Ethan Kane didn't rest when he got back to the salon.
The Duskwardens had done a hasty job of wiping down the blood, but the thick, metallic tang of death still clung to the air.
Instead of collapsing onto the bed, Ethan kept his hands moving. He rearranged the sparse furniture, then grabbed a stack of the heavy cotton towels left behind in the salon's cupboards and began scrubbing. He went over every corner, wiping away the lingering grime until the place smelled more of cheap soap than slaughter.
He didn't bother changing the bedsheets the previous owner had used.
He wasn't superstitious. Some might call it inviting bad luck, but to the rest of the world, a gutter-born scavenger like Ethan Kane was the very definition of ill omen anyway.
Once the cleaning was done, he had to admit the place was a massive upgrade. It felt unfamiliar, even a little sterile, but it beat his damp, suffocating semi-basement by a mile.
He stepped toward the entrance, pausing to let the warm afternoon light wash over his face.
Then, he froze. His eyes snapped open.
Why wasn't he screaming in agony?
Only a few days ago, direct exposure to the sun had felt like acid eating into his bones. He had felt like he was actively dying. But now, the light offered nothing but the gentle, long-lost embrace of actual warmth.
He traced the memory back. That morning, when he had trekked to the scrap yard with Flint Voss, the sun had been beating down mercilessly from the center of the sky. He hadn't felt a single prickle of pain then, either. He had been too distracted by the deal to notice, but the truth was undeniable.
Ethan pulled back his sleeve, his eyes dropping to his wrist.
The gossamer-thin Voidthread was still there, coiled beneath his skin like a dormant parasite. The Voidstrider hadn't left him; the rot was still deep inside his flesh.
So why was the sun no longer burning it away?
Ethan stared at his wrist, completely out of his depth. He knew next to nothing about the ecology of the Voidseep. If he wanted answers, he had to immerse himself in their world—the dark itself. And the safest, most direct path into that abyss was through The Harvesters' Union.
Still, being able to stand in the sun without burning was a victory he wouldn't complain about.
He spent the rest of the day turning the salon inside out until it was spotless. A few locals wandered by looking for a quick trim, but Ethan turned them away, hanging a crude "Temporarily Closed" sign over the cracked glass of the door.
By nightfall, the first real hurdle of his new lifestyle presented itself.
The Lumcores.
Because the salon was split into two separate rooms, he needed to burn through two Lumcores simultaneously to keep the creeping shadows of the night at bay. It was a massive drain on his resources—double the consumption of his old shack.
Fortunately, Dean Brennan had left a small stash of spare Lumcores in his wake. They would keep him safe for a while.
As for what would happen when the stash ran dry... Ethan wasn't worried. If he couldn't secure a steady supply of Lumcores by the time these depleted, he had no business living in a place like this anyway. Reaching above your station was a fool's errand; eventually, the glass castle always shattered.
Once the Lumcores were humming, casting their protective amber glow across the rooms, Ethan treated himself to a hot bath. It was a sheer, almost offensive luxury compared to his old life.
When he finally collapsed onto the soft mattress, the crushing fatigue of the past several days hit him like a physical blow. Within minutes, his breathing evened out, and a light snore echoed through the quiet room.
In the familiar, absolute dark of his mindscape, Ethan walked toward the shimmering, vertical ripple.
After several encounters, he had realized this bizarre wave was his anchor—a direct line to the black entity.
Sure enough, as soon as he reached out and absorbed the ripple, the black orb materialized in his hands, instantly venting a chaotic storm of raw, stolen feelings. It was a bizarre cycle: the creature gorged itself on Ethan's terror and fury in the waking world, only to regurgitate those emotions in wild, exaggerated theatrical displays here.
What had once terrified Ethan now felt almost... endearing.
"Let's get you a name," Ethan murmured, crossing his legs and hovering in the weightless void. "How about Bandit?"
The orb bared its tiny, vicious teeth in a silent hiss.
"No? Fine. Blackie? Roundy? Baldy? Fang?"
None of them clicked. Finally, digging deep into his limited creative reserves, he tried another: "Nightsight."
It was simple. He had first encountered the vertical ripple during a night harvest, and the name fit. This time, the orb didn't snarl or writhe. It accepted it.
"Alright, Nightsight," Ethan said, pulling at the black thread coiled on his wrist. "Is this thing a part of you?"
He gave it a sharp flick. He hadn't really had the chance to test the Voidthread, save for a brief, tense moment in the salon's bathroom where a tentative tug had nearly sliced the porcelain water tank in half. He'd had to stop before he broke the plumbing, or the proprietress would have skinned him alive.
Before Ethan could show off any more, the Voidthread ripped itself from his grasp. It flew toward Nightsight, anchoring itself directly onto the top of the creature’s smooth, round form.
It looked ridiculous—a pitch-black sphere with a single, floppy antenna. Ethan actually chuckled.
The chuckle died in his throat.
The Voidthread snapped rod-straight. In a fraction of a heartbeat, it lunged, driving itself deep into Ethan’s right shoulder.
Ethan gasped, a harsh wince tearing from his throat as the metallic stench of fresh blood filled the dreamscape. He clutched his shoulder, but when Nightsight yanked the thread back, it didn't slide out clean. It tore. A geyser of dark blood sprayed into the void.
