Two weeks after the amusement park, Ethan finally felt stable enough to sit in a public place without scanning every shadow. His hands still shook slightly when he lifted the camera, and the nightmares came every night, but today he could at least focus on the mundane problem of battery life. Seraphine had insisted he take time to recover, though 'recovery' felt like too strong a word for what he was experiencing.
Now Ethan sit on the The café like a freeloader of free wifi, the place smelled of roasted beans and cinnamon, the kind of aroma that could lull anyone into believing the world was simple again. Ethan adjusted his camera, balancing it on a sugar jar for stability. The little red light blinked, faithful and unblinking, capturing nothing more dangerous than the soft swirls of latte art.
Ethan had learned the hard way that the black tech card came with a price. Each supernatural event captured drained the battery twice as fast as normal recording. After the amusement park footage, his battery had died in half the time. Now he was rationing every percentage point like it was his last meal.
After a few seconds, he sighed and clicked it off. The café returned to being just a café—no mechanical hum of recording, no silent pressure of data draining into his SD card.
"Battery saver mode," he muttered under his breath.
Seraphine, leaning against the counter with her chin in her hand, raised a brow. "Did you just narrate turning your camera off?"
"I have to," Ethan said defensively, slipping the camera into his jacket pocket. "You never know when something's going to happen. If I don't ration this, I'll end up with a dead camera at the worst possible moment. And unlike you, I can't conjure fresh batteries out of thin air."
Seraphine's lips curved into a mischievous smile. With a flick of her wrist, the foam atop her cappuccino reshaped itself into a dragon. It spread frothy wings, opened its milk-foam jaws, and blew a tiny puff of steam before collapsing back into cream.
"Wouldn't want to miss capturing that," she teased.
"Dragons don't drain batteries," Ethan shot back, his voice flat. "You do."
Her laughter rang across the quiet café, drawing a glance from the barista at the counter and a chuckle from a student buried in textbooks at the far end of the room.
Ethan leaned back in his chair, arms folded. He hated wasting footage on what he considered "filler scenes." Coffee shops, idle chatter, people watching foam birds—it wasn't what he signed up for. He was supposed to be recording the bizarre, the dangerous, the unexplainable. Except danger seemed to have taken the day off, leaving him alone with a witch who enjoyed tormenting him in small, artistic ways.
That was when Nyx stretched on the windowsill. The cat had been there the whole time, silent, sleek, and utterly unremarkable in the way only cats could be. His tail swished once, twice, before he yawned.
And then he spoke.
"The veil is thinning."
The words fell heavy, like stones dropped into water. Ethan froze mid-breath. His gaze shot to the cat, wide-eyed, almost comical in his disbelief.
"…Wait—what?!" His voice cracked halfway through. "The cat talks?!"
The barista's head snapped up, frowning. A couple on the other side of the café glanced over, then quickly looked away. Ethan ignored them, his focus squarely on the feline who was calmly licking one paw as though he hadn't just upended the laws of reality.
Seraphine didn't so much as blink. She sipped her cappuccino, savoring it. "Oh, you didn't know? He does that sometimes."
Ethan's jaw dropped. "You knew? And you didn't say anything?"
Her eyes sparkled with amusement. "Would you have believed me?"
"...No," he admitted, groaning into his hands. "But still!"
Nyx flicked his tail lazily, his voice carrying a rhythm older than the walls around them. "Better riddles than silence, when shadows creep closer."
Ethan pointed an accusing finger at him. "That! That right there! That's not a normal cat thing! Cats don't… poetically foreshadow!"
The barista cleared his throat. "Sir, if your cat starts talking again, could you… maybe take it outside?"
Ethan's face burned red. "It's not my—ugh, never mind." He slumped back into his chair, defeated.
Seraphine, of course, was enjoying every second. She rested her chin on her palm, watching Ethan's meltdown with the same quiet satisfaction one might watch a magician pull rabbits from increasingly smaller hats. "Relax. Nyx doesn't waste words. If he's speaking now, it's because something wants to be heard."
"That doesn't make me feel better!" Ethan shot back.
Outside, the sky darkened just a shade too quickly. A cloud drifted across the sun, but Ethan swore the shadows lingered longer than they should have. He rubbed his arms against a sudden chill, glancing at the window where Nyx's golden eyes gleamed, reflecting something he couldn't see.
For a moment, Ethan considered turning his camera back on. His thumb hovered over the power button. But the little voice in his head—the one that knew just how fast that red light ate through battery percentage—kept whispering: Not yet. Save it. You'll regret wasting it here.
So he didn't press it. Not yet.
Instead, he slouched deeper into his chair, muttering, "Great. The witch is casual, the cat is cryptic, and I'm the guy rationing battery life."
"Every team needs its strengths," Seraphine offered, pretending to be comforting. "You bring… practicality. And sarcasm. A vital combination."
"Uh-huh." Ethan stared at her flatly.
The café atmosphere tried its best to reclaim normalcy. The barista went back to steaming milk. The student resumed scribbling notes. Outside, a bus hissed to a stop, unloading weary passengers. For everyone else, it was just another weekday afternoon.
But Ethan couldn't shake the unease curling in his stomach. Not from Nyx's words, not from the way Seraphine seemed too calm, and not from the shadows that clung to the corners of the room. He had the sinking feeling that his "battery saver mode" was the only shield between him and something that would demand far more than just electricity.
And yet, he kept his camera off.
Because some part of him knew—when the moment came, he'd need every ounce of charge left to prove it was real.