The city returned to its normal hum. Still, Lily couldn't help but feel that something was off. Even after she'd shut the gate and banished the shadows, something stayed in the air. Something incomplete, something waiting for her.
She had walked back to her apartment after the ritual, but the silence was oppressive. Her phone lay on the counter, still buzzing with messages from her editor, asking for an update. She ignored it. She couldn't bring herself to explain any of this.
As she sat down on the couch, a strange feeling crawled up her spine. The shadows hadn't just disappeared. She could still feel them—like a whisper at the back of her mind. The gates were closed, but there was an unsettling aftershock, like an echo reverberating through her.
They're still there.
She sprang to her feet, a pressure on her skull, thoughts pouring over her. There had to be something more. She'd been so blinded by the ritual, trying to prevent the darkness from overrunning the world, she had missed something vital.
Her phone buzzed once more, and she picked it up finally. There was only one message, a single, anonymous text, on the screen.
"It's not over. You haven't stopped it. The shadows are inside you. They'll always be inside you."
Lily's stomach dropped. It wasn't just a threat, but a warning. Someone knew the truth; they knew what she'd done.
Her mind ran wild. Could she have taken something with her? Shadows had been in her, after all. That was the point: that would end them. She'd held the darkness back from spreading over the world—didn't she?
Maybe something trailed after her out of the underworld.
The idea nipped at her like some disease. She'd believed that's all that came with her from the darkness—wasn't that it? What if she had opened a door by stepping back through it?
Before she could make sense of it, her phone vibrated again. This time, a familiar name displayed on the screen: Benjamin.
It was her editor. She hesitated before picking up.
"Lily," Benjamin's voice crackled through the line, "you need to come back to the office. We've got a situation. Something's not right with the files. And I've been hearing strange things. People are disappearing, but not the way they used to. It's… it's different."
Lily's breath hitched. Not again.
She rang off with a jolt of fear. She could ignore it no longer. She had to know what was going on—what she'd set free.