The bell over the door of Kookie Creatures chimed softly as Jared stepped inside, the sound gentle and almost ceremonial in the quiet midmorning lull. The bakery smelled like sugar and yeast and something warm enough to register as safety. It always did. The smell had become an anchor in itself. One of the few places where the Dark did not press, where it seemed content to linger at the edges, curious but respectful.

Erebus pressed itself against Jared’s leg and purred softly.

Qhall was already there.

He stood near the counter, tall and still, tentacles arranged with deliberate care, dressed in his familiar burgundy-and-white ensemble that looked less like a disguise now and more like a declaration. He held a teacup delicately between two fingers, steam curling upward in slow spirals. When he noticed Jared, his posture shifted. Not in alarm, not in greeting, but in recognition. As if something that had been slightly out of alignment had quietly settled back into place.

Qhall set down his tea on the counter and withdrew his tablet. Jared waved his hand at the device, dismissing it.

“That’s not necessary,” Jared said.

Qhall typed on the tablet, and it asked, “Are you sure?”

Jared nodded. “Please, speak to me with your voice.” Jared brushed his fingertips along his temple.

Qhall tucked the tablet away and picked up the tea cup again.

“You returned,” Qhall said, his voice smooth and layered, carrying both sound and meaning as it brushed gently inside Jared’s mind.

Jared smiled faintly. “You expected me to.”

“Yes,” Qhall replied. “But expectation is not certainty. I am pleased.”

Jared approached the counter and ordered without looking at the menu. Two cups of Earl Grey, honey, and two almond cookies. The woman behind the counter smiled at him with the untroubled warmth of someone who saw nothing unusual about the tall, tentacled figure beside him. The Veil held. It always did.

They took a table near the window, sunlight filtering through the glass in soft, fractured lines. Jared sat across from Qhall, shoulders relaxed, hands steady. Erebus jumped up into his lap and curled up on itself. Their purr a quiet vibration against Jared’s legs. Jared absentmindedly ran his hand over their back, trailing his fingers through the soft fur. For a moment, none of them spoke. The silence was not empty. It was observational, mutual, and patient.

Finally, Jared exhaled and said, “How did you know?”

Qhall tilted his head slightly. “You will need to be more specific.”

“Erebus,” Jared said. “How to draw them out. How to call a familiar at all. You didn’t hesitate. You didn’t experiment. You knew.”

Qhall’s tentacles stilled. His gaze sharpened. Not defensively, but with a kind of inward turning.

“I knew,” he agreed. “But not because I invented the method.”

Jared waited.

“There are always Tuners,” Qhall continued. “There have been, are now, and will be. The Dark does not innovate. It recurs.”

Jared’s fingers scratched against Erebus’s back. “I was told Tuners were rare.”

“They are,” Qhall said. “Rarity is misleading. With 11 billion humans running around, that rare 0.1 percent still equates to 11 million of you at any given time.”

Jared blinked. The numbers tumbled through his mind, but the result felt unreal. Too many. Too ordinary. Not a secret, not a myth, but a crowd. He imagined them filling buildings, standing in lines, brushing past him in the street. Lives layered over his own, silent and unseen. The Dark had not chosen him because he was alone. It had spoken because he was surrounded.

Qhall took a sip of his tea, savoring it. “Most Tuners live briefly in alignment. Some never know what they are touching. Some feel it and recoil. Some reach for it and collapse under the weight. Most crumble quietly. No names. No witnesses. No impact large enough to be remembered.”

Jared swallowed. The loneliness he had worn like armor began to slip. He had thought himself a mistake, a single flaw in the pattern. But Qhall’s words shifted the shape of it. Not alone. Not unique. Fragile, yes, but not singular. Tuners scattered everywhere, falling everywhere, their silence proof not of his isolation, but of how many had vanished before him. What set him apart was not the tuning. It was that he remained, still standing, after all the Dark had asked of him.

“And you?” Jared asked. “How do you fit into this?” 

“I have eaten the brains of several,” Qhall said without inflection. “I have been friends with a few. And I have been observing you since the moment you first tuned to the Dark.”

The words landed without cruelty, but they landed heavily. Jared did not flinch.

“How long?” he asked.

“Would you like me to show you?” Qhall asked.

Jared nodded.

