A Short Story...

Jace

Jace had just stepped off the subway, climbing the metal stairs into the open air. His hand clutched the worn map that had mysteriously appeared a few days ago. It wasn’t just old—it was ancient, textured like vellum, marked with faint glimmers that sometimes pulsed like a heartbeat. It had shown up on his desk, folded perfectly, without a sender.

He had always believed in signs, in paths yet to be explored. But this? This map was something different. It felt alive. It was calling him.

The towering buildings of New York surrounded him—a blend of old and new, glass scraping the sky and brick whispering secrets of the past. Yet, the map didn’t quite match this world. The roads twisted like they had shifted, buildings were marked where nothing stood, and at the top corner, written in fine calligraphy, were his initials: J.C.

He had asked himself a hundred times: Why me? He tried to ignore it—college apps, his part-time job, his grandmother’s persistent voice urging him to “focus on what’s in front of you.” But the map pulled. Not with curiosity. With purpose.

Jace had always wanted to play a larger role in the world, to matter, to belong to something bigger. But believing in that felt like swimming against a tide.

A sudden car horn jolted him back. The map slipped from his hand. He bent to grab it—

But another hand beat him to it.

She had brown hair streaked with silver and eyes like early spring—green, fresh, dangerous. There was something off about her. Something older.

“Are you lost?” she asked, her voice calm and unsettling, like she already knew the answer.

“I’m… following something,” he said, unsure why the words felt both foolish and true.

She glanced at the map and paused, reading deeper than ink. “Funny thing to carry a map of this city.”

“Who are you?” Jace asked.

She gave a small, cryptic smile. “A friend. And you’re not the first one to be chosen.”

That word—chosen—hung in the air like smoke.

“You should come with me.”

Every part of him screamed don’t. He liked control, solitude. But he followed. Something bigger than choice moved his feet.

Lena

Lena had been watching him.

From the moment Jace stepped into the square, clutching the map like it held his soul, she knew: he was one of them.

The signs were converging. Finally.

The Council—what remained of it—had warned her: Another would come. The one the map selects will walk between the folds of the city.

This wasn’t the first time she’d seen someone like Jace. But the others… they had failed. They hadn’t listened. They hadn’t seen.

But this time felt different. The pulse in the air. The way the symbols on the map shimmered near him.

When she picked it up, the weight of it hit her like thunder. For the briefest second, the letters shifted—JC melted into LC, her own initials—then flickered back. The map was adapting. Responding.

“You should come with me,” she said, her voice like a phrase practiced in dreams.

This wasn’t just about guiding him. This was about saving the path. Before it sealed itself forever.

Kai

Kai had been watching from the wall, hands in his coat pockets, trying not to care.

The kid with the map. Lena with her cryptic stares. The buzz in the air that made the hairs on his neck stand up.

He’d seen this before. Not exactly like this—but close.

Years ago, before he shut it all down, he too had seen the map. A glimpse in a mirror. A whisper in the subway. A door that wasn’t there the next day. He’d chosen to turn away. It had cost him everything.

Now, here it was again. The signs. The feeling that the city wasn’t real in the way people thought it was.

Lena passed him, giving him one of those looks—the kind that cracked through your armor.

“You guys sure this is a good idea?” he called, the sarcasm coating his fear.

Lena didn’t slow. “Are you coming or not?”

He hesitated. One beat. Two.

The map had returned. The path had opened again.

Maybe he was crazy. But if the city had secrets left to tell, he wasn’t going to miss the story this time.

Jace

The streets grew quieter. Unfamiliar. Time felt warped.

Lena led them with practiced certainty. Kai walked behind, clearly skeptical, but still there.

The map in Jace’s pocket burned—not in pain, but like it wanted to be held, read, trusted. He pulled it out. The streets on it shifted ever so slightly as they walked, responding to their path.

Buildings bent inward, their shadows long and wrong. One alley whispered his name. A street lamp flickered and stayed lit with no electricity.

“Where are we going?” Jace asked.

“Somewhere the city forgot,” Lena said. “Somewhere it tried to bury.”

That’s when they saw it—a faded door at the base of an old cathedral, covered in symbols that shimmered when Jace looked directly at them.

One looked like an eye. Another, a key. The last one, a spiral—a perfect match to the one hidden behind his left ear since birth.

Lena turned to him. “This is where the map ends. And your part begins.”

He stepped forward, heart hammering.

The moment his hand touched the doorknob, the map disintegrated into golden dust.

Inside, the air was thick. The walls moved, shifting like breathing skin. Lights blinked in rhythm with his heartbeat.

He wasn’t scared anymore.

“This is where it begins,” Lena said behind him. “The real city. The one beneath.”

And the door shut behind them.

To Be Continued??…

See ya next time.