___
The water here, like the light that seeped down to this deep, sub-street level, was a thin, greasy gray. Both found their way through the street grates to fall into the hairline cracks in the concrete. The resonant drip-blip, drip-blip had resumed its endless, lonely cadence.
Across the littered concrete floor pooled a great splatter of water, as if something bulky had heaved forth from hidden depths.
A darker shadow hovered now in the corner. So very still, but alert to its strange new surroundings.
This thing warped into the shape of a man, whose very breath was the moan of windswept crags, whose walk was the grass-rustle of treacherous heaths, whose voice was the crack of bones. This thing—this man named Barren—had come for Cadence.
The name New York City meant nothing to him, but he would learn. Fast. That was his talent.
