They hurried across the road while the marching grew louder behind them. The faded sign above the storefront still read PAWN & LOAN, though enough letters had peeled away that the place already looked half-abandoned even before the Mana Fall. That was probably why the windows still had thick steel bars while almost everything around it had been smashed open. Melody grabbed the door handle, pulled once, felt the lock resist, then pulled harder until the frame cracked and the lock tore free with a sharp pop.
Leo slipped inside first and glanced back at the ruined latch. “Locks really don’t mean anything anymore, huh? Yesterday you’d need a crowbar. Now you’re just opening buildings like Minecraft doors.”
“Yeah, except people usually own these buildings, so maybe don’t get too excited about my new career in burglary.” Melody pulled the damaged door mostly shut and dragged a metal display rack in front of it, more to give them warning than because she thought it would stop anything serious. Outside, the marching rolled through the glass hard enough to make the steel bars vibrate.
The pawn shop smelled like dust, old carpet, metal, and the stale air of a place that had spent years collecting other people’s things. Glass cases filled most of the front half, packed with watches, rings, cameras, tools, game systems, knives, jewelry, and enough random junk that Edward’s brain immediately wanted to start browsing even though something that sounded like an army was coming toward them. Leo had already moved behind one of the counters when he stopped and leaned over a glass case.
“Oh dude, guns.” The excitement lasted maybe three seconds before he actually looked at what was inside. “Oh. Cowboy guns.”
Melody joined him and had basically the same reaction. Several old revolvers rested on faded felt beside a lever-action rifle, a double-barreled shotgun, and another long rifle she couldn’t identify, all of them worn enough that they looked more like someone’s collection than weapons meant for New York. “Still guns,” she said. “Where’s the ammo?”
Leo crouched and checked under the counter. “Maybe in the back? Why have guns but no bullets? Unless they’re just antiques.”
The case had a small lock. Melody didn’t bother looking for a key. She hooked her fingers under the edge and pulled until the metal latch snapped, then lifted the glass and carefully picked up one of the revolvers. It was heavier than expected and completely empty when she swung the cylinder out. The next one was the same, and Leo watched over her shoulder with steadily decreasing excitement.
“So... useless?”
“Not useless. Just useless right now.” She checked the shotgun, found it empty too, and put it back. “If we find ammo later, great. Until then I’m not carrying four pounds of decorative cowboy when I already have enough crap.”
Leo picked up one of the empty revolvers and immediately held it sideways toward an imaginary target. “This one’s cool though. Looks like the one cowboys do the spin thing with.”
“You going to challenge a monster to a duel at high noon?”
“Melody.” Leo stared at her with a completely straight face. “It has no bullets.”
“Right. My bad.”
The marching outside was close enough now that the front windows were visibly trembling. Melody motioned toward a heavy counter near the barred glass, and they ducked behind it with an old rack of coats hiding most of them from the street. Leo squeezed in beside her and tried looking through the same gap between two jackets.
“Can you see anything yet?” He shifted and nearly pushed her out of the opening. “Wait, move like two inches. I can’t see.”
“You’re the one hogging all the space.” Melody leaned farther into Leo and toward the window until the first figure finally rounded the corner.
The creature was blue. Not glowing blue from mana, actually blue-skinned, deep cobalt where its body showed between sections of dark armor. It stood somewhere around eight or nine feet tall, shoulders broad enough that it looked ridiculous standing in the middle of a New York street. Leo leaned closer and whispered, “Okay, what is that? Orc? No, orcs aren’t usually blue. Troll? Oni? Some of those are blue, right?”
“Can you not Pokédex the invading giant right now?”
“I’m trying to figure out what I’m looking at.”
Melody was trying too, but the armor made it harder. It wasn’t stretched human military gear and it wasn’t medieval plate. Smooth black sections overlapped across the giant’s chest, shoulders, and legs with thin blue lines glowing between them like circuitry, while pale mist escaped through vents around the collar. The weapon looked vaguely like a rifle only because Edward’s brain needed something familiar. There was a stock and grip, but three black prongs surrounded a floating blue crystal where the barrel should have been, and metal rings rotated around it without touching. Frost had formed along the underside.