Ethan staggered, his left hand clamped over the agonizing tear in his shoulder. He stared at the retreating line and froze.
The thread wasn't a smooth wire anymore. It had blossomed. Microscopic, jagged branches jutted from its sides like split ends under a lens, lined with wicked, backward-facing barbs. That was why it had shredded his flesh.
It's teaching me, Ethan realized, his pulse hammering against his ribs.
The entity had never truly tried to destroy him. It took his emotions, yes, but stripping him of panic and rage had left him with something far more lethal: cold, unyielding calculation. Now, it was demonstrating the weapon's true potential. If the creature wanted to hollow him out and take his body, it possessed the power to eat his very soul. Why play these games?
In a world where every human was a potential traitor, this alien parasite was proving to be the closest thing he had to an ally.
But Nightsight wasn't a gentle tutor.
The Voidthread pulled back again, tension humming through the dark line.
Thwip!
The thread drove straight through his abdomen.
The agony was blindingly real, forcing a ragged scream from his lungs as a violent shudder wracked his dream-self. He watched how Nightsight moved the thread—it wasn't wielding a tool; it was flexing a muscle. An extension of its own being.
If I let the corruption take me, a dark, dangerous thought whispered in his mind, could I command it like that?
Before the thought could take root, Nightsight ripped the thread free, unleashing another mist of blood. Ethan forced the temptation down. He locked eyes with the swaying black line, his vision narrowing. He stopped letting his mind wander and focused entirely on his opponent.
The thread tensed, pulling back for a third strike.
Ethan didn't try to dodge. He knew he wasn't fast enough to outrun a thought. Instead, he planted his feet and braced himself.
The thread punched clean through his chest, narrowly missing his heart. Ethan's lips trembled, his vision blurring from the sheer, white-hot agony. But instead of collapsing, he lunged forward, slamming his hands onto the wire.
He wrapped the barbed thread around his palms, ignoring the sensation of the steel-sharp thorns slicing through his skin, grinding against his finger bones.
"Ahhhhh!" He roared, a primal, animalistic sound that echoed back to the night he had slaughtered his first Voidstrider.
Nightsight pulled back, the thread tensioning to a high, silent hum.
"This..." Ethan spat, blood bubbling past his clenched teeth, "is my fucking thread!"
With a violent, desperate heave, he yanked.
The connection snapped. Nightsight lost its grip, and Ethan stumbled backward, crashing hard onto the invisible floor. The coiled, black thread lay limp and lifeless in his blood-slicked palms.
He stared up at Nightsight's now completely bald, smooth head. Despite the agony, a ragged, manic laugh tore from his throat.
"Yeah... look at you," Ethan wheezed, his eyes fluttering. "I pulled out your only fucking hair."
Darkness claimed him entirely.
In the waking world, the boy on the bed let out a soft, eerie giggle, his chest rising and falling in rhythm with the blood soaking through his sheets.
Ethan's internal clock usually had him up before dawn. In his line of work, daylight was a resource to be hoarded. But today, the clock on the wall read 9:30 AM, and he was still dead to the world.
A heavy, insistent knocking on the bedroom door dragged him toward consciousness.
Ever since Felix Grayson had sliced open the salon’s metal shutter, the front entrance had been practically wide open, secured only by a makeshift curtain of heavy fabric. Ethan simply didn't have the coin to replace a heavy steel door.
He dragged himself upright, his bones aching with a deep, systemic exhaustion that felt entirely unearned after twelve hours of sleep.
"We're closed," he croaked, his throat dry as ash. "There's a sign on the door."
The knocking stopped. A familiar, sharp voice drifted through the gap.
"Ethan Kane?"
He blinked, his sluggish brain working to place the tone. "Bandit?" he muttered.
"My name is Petra Marlowe!" she snapped from the other side.
Ethan swung his legs out of bed and pulled the door open, entirely unbothered by his lack of a shirt. Petra immediately averted her eyes, a flush creeping up her neck, but the sudden, heavy stench of copper stopped her cold.
She peeked past his shoulder into the room. Her eyes widened, her pupils shrinking to pinpricks.
"What... what did you do?" she whispered, her voice trembling.
"I was sleeping," Ethan said, rubbing his eyes, too tired to comprehend her horror.
Petra pointed a shaking finger at the mattress behind him.
Ethan turned. The sheets were completely saturated in dark, dried blood.
The fog in his brain cleared instantly.
The dream. The barbs.
The damage wasn't just mental. If he had let Nightsight pierce his heart in that void, he’d be a corpse right now. A cold sweat broke out across his back as the sheer, reckless stupidity of his gamble hit him.
But as he frantically examined his chest, stomach, and hands, his breath caught.
There were no open gashes. No exposed bone. Where the barbed wire should have shredded his palms, there were only faint, silvery lines—scars that looked weeks old, already fading.
He had regenerated.
A wild, dangerous thrill surged through his chest. He didn't just have a parasite; he had a healing factor.
"Are you out of your mind?" Petra’s sharp voice cut through his revelation. She was staring at him, her face a mix of deep disgust and sheer bewilderment as he stood there shirtless, covered in dried blood, staring down at his own chest with a manic grin. "What are you laughing at? You are seriously sick!"