Keiran Vox

The alley was humming again. It was that particular sort of hum that rattled up from between the cobblestones. Keiran felt it in his spine first, like a chord tightening. His boots sank ever so slightly into the slick of memory that clung to Whispermire. He paused mid-sweep of mobbing remaining blue goo from the walkway.

His stomach did that fluttery thing it always did when the Tenth Hour was about to return. Not fear. Something... else. Like anticipation mixed with déjà vu and an oversteeped cup of anxious tea. Keiran chuckled. Genzō would like this comparison.

A light blinked twice above him—a rusting gaslamp mounted on a wrought-iron bracket shaped like a crow. That lamp had never blinked twice without something happening. Keiran’s grip on the mop shifted, and his eyes flicked up the alley. Someone was walking too close to the seam where the ooze would soon bloom back into being.

Keiran moved. Fast. Boots skimming across the stones, he sidestepped a chalk circle that hadn't been there this morning and ducked under a hanging string of unlit bird-shaped lanterns. The stranger was about to reach the spot.

“Nope,” he muttered. “Not lettin' the goo get ya.”

And then he was there. He hooked an arm around their waist, spinning them bodily away from the spot of appearance, and pressed them against the painted brick wall. He held them there with one hand braced against the wall beside their head, the other still gripping the mop like a talisman. Before their eyes could even meet, the world behind them gave a soft shhhlick. The Tenth Hour returned. Blue, pulsing, reflective. It splattered over his back and slid to the ground like an unbothered slug.

“Hi,”

Keiran said, quieter now. His heart was hammering in the strange rhythm of the slime’s glow. He was covered in it and the warm substance matched the blue pulsing markings on his neck and arms.

“I didn’t mean to...well, s'pose I did, but not like...You nearly stepped into somethin' you can’t quite un-step from.”

He stepped back, brushing some of the glowing residue from his shoulders. His boots squelched faintly in the forming puddle beneath him.

“Sorry for the wall bit. Reflex."

He offered the smallest of smiles. Crooked, sheepish, the kind you give someone after catching them with their shoelace untied mid-fall.

“I’m Keiran. I mop. You alright, love?”

He waved the mop in his hand lightly to emphasize his profession as a street cleaner of the Tenth Hour.