LGHTNOVELBOOK Chapter 51: Chapter 45: The Hunt Begins
A World That Moves Without Them
The world outside continued as if nothing had changed.
People walked the streets. Newspapers reported on politics, trade, and the occasional supernatural event. The Church of Evernight, the Church of Steam, and the Machinery Hivemind all maintained their silent war for influence, their battles unseen by the common folk.
Everything was normal.
Except it wasn't.
Because Klein and Yeaia could feel it.
There was an absence—a gap in reality that no one else noticed.
An unspoken silence that trailed behind them, pressing at the edges of perception like a missing word on the tip of the tongue.
Something was watching.
Something was hunting.
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A Decision in the Fog
Klein stood alone in the gray fog, hands resting on the long bronze table.
The Tarot Club gathering had ended not long ago, and yet…
He lingered.
There was something unnatural about how easily it had ended.
Miss Justice had been her usual perceptive self, yet she hadn't seen anything strange.
The Hanged Man, always the cautious one, hadn't noticed the slight distortions in Klein's pauses.
Even The Star, with his instincts sharpened by divine influence, had simply carried on.
They didn't notice the missing pieces.
They couldn't.
Klein could.
And that was dangerous.
A whisper crawled at the edge of his thoughts.
"It'll remember you too."
Yeaia's warning.
A warning he was starting to understand too late.
Because something had changed since the last gathering.
The distortion was no longer just around them.
It was following them.
It was here.
Even in the gray fog.
And that meant—
Klein straightened, vanishing from the divine space in an instant.
He had to move.
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The Fading Trail
Yeaia sat atop the rooftop of a dilapidated warehouse, their mismatched eyes scanning the city below.
They had chosen this place carefully—an area where reality was already weak.
A place where dreams and thoughts tangled with waking life.
A perfect hiding spot.
Or at least, it should have been.
The problem was—
The trail wasn't fading.
It should have disappeared hours ago. It should have unraveled, slipping between the cracks of perception like it always did.
Instead, it lingered.
That meant one thing.
"It's learning," Yeaia muttered under their breath, the embers in their hair flickering.
Klein appeared beside them in an instant, the air distorting around him.
"It's getting closer," he said without preamble.
Yeaia exhaled. "I know."
A silence stretched between them.
Neither of them needed to say it.
They had underestimated it.
They had assumed it would keep acting as it always had—as an erased thing.
But something had changed.
Something about their presence, their actions, had caused it to do what it should not be able to do.
It was adapting.
It was remembering faster.
"We need to run," Klein said.
Yeaia didn't answer immediately.
Their gaze was locked onto something far beyond the city skyline—something not there, but present nonetheless.
Then, finally—
"Not yet."
Klein frowned. "Yeaia—"
"I know what I'm doing." Their voice was quiet, but steady.
Klein studied them for a long moment.
Then, he sighed.
"Fine."
But even as he spoke, the weight pressing against their reality grew heavier.
The hunt had begun.
And time was running out.
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End of Chapter 45
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