As I trailed the couple through the shifting currents of the crowd, a slow realization settled over me.
The city was far larger than I had first imagined. Each turn they took revealed another street, another narrow passageway opening into a hidden courtyard, another stretch of market stalls spilling their colors and voices into the air. The city didn't just expand outward. It seemed to grow inward, as if behind every familiar facade lay another world, unseen, waiting only a few steps away.
After nearly an hour of following them, the steady thread of their presence unraveled into the crowd. Their shoulders, their synchronized steps, vanished among the shifting bodies, and with them went my sense of direction.
Yet instead of turning back, I let the streets take me. The city revealed itself in fragments: a burst of laughter tumbling from a balcony, the rhythmic creak of a wooden sign above a shuttered shop, the glint of tiled roofs glimpsed between crooked alleys.
I was no longer chasing anyone. I was letting Nerava lead me.
The street felt too clean, the air too soft. It wore its safety like perfume: a florist misting leaves, a boy pedaling past with a paper bag swinging from his handlebars, a dog asleep under a cafe table. Laughter rang against the glass.
I glanced to my left, and there it was a kiosk squatting at the corner, its glass panes layered with bus schedules, faded adverts, and notices so old their edges curled like dry leaves. Near the bottom, almost swallowed by peeling posters. I spotted a city map.
I crouched for a better look.
The paper was bleached and brittle, warped from rain, its corners stained a dull brown. Still, the shape of the city was clear: streets twisting and knotting into dense clusters, dividing it into three uneven swaths of pale gold, rust red, and deep black.
The legend was nearly erased, the ink smudged to ghosts of letters, yet still readable:
Zone One — Civic and Cultural District
Zone Two — Industrial and Peripheral Residences
Zone Three — Restricted Sector
That's when it struck me. Iwas in Zone One, the Civic and Cultural District. The spotless streets, the gleam of glass, the effortless laughter drifting through the air—it all fit.
This was Nerava's polished face, the one it presented to strangers.
And knowing that only made me wonder more about the other zones, what lay beyond the rust red, and what shadows gathered in the deep black.
I drifted past the café fronts, trying to wear the ease of someone who belonged here. My reflection slid along the glass, nothing more than a smear of dark shirt, hollow eyes, and a mouth set in the shape of bad news.
A waitress set down a basket of bread, the steam rising in visible waves.
My stomach answered with a small, betraying growl.
I waited for the turn of her head, my fingers closing around a heel of bread with practiced quiet.
But before I could slip it away, a bell rang from the doorway:soft, polite, damning.
She didn't shout. She only looked at me, shaking her head once, like I was a story she'd told too many times.
The shame stung sharper than hunger.I set the bread back, untouched, and kept walking.
As I walked on, a prickle crawled up my spine—the distinct weight of eyes on me.
City security, I thought.
The guards in Zone One wore their smiles like decorations, easy and unthreatening at first glance. But behind those grins, their attention was sharp, following me as I moved across the gold-paved square. Sunlight bounced from every surface, each window polished to a mirror's sheen, throwing my own reflection back at me from a dozen angles. I felt surrounded not by walls, but by eyes: my own and theirs.
One of the guards shifted slightly, turning toward me with a movement too casual to be careless.
It was the look of a cat glancing at a mouse that insisted it wasn't prey, the moment before deciding whether to pounce.
My pulse quickened.
I broke the connection before it could root deeper, turning abruptly into a side street. The gold light of the square fell away behind me replaced by the cooler shadow of the narrow lane, where the air smelled faintly of stone and rust.
I walked for what felt like half an hour. Letting the streets guide me with no plan, no sense of where I'd end up.
And then suddenly, without any sign...it changed.
There was no gate, no checkpoint, not even a line on the pavement. The Second Zone didn't arrive.
It seeped in.
The shift came in the air first. It thickened, grew weighty, as if it carried dust and unspoken rules in every breath.
The light dimmed, not from clouds, but from the way the buildings leaned in, taller, narrower, casting long shadows that ate at the street. Zone One's gold and glass dissolved behind me like a dream, replaced by a palette of gray stone, rust, and weather-worn wood. The cafés and boutiques vanished, their places taken by shuttered shopfronts, crooked doorways, and houses leaning into decay. Some were just shells, roofs caved in, walls sagging, windows open to the wind.
The street grew quieter, but not empty.
I could feel eyes in the gaps between buildings, a flicker of movement in the corner of my vision.
A tap landed on my left shoulder, light but deliberate.
I turned.
"Smoke?" the man asked, his voice raspy, almost amused.
"I'm just passing by," I said, my tone low, as if speaking louder might draw more attention.
"Everyone's just passing by," he answered, smiling in a way that was both playful and predatory.
I studied him. His hair was a black, tangled mess, like a crow's nest after a storm. His eyes were pale, ringed in shadow, yet oddly alert, like a scavenger watching for scraps. A crooked, mischievous smile played on his lips, though it didn't reach his gaze. His clothes were plain: a stretched T-shirt, faded jeans.
But it was his hands that held me. The knuckles were swollen and mottled with bruises, faint cuts tracing the skin.
"Paying for the use of our road," he said suddenly, cutting into my thoughts with a voice that was no longer casual.
I lifted my hands slowly, fingers spread, making sure he could see the empty palms. "I have nothing."
For a heartbeat, neither of us moved. The weight of the Second Zone pressed closer, as if the very street was waiting to see what happened next.
The quiet broke. Not with voices or footsteps, but with the hollow complaint of my own stomach.
The man's smile sharpened. Not in cruelty, but in recognition. His pale eyes searched my face like a word had just surfaced in his mind.
"Oh," he said slowly, the sound rolling like a coin in his palm, "you're one of us."
I kept my hands raised, unsure whether that was meant to make me safer or threaten me. "I don't know what you mean."
"You do." His head tilted, his gaze steady, waiting for the flicker in my eyes. "The walk. The way you check the area before you check faces. You weren't made for the gold streets."
His grin softened into something almost like welcome, though its edges stayed sharp. "Come on," he said, jerking his head toward a side street. "No sense wasting the day out here. You look half-starved."
My stomach cramped at the word, as if it had been listening.
"I'm fine," I said, even as my knees wavered.
"Sure you are," his gaze flicked down, reading me like a book. "But fine doesn't last long in Zone Two. You know that."
Before I could answer, he was already moving, expecting me to follow.
The street funneled into a narrow alley smelling of damp brick and stale oil. At its end, a battered metal door waited, its paint scabbed and flaking.
He pulled a key from a leather cord around his neck and turned the lock.
Inside, a stairwell coiled down into shadows, the air thick with the scent of tobacco and something heavier—metallic, faintly sweet.
"Home," he said over his shoulder. "You'll eat. You'll warm up. Then we'll talk."
It wasn't a threat.
It wasn't a promise.
It was an agreement I'd never made.
Still, the smell of food curling up the was enough to pull me forward.