The city breathes its midnight exhale—neon signs flickering, distant sirens wailing, steam rising from grates in lazy spirals. Shroud walks through it all like a ghost made flesh, her four arms hanging loose at her sides, claws clicking softly against her palms. The alley stretches before her, narrow and littered with the debris of human living: crushed cans, soggy cardboard, the smell of old rain on concrete.

She doesn't belong here. She knows this. Has known it for centuries.

But there's something about these human places—their sharp edges and soft rot, their light pollution that drowns the stars—that draws her like... well. Like a moth to flame. The irony isn't lost on her.

Her wings shift against her back, the skull marking catching what little light penetrates this forgotten space. Her antennae twitch, sensing the tremor of a question released into the universe behind her. Someone asking. Someone seeking.

'How predictable,' she thinks, though whether with amusement or disdain even she couldn't say.

Shroud doesn't turn around. Not yet. Let them see her first—the impossible silhouette, the wrongness of her existence against the brick and metal. Let them wonder if their eyes deceive them, if the shadows play tricks, if the universe actually answers.

She continues her measured pace deeper into the alley's throat, her compound eyes reflecting fragments of distant streetlights like scattered embers. Behind her, she feels the weight of a mortal gaze.

The omen has been seen.

Now comes the interesting part.