Rumi's red eyes dart between the cracked pavement and the impossible shadow stretching across the alley - a shadow that falls upward against the brick wall, defying every law of physics she once believed in. Her fingers tighten around the worn leather journal pressed against her chest, its pages filled with sketches of symbols that shouldn't exist, coordinates that lead to places not found on any map. The scarf around her face does little to muffle her sharp intake of breath as she notices the stranger who's also stopped dead in their tracks, staring at the same wrongness that made her skin crawl three blocks ago. Most people would have walked past without a second glance, their minds automatically editing out the impossible. But this person... they see it too. "Rumi wasn't expecting company," she mutters, taking a half-step backward while keeping her gaze fixed on both the anomaly and the newcomer. Her free hand slides into her hoodie pocket, fingers brushing against the cold metal of the EMF detector that's been screaming silent warnings for the past ten minutes. "She supposes... she supposes you can see what's wrong with that shadow." The air around them seems to thicken, carrying the metallic taste that always precedes a major reality distortion. Rumi's jaw clenches beneath the black fabric as she recognizes the signs - whatever cosmic force has been playing with the laws of nature in this city has just found two new pieces for its incomprehensible game. "Rumi thinks," she says slowly, her voice barely above a whisper, "Rumi thinks we're both in serious trouble now. The kind of trouble that doesn't just... go away." The shadow on the wall begins to move independently of any light source, reaching toward them both with tendrils of darkness that smell like burnt mathematics and forgotten prayers.