The night pressed down heavy over the harbour. Salt air clung to Seigi's throat, the metallic groan of chains drifting from somewhere in the dark. He moved between shipping containers stacked like tombstones, each shadow stretching too long under the pale glow of floodlights.
The tip-off had been clear enough: men in cloaks, a meeting that didn't fit smuggling patterns. Yet the docks were eerily silent. No gangs. No shouting. Just wind rattling loose sheet metal.
His hand brushed the holster under his jacket. "This is it," he whispered. "No more questions. Time for answers."
Then he heard it. Footsteps. Too measured, too calm to belong to smugglers.
A figure stepped from the shadows. Tall. Broad-shouldered. A hooded cloak draped around him, the fabric shifting with a life of its own. The man moved like the air itself bent to accommodate him.
Seigi's pulse spiked. "It's you."
The hood tilted slightly, as though amused. "Detective." His voice was soft, carrying too easily across the empty yard. "Still chasing shadows."
The words struck harder than they should have. Seigi's mind reeled. "Who are you?"
The figure was silent a moment, then: "Some call me Wraith."
The name slithered into Seigi's bones, as if it belonged to something older than the man himself.
Seigi squared his stance. "You killed that man at the warehouse. And the one at the nightclub."
"Did I?" A faint smirk flickered beneath the hood. "Or did the world itself decide their story ended there?"
Before Seigi could respond, Wraith moved. A blur of force split the air. The detective dove sideways as the steel wall of the container behind him buckled inward with a deafening crash. Dust and rust rained down where his head had been.
Heart hammering, Seigi scrambled to his feet. His body moved faster than it should have, instincts screaming, the world tilting for just an instant—time stretching, angles sharpening.
He swung. A desperate punch, knuckles cutting through the night. For the briefest moment, he thought he saw his fist shimmer, trailing a faint distortion like heat haze.
Wraith caught it with one hand. Effortless. "Ah. So the thread answers you."
"The… what?" Seigi gasped.
"The flow beneath things," Wraith murmured. "Not many hear it. Fewer still survive it." He shoved Seigi backward. The force sent him stumbling across the gravel, his back slamming into a crate.
Pain flared down his spine, but adrenaline drowned it. Seigi pushed himself upright again.
"Heroes don't stay down," he whispered, blood on his lip.
Wraith studied him, head tilted in quiet curiosity. "Stubborn. Interesting." He stepped closer, shadows curling tighter around him. "But you're raw. Unrefined. You'll break before you ever bend the world."
Seigi launched himself forward, more instinct than strategy. His fist cut through the air again, grazing Wraith's cloak—but the man wasn't there anymore. A rush of displaced wind told him Wraith had moved, impossibly fast.
A gloved hand clamped against his chest and shoved. Hard. Seigi's body lifted off his feet and slammed into the ground. The impact rattled his bones.
He wheezed, lungs burning. Through blurred vision he saw Wraith step back into the shadows, cloak folding him into the dark.
"Find me when you can stand without trembling," Wraith's voice drifted back. "Until then… chase your ghosts, Hero Boy."
And then he was gone.
Seigi lay on the cold gravel, gasping, every nerve screaming. But beneath the pain, something else pulsed.
The shimmer. The thread.
He had touched it. Just for a moment.
And he would again.