Chapter One: After Midnight

Moonlight poured down the exit stairwell, red as a silent fire. Outside the tunnel, the city was no longer the one she knew. Flocks of dark shapes circled the crown of the Everday Tower across the river. A huge animal bounded along an overpass, crushing the roofs of stalled cars. Every roadside display had dissolved into static, interrupted by the same line of scarlet text: VEIL FAILURE. ALL LINEAGES RETURN TO THEIR REGISTERED DISTRICTS. And yet the streets were not the slaughterhouse she had imagined. Most monsters were hiding, making calls, or hurriedly pulling coats over scales and fur. A delivery driver with antlers still stopped to right his fallen scooter. Two office workers with exposed fangs argued over a taxi.