The Static Cough

The world smelled of ozone and sickness.

Kaelen opened his eyes. He didn't gasp; he didn't flinch. He simply exhaled a long, white plume of breath into the freezing air of the shack.

He lay on the dirt floor, staring at a knothole in the rotting wood of the ceiling. He knew that knothole. He knew the exact pattern of the water stain spreading around it like a bruise. He knew that in exactly three seconds, the wind would rattle the corrugated metal sheet that served as their door.

* Rattle. Clang.*

**11:30 PM.**

Kaelen sat up. His bones ached with a fatigue that went deeper than muscle, a weariness that settled in the marrow. It was the exhaustion of a man who had run a marathon, only to wake up at the starting line.

"Kaelen?"

The voice came from the corner of the room, thin and crackling, like a radio losing signal.

Kaelen turned. Elara was curled up on a pile of rags. She was twelve years old, but the sickness made her look seven. Her left arm, which was usually wrapped in bandages, had slipped free. Where there should have been flesh and bone, there was only grey, flickering static. The Void-Rot was eating her, pixel by pixel.

"I'm here, El," Kaelen said. His voice was rough. He reached for the canteen of water beside him, but his hand stopped.

He remembered. In Loop 42, he had given her water, and she had choked. In Loop 15, he had hugged her, and the static had burned his skin.

"The light," Elara whispered, pointing to the doorframe. "It’s gone."

Kaelen looked at the Ward Stone embedded in the threshold. It was a chunk of quartz that usually glowed with a warm, amber light, pushing back the hungry darkness of the Abyss below their floating island.

Now, it was dull grey. Dead.

Kaelen stood up, his boots crunching on the grit. He checked his pockets. The inventory was always the same.

Three copper coins, rubbed smooth by anxiety.

A piece of stale hardtack.

And the Hourglass.

He pulled the object out. It was small, made of black glass that felt like ice. The sand inside wasn't sand; it was crushed time, shimmering with a violet hue. It was currently sitting in the bottom bulb. Inert. Waiting for the flip.

He had thirty minutes.

If he didn't recharge the Ward Stone by midnight, the Void Tide would rise over the cliff edge. It would swallow the shack. It would swallow Elara.

"It’s okay," Kaelen lied, forcing a smile that felt like it was cracking his face. "I just need to get a refill. Stay here. Don't move."

"It’s cold, Kaelen," she wheezed. A cough racked her body, and a puff of grey static expelled from her lips instead of air.

"I know," Kaelen whispered. He grabbed his coat—a patchwork of leather scraps—and headed for the door. "I'll be back before the bell rings."

He stepped out into the night. The Dregs were silent, save for the distant, rhythmic thrum of the city engines far above them. Down here, on the lowest island, there was no light. Just the purple bruise of the Void churning a mile below, rising inch by inch.

Kaelen started to run. He knew every pothole. He knew which alleyway smelled of urine and which one smelled of rot. He ran with the efficiency of someone who had run this path a hundred times before.