Chapter 17: The Mountain Town Crisis (2)

The days began to blur together in a way Lena didn’t entirely trust.

It started with routine, sharp-edged at first, uncomfortable, all elbows and missteps, but routine nonetheless. 

Morning light crept over the city in pale gold, thinner than she was used to, spilling between buildings and across the narrow street outside their cloud kitchen. 

The air always felt cleaner at dawn, almost brittle, as if it might snap if breathed too deeply. By the third day, she learned to pace her inhalations. By the fifth, she stopped thinking about it at all.

They woke early.

Too early.

The kitchen lights came on before the street fully did, illuminating stainless steel and spice jars and the faint haze of steam that never quite left the room anymore. 

There was comfort in the repetition: wash hands, check stock, light burners, prep fillings. 

Gorchov complained less each day, which Lena found more unsettling than the complaining itself. 

Li Wei settled into the ordering system like he’d been born to manage digital queues and impatient couriers. Khalid learned the streets by heart, timing deliveries and supply runs with uncanny precision.

And the boss watched.

Not hovering, never that, but always aware, as if the building itself fed him information. 

He corrected without scolding, adjusted without explanation. When something worked, he let it continue. When it didn’t, it stopped existing as an option.

By midweek, the food became good.

Not just passable. 

Not just functional. 

People ordered again. 

Ratings climbed in small, steady increments. 

The kitchen developed its own rhythm, a shared language of gestures and half-finished sentences. 

Lena stopped measuring spices so carefully and started trusting her instincts. Gorchov learned when he was allowed to taste and when he absolutely was not. 

Khalid learned which containers survived transport and which leaked no matter how tightly they were sealed. 

Li Wei learned which customers reordered and which ones never came back, and flagged the difference with quiet interest.

Daytime Nepal was… manageable.

Busy in a way that felt grounded. 

Markets opened. 

Vendors called out. 

Motorbikes weaved through traffic with fearless grace. 

Prayer flags fluttered between buildings, bright against concrete and sky. 

The mountains loomed in the distance like a suggestion rather than a threat, their presence constant but easy to ignore when the sun was high.

It was the evenings that changed things.

The shift was subtle at first.

The temperature dropped quickly after sunset, not gradually, but decisively, as if someone had reached up and turned a dial. Heat fled the streets, replaced by a cold that slipped under collars and into bones. The sky darkened faster than it should have, twilight compressed into minutes. Shadows lengthened and then simply… stayed.

People went home.

Not all at once, not in panic, but with a shared understanding that whatever errands needed doing could wait until morning. Shops shuttered. Street vendors packed up. The flow of foot traffic thinned until it felt intentional. Lights went out one by one in upper-story windows.

By the fourth night, Lena noticed the sound change.

During the day, the city hummed, engines, voices, horns, footsteps layered together into a constant backdrop. At night, that noise didn’t fade so much as collapse. 

What remained was sparse and directional: a distant dog barking once and then stopping, wind brushing against loose signage, the soft whine of a single motorbike passing far away.

The silence between sounds grew longer.

Heavier.

From the kitchen window, Lena watched the street empty itself until only the glow of streetlamps remained, illuminating stretches of pavement no one walked on anymore. 

The delivery orders dropped off sharply after dark. 

Not stopped, never stopped, but slowed to a trickle, the few that came in marked by longer wait times and quieter couriers.

On the fifth evening, Khalid returned from a supply run later than expected.

“Road was clear,” he said, shrugging off his jacket. “Too clear.”

The boss glanced up. “Which road?”

“All of them.”

That night, Lena went up to the roof alone.

The building wasn’t tall, but it was enough. 

From there, the city spread out unevenly, lights clustered and sparse in strange patterns. 

Beyond the last row of buildings, the land fell away sharply, descending into darkness that wasn’t empty so much as unlit.

The mountains were clearer at night.

Their silhouettes cut sharply against the sky, immense and unmoving, their presence suddenly less abstract.

They blocked stars. 

They blocked sound. 

They felt closer than they had any right to be.

Lena hugged her jacket tighter around herself.

