35-MOONRUN BONFIRE
The west office was quiet in a way that felt intentional. Lamps instead of overhead lights. Dark wood shelves. Stacks of files that smelled faintly of dust and ink and something old—leather, maybe. I rolled up my sleeves and buried myself in work the way I always had when my life felt like it was slipping out of alignment. Alliance seating charts. Incident reports. Patrol rotations. I sorted. I labeled. I organized. And slowly, inevitably, the night life noise crept in anyway. At first it was just background noise I could easily ignore. A low drumbeat pulsing through the walls, steady as a heartbeat. Then voices—dozens of them—layered together. Laughter that dipped into growls. Shouts that ended in sharp, breathy exhales that weren’t quite human. Then the smells reached me. Smoke, thick
- Writer