Leo whispered, “That’s a gun.”
“That is not a gun.”
“It’s shaped exactly like a gun.”
“It has a floating crystal in it.”
“So... magic gun.”
Melody watched the crystal pulse once. “Yeah, I can meet you there. Magic gun.”
Another giant rounded the corner, then another, and within seconds the street began filling with them. Some wore heavier armor, others lighter sets with glowing sections along the arms and backs. Several carried long weapons that looked like spears until Melody noticed the tips were condensed wedges of pale-blue light surrounded by frost. One giant carried something almost as long as Leo was tall, six glowing crystals rotating along the top while white vapor rolled from vents near the back.
Leo’s eyes followed it. “Okay, that one is definitely the machine gun guy.”
“I don’t think that’s what machine guns look like.”
“You know what I mean. Big guy, big gun, lots of things that probably shoot cool lasers.”
“You’re very committed to admiring the enemy.”
“I can't help it. This is literally like a movie I would watch with my dad.”
Melody smirked. She couldn't help feeling a little like an imposter for not geeking out beside him. Edward should have been every bit as interested in the impossible technology passing outside, but for some reason teasing Leo about his excitement came more naturally. She wondered, not for the first time, if this was how the original Melody would have treated him if they had ever met.
More soldiers came around the corner, so many that Melody stopped trying to estimate numbers. They weren’t wandering or bunching randomly. Every group kept spacing, some watched rooftops while others checked alleys and windows, and the longer she watched, the harder it became to keep calling them monsters. Then smaller blue figures appeared. Smaller still meant more than six feet tall, but their armor was sleeker and more fitted. One had a transparent shard curving from behind its ear over one eye like a visor, and when the figure raised two fingers, ten giants stopped immediately.
Leo’s whisper got quieter. “Okay, that one is definitely important. Captain or officer or whatever. That’s not normal monster behavior.”
“Yeah.” Melody didn’t know enough about military ranks, but she knew what an order looked like. “That one’s telling them what to do.”
The smaller soldier spoke in a language neither of them understood. Three giants broke away immediately, one checking an alley, another moving toward a laundromat, the third raising its weapon toward apartment windows above the street. Leo shifted beside her. “They’re searching buildings. Like actually searching them. I wonder what they are looking for.”
“Hopefully not us.”
“Yeah. That was kind of my next thought.”
The scouts returned after less than a minute and the column started moving again. Now that Melody understood what she was watching, more details became obvious: packs strapped to soldiers’ backs, groups with different weapons, wounded soldiers being helped along instead of abandoned, and long floating cargo platforms that rose over wrecked cars without ever touching the ground. Leo stared when the first one drifted past.
“What if the crystals are batteries? Like mana batteries. Everything they have has them. Maybe that’s just electricity to them and we’re calling it magic because we don’t know how it works.”
That thought stuck with Melody. She had always pictured a magical civilization as castles, swords, robes, and staffs, but this was something else entirely. She kept watching the platform as it effortlessly climbed over a wrecked sedan. “Okay... either that looks way more advanced than it actually is, or we might be seriously behind these guys. Which is really freaking bad if they actually are invading us.”
Leo didn’t answer right away. His eyes moved from one weapon to the next before he finally nodded. “Yeah. I was kind of hoping you weren’t going to say that.”
Two giants came next supporting a third between them. Its armor had been torn open around the ribs, dark blue blood staining the plates beneath. One leg barely touched the ground while the other two adjusted their pace to keep it moving, and Leo stopped joking as he watched.
“Look. They’re helping him.”
“I know. I see.”
“No, I mean like people do. They’re slowing down for him. The one on the left keeps fixing his arm when it slips.” He watched until the wounded soldier passed out of view. “So, they’re people, right? Not human, obviously, but blue monster people. They have to be.”
Melody didn’t know what else to call them. The snake had hunted them. The cat had attacked like an animal. Even the weresheep had mostly treated them like food. These had language, technology, wounded soldiers, officers, scouts, and enough organization to move hundreds through the city without breaking formation. Then a large armored vehicle floated through the intersection without wheels, blue light glowing beneath it while frost briefly spread across the pavement before melting behind it.
