The streetlamp hummed with a low, dying buzz, casting a jaundiced light over the rain-slicked cobblestones. Elias stopped. He didn’t hear a footstep, but he felt the sudden, crushing weight of a gaze that didn't belong to a person. He turned slowly, his breath hitching in the damp air. His shadow, once a faithful companion of physics, had severed its ties to his heels. It loomed against the stained brickwork, massive and distorted, its fingers elongated into jagged talons. Most unsettling were the eyes—two pinpricks of incandescent white staring back from the void where his reflection should be. In the periphery of the alley, other silhouettes began to peel away from the walls, drifting like smoke through the fog. The city wasn’t empty; it was just hidden. Elias realized then that the shadow wasn't a projection of his body, but a predator waiting for the light to finally fail.
