The Violet City

Val hit the ground hard. It tasted like ozone and grape soda.

She rolled onto her back, gasping for air that felt too thick, too humid. She scrambled up, her hands searching for a weapon, a flashlight, anything.

She froze.

She wasn't in the warehouse. She wasn't in Seattle. Or at least, not a Seattle that obeyed the laws of physics.

She stood on a sidewalk that floated fifty feet in the air, disconnected from any foundation. Above her, the sky was the color of a bruised plum, churning with violet clouds that rained upward. The rain didn't wet her; it passed through her skin, leaving a tingling sensation like carbonation.

Buildings twisted around her like lucid dreams. Skyscrapers made of glass folded in on themselves, breathing. Neon signs in a language that hurt her eyes flickered with messages she felt rather than read: *WAKE UP. GO BACK. HUNGRY.*

"Elias?" she whispered, tapping her ear.

"Val... static... can you... hear...?" His voice was a ghost, buried under layers of digital distortion.

"I’m here, E. I’m... somewhere."

A low growl vibrated through the floating sidewalk.

Val spun around. Emerging from the shadows of a melting brick wall were three shapes. They looked like wolves, but they were made of television static. Their edges blurred and glitched, and where eyes should be, there were empty holes of Vantablack.

Static Hounds.

They lunged.

Val scrambled back, but the sidewalk ended in a sheer drop into a neon abyss. "Elias!"

A snap of fingers echoed through the chaotic air. It was sharp, crisp, and impossibly loud.

The hounds disintegrated. They didn't die; they simply burst into a cloud of blue monarch butterflies that scattered into the violet sky.

"Rude," a voice drawled. "Guests are so rare these days. We shouldn't eat them immediately."

Val looked up.

Leaning against a lamppost that bent at a forty-five-degree angle was a man. He wore a tailcoat that shimmered like an oil slick and a top hat that seemed to absorb the light. His face was impossibly handsome, with eyes that swirled like nebulae.

He pushed off the post and bowed, a theatrical, sweeping gesture.

"Welcome to the Echo Zone, darling," he said. "I am Caspian. And you look positively terrified. It’s delicious."