Incubus Living In A World Of Superpower Users - Chapter 433

Capítulo 433: Mirror Thread?

“Hello, Ethan,” the system replied, warmer than usual. “Keep your feet. Don’t fall in love with stairs that haven’t earned you.”

The stairs preened with their neat light as if they had heard. He ignored them. He took the arch. The ruin shifted once, a small settling like a room putting its chairs back, ribs finishing their rise, lamps steady, insects choosing new circles without fuss.

The street felt awake in the way good tests feel awake. Curious. Patient. Ready to push.

He was ready to push back.

Fog thickened two steps past the arch. It came from the ground in soft ropes, draped itself across the street, and shrugged the old city out of its shape.

Stone smudged into mud. Lamplight flattened into a glow that felt damp. The air turned warm and close, filled with the sound of water doing small, private work somewhere beyond sight. Vines took the place of walls.

Tree roots replaced curbs. The ground under his boots softened from honest grit to the slow give of wet earth that wants to keep what walks on it.

He stopped and let his eyes work before his feet did. The fog wasn’t even. It banked in pockets and thinned in cuts.

The mosquito hum grew and shrank with those pockets, as if the sound itself was choosing where to rest.

He breathed through his nose and tasted tannin, algae, and the faint copper of old tools left to rust in a wet place—a swamp, but not a natural one—a swamp that had been taught to behave like a lesson.

He named the first three rules again in his head. Count. Water. Feet. He added Elira’s voice to the list because it belonged there now. Judgment before hurrying.

He took one step. The mud took his heel and tested his weight as if asking for a reason. He gave the reason by placing his other foot in a patch of darker soil that held him without complaint.

He waited a breath. He stepped again. He kept to the thin line where reeds grew in a patient row. Reeds tell truths about the ground. They hold where water holds. They break where sink waits.

The fog moved aside for a stretch and then drifted back. A shape lay half-buried off the path.

A metal case with clean corners and a latch that had not rusted. It looked planted rather than lost.

He squatted and watched it for a count of five. No insect landed on it. No mud clung to its sides.

The fog never ran across its top. It repelled small, honest things. He didn’t touch it. He nodded to it like you nod to a trick that does not insult you, then stepped on.

Another gleam waited at the base of a root ahead. This one was a charm disc, the kind students pass around like candy until a proctor catches them and makes a bin.

It sat almost covered, as if a heel had accidentally scuffed it across the ground. He tapped it with the back of his knife. It rang too high for how much mud filled it.

He slid it sideways with the blade. The ring didn’t change pitch. He left it where it lay.

A third lure hung from a branch like a coin caught by a child’s string. A clear vial, half full of something that wanted to be called a tonic.

He looked at it long enough to feel his own throat protest that it had been working for a while and would not complain about help.

He smiled without teeth. He walked under it. It didn’t fall. The branch gave a little tremble, like a hand that wants to take but remembers it has been told not to.

“Judgment,” the system said, satisfied. “Ten out of ten. No glitter purchased. My heart aches.”

“Your heart is a menu,” he said, voice low. “Keep it to yourself.”

“You love me,” it said sweetly.

“Keep walking,” he said, and did.

The path that wasn’t a path curled left. Fog thinned enough to show a shallow bowl of water spread across the ground like a piece of glass someone had breathed on. He did not step in.

He watched its skin. Honest water remembers wind. This water held itself too still. He snapped a reed and tossed the piece across the bowl.

It floated for one count, then sank as if a hand had pressed it gently. He marked the place in his head: quick-mire, the kind that behaves like water until you are halfway in.

The humming changed—not louder, but lower. There was a heavy thread under the mosquito music—wings, but not the light kind. He lifted his head and scanned the line where fog met sky.

A shape passed through the gray like a story moving behind a sheet. Another shape glided after it. Then both circled back, one above, one low.

The water shivered at their shadow. He did not stand in the open to be admired. He stepped back from the bowl and moved beside a root thick as a door. He set his back there, good wood behind him, ground he trusted under his soles.

The chimera announced itself first with smell: a wet musk edged in acid, like swamp breath through a metal filter.

It slid into view with the kind of grace big bodies get when they are the only thing that needs to move. Crocodile from the neck down, plates raised like roof tiles along its back and sides.

Horned head above that, two curving points that had not grown in the swamp, a gift from whoever made it or whoever it had been told to imitate.

Insect wings rose from its shoulders, not delicate or pretty, but metal-veined and strong enough to lift a body that should not fly.

They folded and opened in slow rhythm as it approached, stirring the fog in slow spirals.

It watched him with two sets of eyes and a mouth full of teeth that had been filed flatter than a true crocodile’s.

A designer who had decided ripping wasn’t the lesson this time. Crushing was. It moved its head a fraction left, right, testing whether its outline would blur at the edge like a fake.

It made a thick rumble, not a roar, a sound a swamp makes when it rolls itself in its sleep.

He didn’t run. Running in a swamp happens when a plan exists. He didn’t have it yet. He stood and let his hands feel light.

He kept his breathing low. He tilted his body right to offer a small line, the way you offer a seat to a guest you want to sit where you can watch them.

The wings buzzed once. It stepped. The ground held for it like a floor that owed it rent.

He wanted the quick-mire. He wanted a patient sink, not a dramatic one. He glanced at the bowl again, then at the line of reed growth around it.

The reeds didn’t lie. The bowl sat like a trap that had been set for a timid animal rather than a strong one. He needed a different mire, one that would take weight.

“Mirror thread?” the system offered, quickly. “Two seconds on a plate could make it bite a wall instead of your head.”

“Later,” he said. “Show me water.”

“Left side, three paces past your knee,” it answe

red without argument. “See the bubbles like a string of beads. That patch is hungry.”

He saw them. He adjusted his stance like a dancer who intends to move but hasn’t chosen the beat.

He lifted his knife and let the light touch its edge. The chimera watched the glint. Good. He made a small feint to draw its eyes a little higher.

The wings lifted, caught air, lowered. The head dipped. The body slid a little, weight adjusting.

At the same moment, a second chimera shape drifted through the fog to his right. He didn’t turn.

He watched how the muck took no impression from its passing. Illusion. The sim wanted to pry him away from his chosen ground.

“Not cute,” he said to the air. He set his heel against the root behind him and pushed off in a short, ugly sprint that hugged the edge of the hungry patch without entering it.

The chimera lunged with a head strike that wanted to pin him to the root. He slid under horns that looked heavier than they were.

He let his shoulder take a wing brush without getting caught by the edge. He cut low at a seam between plates and got nothing but sparks.

That was fine. He wasn’t cutting to kill. He was counting the path.

He reached the far side of the hungry patch and planted his feet on the narrow run of ground that held a line of small, stubborn plants.

Honest ground. He turned and gave the chimera his back for a fraction of a breath.

Your gift is the motivation for my creation. Give me more motivation!

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Creation is hard, cheer me up!

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