.
The scent of dried nightshade, clutched in her fist, always did this to her, pulling a thread of memory from the tangled skein of her past. She was a girl of ten again, standing in a kitchen that smelled of damp earth and baking bread, not exhaust fumes and boiled cabbage. Annelise’s hands, gnarled and tattooed with faded sigils, guided her own. “The Veil is thin in places, little bird,” her grandmother’s voice was a low hum, like bees in a clover field. “Our blood knows where. Our blood is the needle and thread that mends it.” Annelise had pointed a crooked finger at a similar crack, a dark fissure behind a cast-iron stove. “They are patient. They will wait for you to grow tired. You must never grow tired.”
A tremor ran through the floorboards, shaking Elara from the warmth of the memory. The whispers from the crack intensified, coalescing into a singular, venomous thought: You are the last. There is no one to help you. It is over. The tendrils of shadow that seeped from the fissure grew bolder, stretching like ink in water, chilling the air until her breath plumed before her. They smelled of ozone and damp soil, of things that had slumbered too long in lightless places. The old tea kettle on the stove began to rattle softly, a nervous shudder against the encroaching dread.
Elara stepped forward, her bare feet silent on the linoleum. She held the sprig of nightshade before her, its acrid scent a shield against the void’s sweet promises. She was the last. The thought was not a source of despair, but a whetstone for her resolve. The Coven of the Veiled Moon was gone, victims of a world that had traded magic for convenience, but its duty remained. It lived in her. She began the low, rhythmic chant, her voice weaving a barrier of ancient words. The salt glowed with a faint, silvery light. The shadows recoiled. For another night, the mend would hold. For another night, the city would sleep, blissfully unaware of the woman on the thirteenth floor and the crumbling wall she refused to let fall.