I don't have a destination. So only a rule: keep moving until the world offers a reason not to.
Somewhere to my left the river keeps pace, a quiet metronome behind buildings.
I can't name it.
The bakery opens with a loud bang. A woman with a big stick runs out, chasing a poorly dressed child.
I don't interfere in this scene and I go quietly.
Now I have got a destination.
City center.
I walk toward the city center, following a narrow street that winds between old buildings and shaded doorways.
The path twists left and right, each turn revealing a glimpse of something livelier ahead. Until the cramped lanes suddenly spill into a wide, open square buzzing with life. Lined with shops, dotted with cafés, and edged by small kiosks selling everything from flowers to newspapers.
***
The kiosk stirs awake. It shutters slamming open. Inside, the owner, back turned, counts coins with the precision of a watchmaker.
Newspapers rest on a low plastic crate, still bound with tape.
Before I even register the thought, my fingers snatch one, and I'm already running.
By the time the owner notices, I've vanished into the crowd.
I unfold the newspaper amid the press of the crowd, its pages carrying the damp scent of cheap ink and rain.
The headlines sing a chorus of unfamiliar names, yet the words themselves are not strange: Arrested. Suspected. Corrected.
Language opens doors in my mind.
So I know this language, I think to myself.
***
Walking towards city I realize I have no home. No safe place waiting for me, no familiar walls to return to. I don't know who I am, my name, my history, the small details that make up a life. I don't even know why I've come to this city, whether it was my choice or someone else's design.
All I know is that something deep inside me is alert, cautious, whispering one clear command: hide.
I won't take the name Martyna. It will only bring trouble, I tell myself.
The thought isn't just a suspicion, it feels like a memory wrapped in warning, a fragment of knowledge I can't fully unpack.
Leaving the press of the crowd, I drift toward the quieter edge of the square, where a narrow street peels away between two tall buildings.
The sound of footsteps and chatter fades as I push open the door to a small café.
The air inside is warm and thick with the scent of coffee, milk froth, and something sweet baking in the back.
I choose a corner seat by the window, where I can see without being seen.
Outside, the mass of people moves in slow currents, faces passing like leaves in a river. They look washed-out, their clothes faded, their expressions empty, as if life has been worn down to habit.
No one stands out.
No one notices me.
"What is a person?" I whisper into my hands, my palms momentarily obscuring my vision. What does he or she consist of?
The question in my mind, and for the next half hour I sink into thought, turning over fragments of ideas.
A person is memories, but what if those are missing? A person is choices, but what if someone else makes them for you? A person is feelings, instincts, fears, and hopes, but mine feel scattered, unclaimed.
Slowly, I begin to thinking, shaping a list in my mind. Each mind line feels like I'm trying to sketch a face in the fog, reaching for a definition that might, in the end, be my own.
The shape of it began to crystallize in my mind, like mist condensing into water, like something that had always been there, waiting for me to peel it away from the fog.
I didn't plan it.
The words just came, one after another, forming a fragile framework.
Without really meaning to, I named it „The Components of a Person".
First emotions. They are the core, hidden deep inside, where no one else can reach. You can smile without joy, speak without feeling, but you can never silence the currents beneath the surface. They shift and churn like a restless sea. Sometimes a storm that tears everything apart, sometimes a still tide that lulls you into forgetting it's even there.
Second habits. The small patterns that coil through every day. Some we choose, carving them into our lives like deliberate marks on stone. Others slip in unnoticed, growing roots in our bones until they feel like they've always been part of us. Habits are quiet tyrants. Never shouting, but always guiding our steps.
Third relationships. Threads that bind people together. Some threads are soft and silken, warm with trust. Others are knotted, frayed, ready to snap. There are friendships that lift you, rivalries that sharpen you, and loves that burn you alive. No one walks alone, not truly.
Fourth the environment. The streets you take each morning, the air that fills your lungs, the sound of the city or the silence of a field. The environment is a slow sculptor, shaping us without our notice, wearing us down or building us up, grain by grain, until we match the place we live.
Fifth memories. The last piece, the most fragile, and the most dangerous. Memories decide who we are, locking our past into place. They can be treasures, weapons, or chains. Without them… without them, a person is nothing but an empty shell.
When I finally looked down at the table and I felt the pride.
Small, steady, and oddly grounding.
Here in this city, where I had no name, no home, and no past, I had managed to create something entirely mine.
A truth.
A definition.
Maybe even the first step toward finding out who I was.
***
Through the cafe window, my gaze drifts upward and catches on the clock tower, its weathered stone rising above the jagged rooftops like a stern sentinel watching over the square.
The pale morning light brushes against its surface, and the gilded hands glint faintly as they settle on nine.
The sight makes me pause.
Nine o'clock.
A perfectly reasonable time for breakfast, maybe even a slow, indulgent coffee.
But the quiet ache in my stomach meets a colder truth.
I have nothing to pay with.
No coins.
No notes.
Nothing the cashier here would accept.
The warm air inside the café suddenly feels too thick, too close, almost as if the walls themselves know I don't belong.
I push my chair back, its legs scraping softly against the worn floorboards, and step outside into the crisp, noisy street.
The air greets me with a swirl of scents. Roasted nuts drifting from a vendor's cart, mingled with the acrid bite of scooter exhaust.
Around me, city hums with morning life: people rushing past with paper cups in hand, street sweepers pushing their brooms over uneven pavement, shopkeepers turning keys in locks and swinging open shutters with a creak that feels older than the city itself.
That's when I notice them, an inseparable pair walking just ahead. They move as if tethered, their shoulders brushing, their steps falling into a rhythm so seamless it looks rehearsed. Together, they weave through the crowd like dancers in a silent performance, untouched by the noise around them. Without quite meaning to, I match their pace, keeping a few steps behind.
I'm not following. I'm learning. I want to see how people here move through their city, how they settle into its spaces, how they talk, what they notice and what they ignore. I tell myself, the words firm inside my mind.
Every place has its own unspoken rules, a choreography no one explains.
If I'm going to survive in the city, I need to learn the steps.
So I watch.
I notice how they skirt around a delivery cart without losing stride. How the man tilts his head ever so slightly when the woman speaks, as though her voice is the anchor holding him in place.
I catch fragments of passing conversations, hear street names muttered like secret codes.
I take in the layers of the city: advertisements taped to crumbling walls, a faded poster curling at the edges, a half-erased chalkboard menu in front of a café.
Then I see it.
A thread of certainty woven right into the streets.
A shop sign stretched across a doorway, its once-bright letters now sun-bleached and weather-softened: Nerava.
The name settles into my mind with a weight I can't explain, as though I've just turned the first page of a story I've already been living.
And yet, with each step, I feel something else...
A current running beneath the city, subtle but undeniable.
Nerava is not just stone, streets, and the bustle of morning trade. It has a pulse, and that pulse carries secrets. They seep from the shadows of alleys too narrow for sunlight, from shuttered windows that have been closed for far too long.The city of Nerava is dangerous, I think.
Not because of the bodies in the abandoned house.
No...
Nerava hides something much deeper.
Much older.
And far more dangerous...