Leo stared after it. “If that’s their tank, I feel like our tanks are kinda screwed.”
Melody kept watching. “Let’s not decide humanity lost because you saw one floating ice box.”
“I didn’t say we lost. I’m saying theirs floats.”
“That does make it cooler.”
“Agreed.”
The entire column stopped, not gradually, but all at once, hundreds of footsteps ending within seconds so that the silence itself made Melody’s heart jump harder than the marching had. Leo grabbed her sleeve while a smaller soldier near the front raised one hand and several others broke formation to check storefronts. One of them started walking directly toward the pawn shop.
Melody wrapped her fingers around the fang dagger. The familiar warmth spread through the handle beneath its wrapping while Leo shifted closer until their shoulders touched. The soldier stopped outside the barred window, and up close its armor looked even stranger, tiny lights moving beneath translucent sections near the wrists, frost curling around its boots, the crystal over one eye adjusting when its head turned toward the shop. Melody could hear Leo breathing beside her, and she could hear herself too as the soldier looked through the glass.
If it came inside, Melody would fight. That was the entire plan, and considering the thing outside had a magical frost rifle and armor from some civilization that clearly knew what it was doing, she wasn’t exactly thrilled by the plan. Leo tightened his grip on her shirt. Then someone outside shouted one sharp word, and the soldier immediately turned away.
Neither of them moved until it had returned to the formation and the marching started again. Leo finally breathed out and loosened his grip. “Dude, I swear we have a luck charm on us or something.”
They stayed there while the army continued through the street. Neither of them tried counting anymore. There were hundreds at least, floating transports, armored vehicles, different kinds of soldiers, and enough equipment that this clearly wasn’t some random group that had stumbled through New York. Leo seemed to realize the same thing as he watched another organized group disappear down the street.
“Do you think they already know where they’re going? They’re not lost. They’re checking streets, but the whole army keeps moving the same way. Either they somehow have a map of New York or they’ve got something telling them where to go.”
Melody hadn’t thought about that. “That would mean they expected to be here.”
“Maybe. Or they figured it out really fast.” Leo swallowed. “Neither one is great.”
The rear of the column eventually came into view. Several soldiers kept watching behind themselves while others scanned upper windows. One of the last ones stopped near the intersection long enough to place a small black object on the road, and the device unfolded on four thin legs before a blue crystal lit in its center.
Leo pointed. “Okay, that’s probably important. Sensor maybe. Camera. Beacon. Could be a bomb, but I’m putting bomb lower on the list because I really don’t want it to be a bomb.”
“Thank you for ranking your horrifying theories.”
The final soldiers disappeared around the corner. Their footsteps remained for several minutes afterward, echoing deeper into the Bronx until they slowly blended into the normal sounds of fires, sirens, and distant gunshots. Melody and Leo stayed behind the counter anyway, neither trusting the quiet enough to immediately stand up.
By the time Melody finally did, the daylight outside had changed enough that the shadows between the buildings were stretching across most of the street. They had spent the day walking, fighting, running from ants, watching a weresheep get eaten, getting Leo’s hoodie, and now hiding from an army that shouldn’t exist. Melody looked through the barred windows and decided she had absolutely no interest in learning what else New York had prepared for them after dark.
“We’re staying here tonight.”
Leo looked around the pawn shop. “Honestly? Yeah. I’m not arguing. This place has bars, the back probably has another door, and after everything today I really don’t want to find out what new crap comes out after dark.”
“Exactly.”
They stopped treating the store like a hiding place and started treating it like shelter. The back half contained a small office, a bathroom with no running water, a cramped storage room, and a reinforced metal door opening into the alley. The back door was still locked and solid, so Melody left it alone. One secure exit was better than breaking everything just because she could.