The air up there was colder. Thinner. Every breath felt borrowed.

She realized then that she hadn’t seen anyone walking alone after dark all week.

By the sixth day, the pattern was undeniable.

Sunset brought stillness.

Not peace. Not rest.

Stillness.

Even the wind seemed to hesitate after nightfall, gusts arriving in brief, purposeful bursts before vanishing again. Flags hung limp between buildings. The distant city noise never quite returned. The geography beyond the immediate neighborhood felt… erased, swallowed by darkness that refused to reflect light back.

Li Wei noticed it too.

“Signal degradation after sunset,” he said one evening, tapping his tablet.

“Cell towers still active. Usage drops.”

Khalid leaned against the counter. “People know something we don’t.”

Gorchov, unusually quiet, stared out the window. “Or they remember.”

No one asked him to elaborate.

On the seventh night, the kitchen closed early.

Not officially, orders were still open, but the boss turned the lights down one notch, then another, fingers lingering on the switch panel as if he were listening for something only he could hear.

The effect was immediate. Shadows gathered in corners that had been bright moments earlier. Reflections dulled. The interior of the shop felt smaller, more contained, as though the walls had leaned in by a few inches.

Outside, the street was empty enough that Lena could see the far end clearly.

Nothing moved.

No cars idling at the curb. No pedestrians cutting through on their way home. Even the usual late-night stragglers were gone. The streetlights burned steadily, revealing clean pavement and shuttered storefronts, but the scene felt staged, too orderly, too quiet.

The desolation wasn’t dramatic.

There were no signs of disaster. No wreckage. No warning tape fluttering in the wind. No emergency sirens echoing in the distance. Just absence. A simple, unsettling lack of activity, as if the city had collectively decided to step back. It felt less like abandonment and more like withdrawal.

Like the land itself had exhaled when people retreated indoors.

Lena pushed the door open and stepped outside briefly, letting it swing shut behind her with a soft click. She stood just beyond the doorway, hands tucked into her jacket pockets, breath fogging faintly in front of her face.

The cold bit at her instantly.

It wasn’t unbearable, but it was sharp, invasive, seeping through fabric and skin with practiced efficiency. The streetlamp above her buzzed faintly, its light flickering just enough to be noticeable, struggling against the darkness beyond its narrow halo. Everything outside that circle of light felt deeper, heavier.

She took a few steps away from the building.

Her boots echoed too loudly on the pavement, each footfall bouncing back at her from the empty street. The sound traveled farther than it should have, unbroken by traffic or conversation.

Every instinct told her to stop.

She did.

She stood there, perfectly still, listening.

From here, the city felt fragile. Like a thin layer of noise and light stretched over something vast and patient. The buildings around her no longer felt like protection so much as markers, temporary fixtures arranged atop something far older. Beyond the last row of structures, the darkness pressed in, not advancing, not retreating.

Just waiting.

The thought sent a chill through her that had nothing to do with the cold.

She turned back toward the door and went inside, the warmth of the interior washing over her as it closed behind her. The lights seemed brighter now by contrast, the hum of appliances and quiet conversation grounding in a way she hadn’t realized she needed.

By the end of the week, the routine felt natural.

Work. Prep. Orders. Quiet evenings. Early nights.

People adjusted quickly. They always did. The city learned new rhythms, learned when to be loud and when to be still. Shops closed a little earlier. Streets emptied a little faster. No one talked about it directly, but everyone moved as if guided by the same unspoken agreement.

Yet the calm that settled over the city after sunset never felt earned.

It wasn’t the exhaustion of a long day or the peace of rest well taken. It was the kind of calm that followed a held breath, the kind that settled in when something had been narrowly avoided rather than resolved. The air felt tense even in its stillness, as though it might shatter if disturbed too suddenly.

From the kitchen, from the roof, from the windows that looked out over streets that emptied too quickly, the geography revealed itself not as empty but as restrained.

Corners held shadows too carefully. Distances felt measured. The city didn’t sleep so much as it stayed very, very quiet.

And Lena had the distinct, uncomfortable sense that whatever lived out there, whatever the darkness belonged to, preferred it that way.