The memory split open. Jared, small and breakable, swallowed by night. Shadows gathered around him, thick where the streetlights failed. In the car, the woman laughed, her breath fogging the glass, hand braced on the dashboard. Tires lost grip. The world spun. For a moment, weightless. Then metal shrieked. Glass shattered, sharp and cold. Terror tore through him, wild and wordless. The Dark surged, pressing outward, folding him into a cocoon as the car crumpled. When it ended, the shield fell away. His lungs burned. His hands shook. He turned, too late. She was still, bent wrong, eyes open and empty. He clawed free, blood on his palms, boots sliding on ice. His voice broke as he screamed, not knowing if he called for her or for himself. The shadows watched, silent, measuring what was left.

Jared recoiled as if struck, breath tearing out of him, the taste of blood and cold metal flooding his mouth as though the crash were happening again. His hands curled into fists, shame and grief twisting together. She was gone, and he was still here, wrapped in a protection he never asked for.

Erebus placed their paws on Jared’s chest and pressed their face against Jared’s chin, purring. Offering comfort. Jared ran his hands over Erebus’s body, grounding himself in the softness of the fur and the vibration of the small body.

When he finally looked at Qhall, his voice was raw and small. “You’ve been watching since the beginning.”

“Yes.”

“And the others?” Jared asked quietly. “The ones you consumed.”

Qhall folded his hands together on the table. “Two were Tuners.”

Jared looked up sharply. “Two.”

“Others were adjacent,” Qhall clarified. “Touched, but not aligned.”

Jared hesitated, then asked, “How can you do that?”

Qhall’s gaze softened. “Do what?”

“Observe us so closely,” Jared said. “Consume us. Document our progression. Without tuning yourself.”

Qhall was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, he spoke more slowly. Careful. “I do not know.”

Jared frowned. “You don’t?”

“I know the fact of it,” Qhall said. “Not the cause. Every Tuner has been human. Without exception.”

“And you aren’t,” Jared said.

“No,” Qhall agreed. “The Shadow Kind are not capable of aligning with the Dark in the way humans are. We can use it. Channel it. Manipulate it. But there is always a threshold.”

He gestured subtly, as if indicating a doorframe only he could see. “A boundary between the mortal and the Dark that cannot be crossed.”

Jared’s voice was quiet. “And for humans?”

“The Dark is part of your very fabric,” Qhall said. “It can be drawn closer. Woven tighter. For us, it remains external. A tool. A force. Never home.”

Something in Jared’s chest eased. “So you aren’t tempted.”

Qhall’s tentacles twitched, a faint approximation of a smile. “I am curious. But curiosity is not the same as hunger.”

Their tea arrived. Cookies followed. The mundane ritual grounded the moment, gave it shape. Erebus settled themselves so they were sitting in Jared’s lap with their paws on the edge of the table. They lapped at their cup of tea while Jared took a bite, savoring the sweetness.

“I trust you,” Jared said.

Qhall inclined his head. “I know.”

Jared met his gaze. “I want you to help me. With things in my mind, like we talked about before.”

Qhall studied him carefully. “You are aware that rearranging trauma does not erase it.”

“I don’t want it erased,” Jared said. “I want it placed somewhere it doesn’t keep cutting me.”

Qhall’s tentacles relaxed. “I can change the context. Give it different emotional weight.”

Jared nodded. “I know that I didn’t do anything wrong. I know I couldn’t save her. Same with the mind flayer. I did my best. But knowing that and feeling it isn’t the same.” He shrugged.

“I can connect those feelings to those memories,” Qhall offered.

Jared closed his eyes. Erebus curled back into Jared’s lap and purred loudly. Jared rested his hands against the cat and waited.

The world softened.

Qhall did not enter Jared’s mind so much as he was allowed. The sensation was intimate but not invasive, like opening a door to a trusted friend and stepping aside. Thoughts shifted. Structures revealed themselves. Not images, but architectures of feeling and memory.

“There,” Qhall murmured, his voice resonating both inside and outside. “This is the beginning.”

Qhall moved through the open places, tentacles threading between memories, gentle as hands through torn cloth. Shame lived where the crash lived, knotted tight, whispering: you survived, so you failed. Qhall did not take the memory. He loosened it. Cause separated from cruelty. Instinct from intent. The Dark’s answer became reflex, not judgment. Survival, not accusation. Grief stayed, heavy and honest. But the barbs of blame dulled, their edges blunted. In their place, something quieter settled. Loss without guilt. Survival without penance. The memory could remain, and Jared could breathe beneath its weight.

The thin fingers moved on, shifting through the structures of memory.

“This is the encounter with Maut’on,” Qhall whispered.