They barricaded the damaged front entrance with another display case and an old filing cabinet, Melody doing most of the heavy lifting while Leo moved smaller things out of the way and offered suggestions until she informed him that anyone giving directions could also help push. That made him considerably quieter. Afterward they covered the lower parts of the windows with coats and flattened cardboard, leaving only a small gap near the edge so they could check the street without exposing themselves.
Once they finished, the pawn shop felt less open to the world. The blue device left in the road still glowed quietly outside, though, and neither of them managed to completely ignore it.
Leo eventually sat behind the counter staring through the narrow gap they had left in the covered window. “So... are we being invaded?”
Melody leaned against the opposite side of the counter and rubbed a hand over her face. She had been avoiding that word since the first soldiers appeared because saying army was one thing and saying invasion was another, but she didn’t have a better explanation anymore. “I don’t know. It looks like one, but we don’t know if they actually came here on purpose. Maybe whatever happened to Earth happened to them too. Maybe the breach connected places together instead of just opening one way.”
Leo pulled one knee against his chest. “Like worlds getting smashed together or connected somehow? Because that would kind of explain the monsters, right?”
“Maybe.”
He stayed quiet for a little while, rubbing at the golden fleece around his wrist while staring toward the covered window. “Even if the answer sucks, I just want an answer. Why did the sky break? Why are there monsters? Why did we get powers? Why are blue people walking around with an army? Did somebody do this, or did the universe just break, or what?”
His fingers slowed against the golden wool. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter.
“Why did my family have to die?”
Melody sat beside him. “I know. I’m sorry, Leo. I wish I knew.” She rested her arms against her knees and stared down at the floor for a moment. “I feel like I’m supposed to be the adult with all the answers, and I just don’t have them. Every five minutes something new happens and we’re just supposed to go, okay, guess that’s real now.”
“Exactly.”
“At this point somebody could tell me the Loch Ness Monster was always real and I’d mostly be annoyed nobody explained how it hid that long.”
Leo gave a small laugh. “Dude, imagine if it got mana too. We'd have to go kill the Loch Ness Monster.”
Melody turned toward him. “We?”
“Okay, you kill it. I'll watch.”
“That sounds more realistic.”
They ate some of the food from their backpacks behind the counter while daylight disappeared. Peanut butter, crackers, pretzels, fruit cups, and water wasn’t much of a dinner, but neither complained. Afterward they searched the shop properly, and while the guns still had no ammunition anywhere in storage, they did find batteries, flashlights, two portable chargers with a little power left, blankets, and an old hand-crank emergency radio.
The radio took nearly a minute of cranking before static came through the speaker. Melody slowly tuned through the frequencies until a broken human voice appeared beneath the hiss.
“...residents remaining within the metropolitan area are advised to shelter indoors... avoid unidentified wildlife... avoid contact with unidentified armed groups or non-human forces... emergency response remains active where possible...”
The message repeated once, then dissolved back into static. Leo sat back and looked at the radio for several seconds. “So, they don’t know either.”
“No, but at least there are still humans out there.”
“Agreed.”
They carried the blankets into the back office because it had no windows and only one entrance. Melody set the snake sword against the desk within easy reach, while Leo dropped his Bluey backpack beside one wall and started arranging one of the blankets on the floor. The office was small, cluttered, and still full of whoever had worked there before, with papers covering part of the desk, an empty mug beside a dead computer monitor, and several cardboard boxes stacked against the wall.
They started clearing enough space to sleep. Melody moved one of the heavier boxes and stopped halfway through setting it down when a faint blue-white glow appeared from behind the remaining stack. It wasn't the icy color of the army's technology or the warm gold of Leo's fleece, but the same strange mana-light she had seen drifting from dead monsters.
Leo noticed where she was looking and helped pull the last box aside.
An axe leaned against the wall.
It looked almost disappointingly normal. The handle was long, wooden, and worn smooth with age, while the heavy iron head looked like something a man on the frontier might have used two hundred years ago to clear trees for a cabin. No crystals, no runes, no ridiculous fantasy blade, just an old wood-cutting axe that happened to be shedding blue-white mana particles into the dark office.
Leo stared at it for several seconds.
“Okay... why is the old-timey lumberjack axe glowing?”