The city spoke in static.
Not in words, not even in sound — but in the way air tasted like old electricity and the way every window blinked like an eyelid unsure of waking. Streetlights flickered not to warn of power failure, but of something trying to remember how light worked.
He didn't have a name. Not one that stuck.
When people called him something, the syllables dissolved before they landed.
When he tried to speak his name aloud, it came out hollow, like the air refused to carry it.
Still, he walked — barefoot, always — because the pavement kept secrets in its warmth.
The place wasn't real. He knew that.
Not because of the floating streetcars with no riders.
Not because the moons didn't match.
Not even because he'd died once, and the city had shrugged it off like spilled tea.
It wasn't real because the city asked questions.
Do you remember her voice?
Where were you before the loop?
Why don't you bleed when the dogs bite you?
It never asked aloud. Just in the way mirrors cracked when he passed them.
Or how vending machines offered photographs instead of food — and every photo showed his back.
He wasn't alone. Not truly.
There were others, but they walked like actors between takes. They moved like they were told to move. He saw a man eat a wristwatch like it was an apple. Saw a woman cry backward — tears crawling up her face into her skull.
No one screamed. No one asked why.
The city didn't allow questions unless you earned them.
He passed the glass gate again.
He always did.
It never opened.
A giant arch of curved obsidian glass, standing between two ruined cathedrals that once bled light. It shimmered when he got too close, and behind it… nothing. Just a void so deep it made the stars blink wrong.
Each time he touched it, he woke up in another part of the city. Naked. Remembering one new thing. Forgetting two old ones.
This time, when he touched the glass, it was warm.
Not just warm — wet.
Like it was breathing.
He pulled his hand back, and the fingerprints stayed — but they were not his.
They were smaller, like a child's.
And they pulsed.
Then:
The glass gate cracked, just slightly — a thin hairline fracture that dripped color into the grayscale world.
Not red. Not blue. Something older.
A color you feel in your spine, not your eyes.
And then, for the first time, a voice.
Not the city's.
A real one.
Female. Human. Familiar.
"You're not supposed to be awake yet."
He turned — but no one was there.
Just the shadow of someone who hadn't arrived yet, already walking away.
End of chapter.