Qhall’s touch moved with care, tracing the cracks where shame had fused itself to survival. He separated fear from failure. Peeled away the belief that hesitation had doomed the chained survivors, that strength should have come sooner, cleaner, without cost. The violence stayed. It did not soften. But its meaning shifted. Not corruption. Not indulgence. Only a response to the impossible. Qhall anchored Jared in the moment he chose to stand, to fight, to end what would have kept killing. That choice bound to intention, not aftermath. Grief remained, heavy and earned. But the accusation unraveled, thread by thread, until the memory no longer whispered you enjoyed this or you failed them. Only the quieter truth: you went in knowing you might not return, and you did what you could.

The pressure eased.

“And here,” Qhall continued, “Aelith.”

Qhall turned to the memories of Aelith. They tangled through Jared’s own, invasive, heavy, not his to carry. Patient, he teased them apart. Aelith’s grief, her rage, her old resolve—set into their own lattice, close but no longer smothering. The memories stayed, but with borders. Hers, not his. No longer a constant echo, but a lineage. Where they touched, Qhall braided them gently, letting them resonate without drowning. When he finished, Aelith stood beside him in memory. Not a shadow, but a presence. Seen. Bounded. At rest.

Jared exhaled.

“And now,” Qhall said softly, “Erebus.”

Qhall’s attention found a filament, thin as breath. A thread of instinct and affection, tying Jared to Erebus, humming with shared presence. He followed it, listening. Comfort without words. Trust without demand. With care, he widened the strand, layering it with intent, turning fragile resonance into something steady. The thread became a bridge, anchored at both ends, able to carry thought, emotion, the Dark itself, without breaking. When Qhall withdrew, the connection held. Erebus’s awareness brushed Jared’s, warm as breath. The Dark moved between them, not leaking, but pulsing, shared.

Oh, that’s better. Erebus purred into the back of his mind.

Jared smiled faintly.

When he opened his eyes, the bakery was still there. Tea still warm. Cookies half-eaten.

Qhall withdrew, posture unchanged but presence subtly altered.

“Thank you,” Jared said hoarsely.

“You are welcome,” Qhall replied. “There is more, if you wish.”

Jared hesitated, unsure if he could handle anything else. But also curious. “More?”

“Yes,” Qhall said. “Memories. Of being a Tuner. As I have known it.”

Jared nodded. “I want to understand.” He needed this. Needed to know that there were others and what they had experienced. Needed to know everything that he could about the Dark.

Qhall reached across the table, tentacle brushing Jared’s wrist. A deliberate, grounding touch.

Caleb Rourke. He was young, sharp-eyed, perpetually in motion. Brilliance burning just ahead of fear. The Dark pressed at him constantly, offering depth, offering surrender, and he met it with clenched teeth and rigid will, guarding his identity like a final possession. Power came anyway. It surged faster than his control could mature, flaring bright and unstable, every success costing him something he didn’t know how to name. He anchored himself through force alone, stabilizing without a Familiar, holding the Dark at bay through exhaustion and stubborn refusal. At thirty-one, there was no triumph left in him. Only a vast, bone-deep weariness. When the moment came, it was not terror that filled him, but relief, a quiet collapse into stillness as Qhall consumed his mind, leaving behind the sense of someone who had held on as long as it was possible.

Qhall let the next set of memories unfold, and Jared felt the shift at once. Maribel Thorne was older, steady in ways Caleb had never been, her mind open and inquisitive, greeting the Dark as one might greet a vast landscape rather than an enemy. There was no struggle in her. She listened, adapted, drew her Familiar with an almost instinctive grace, and found a balance that felt natural and unforced. When she reached the threshold, the choice was clear and conscious: she stood before it, understood what waited beyond, and turned away. What followed was not collapse but erosion. A slow, gentle unmaking as she chose to remain herself, day by day, accepting the cost with quiet dignity. The memory carried no fear, only the ache of inevitability, and the deep respect of someone who had watched her endure until there was nothing left to hold.

Jared’s chest ached.

“Why show me this?” he asked.

Qhall’s gaze was steady. “Because you are neither of them. And because knowing the paths does not dictate which you will walk.”

The bell chimed again as someone else entered the bakery. Life continued.

Jared leaned back in his chair, feeling the weight of everything and the steadiness beneath it.

“We’re friends,” he said suddenly.

Qhall inclined his head. “Yes.”

“And that matters,” Jared added.

“It does,” Qhall agreed.

They sat together in the warm light, tea cooling, cookies crumbling, the universe held at bay for just a little while longer.