The city was bright.
Light ran along the edges of every tower, thin and clean, like someone had traced the buildings with a silver brush. Bridges of glass arched between the heights, clear as frozen water. People crossed them in quiet pairs and laughing groups, their steps a soft music I could feel more than hear. The air smelled like stone warmed by sun, and a faint sweetness, like rain that never fell.
I stood at the mouth of a narrow street and held the glass book to my chest. The cover caught the light and sent it back in small rivers. My name on the front looked like it had been scratched by a patient hand and then polished until it shone. The last words inside still echoed in my head.
Enter.
Do not run.
Do not lie.
If you must choose, save one who looks away.
I did not know what that last line meant. It sat in my thoughts like a small stone with a sharp edge. I would trip over it when I was not careful.
People moved around me as if an unexpected visitor was nothing to notice. A courier brushed past with a stack of papers under one arm. A child tugged a parent toward a cart where clear fruit lay on clear ice. A pair of guards in pale uniforms walked their slow path along a balcony, speaking in low voices, calm and even. Their spears had thin blades that caught the sun in brief flashes.
I took a breath. I took a step.
The street opened into a square. The ground was smooth, a pale grey stone that shone when the light struck it just right. In the center of the square stood a long pool filled with glass, not water. Thin sheets lay on thin sheets, layer over layer, until the pool looked like a shallow river that had been encouraged not to move. A small boy dragged his fingers across the top, and the glass chimed like a gentle bell. The sound ran along the sheets and faded at the far edge.
I looked up at the closest bridge. The span was not a single piece. It was many pieces fitted so precisely together that the seams vanished unless the light found them. The bridge bowed a little in the middle. A group of students crossed with books tucked under their arms and clear bags on their shoulders. The bags were full of folded paper and a set of small tools that looked like tiny rakes and tiny hammers. One student stumbled at the crown of the arch and laughed. His friend caught his elbow. They both smiled.
So far, the world did not look like it was failing.
I opened the glass book.
There were no printed chapters. There were no page numbers. There was a neat line of writing that was not mine, and below it, blank space.
Observe, the line read, then speak your name once.
I waited to see if more words would appear. They did not. The page felt cool. The letters looked as if they had been written into the glass with a pin made of light.
I watched another span. A woman in a dark coat pushed a cart with three folded chairs across the mid point and set them under a shade frame that she unfurled with practiced hands. She sat and waited. A man in a white hat stopped to buy a drink from a cart. A small dog carried a strip of ribbon in its mouth and chased the ribbon's shadow.
I cleared my throat.
"Row," I said softly.
The word seemed to settle on the page like a leaf on still water. Letters formed below it.
Good. Now do not lie. Not to them. Not to yourself.
I looked up at the nearest face. A man with kind eyes. He had the sloped shoulders of someone who carried heavy things and did not complain about the weight. He smiled when our eyes met, the way people smile when they pass in a place where trust is a habit. I smiled back. The truth in me was small and quiet and held on to its own shape. I was a stranger. I was here to watch a city fall and try to stop it without knowing how. I could lie about neither.
A soft voice came from my left.
"First time on the ground," the voice said. "Or are you lost."
I turned. A young woman stood under a thin tree that had grown up through a crack in the stone. Its leaves were pale and seemed to drink light rather than reflect it. She wore a jacket the color of the sky over clean snow. Her hair was pulled back with a clear ribbon that caught the sun and released it in small sparks.
"I am new," I said. It was true. "I do not know where to go."
"Then you picked a good place to stand still," she said. She tipped her head toward the pool of glass. "Visitors start here. It helps to see yourself before you walk under the bridges."
"Why," I asked.
"So you remember which one of you is you," she said. "And which one you might be if the light hits wrong."
She stepped to the edge of the pool and looked down. I stood beside her and did the same. The glass showed my face as if the world had made a mirror from winter. The image was a little soft. The edges of my hair blurred into the air, and my eyes looked a shade lighter. The woman's reflection looked like a drawing of her that a careful hand had finished in a rush.
"See," she said. "It is enough. If you know it is you."
"I know," I said. The truth walked beside the words. It fit.
"I am Lio," she said. "Short for Liora, but my friends say the rest takes too long. If you are new, you will need a guide. I am not a guide, but I can take you to one. No charge on first day if you promise to tell me a story next week."
"I can try," I said. "I am Row."
"Row," she repeated, tasting the sound. "Simple. Good. Come, then."
She walked. I followed. The book lay against my ribs, and each step seemed to mark a small beat in the page. The words did not change, but the cool under my fingers felt alive, like the book had a slow pulse of its own.
Lio led me to a wide street that sloped up between two towers. A small tram slid along a clear rail and stopped with a soft sound. People stepped on and off without bumping. The doors opened like a sigh and closed the same way. Lio shook her head.
"Too slow," she said. "We will take the lift."
"The lift," I asked.
She pointed to the tower on our right. A narrow platform hung from clear cables that ran up through a thin slot in the tower's side. The platform looked like a slice of glass leaf held by threads. A man in a grey vest stood at a small console. He nodded at Lio.
"Up," she said.
He tapped a key and the platform hummed. We stepped on. The building slid down around us. The square shrank. The pool of glass became a small bright coin. The bridges felt closer, like the ribs of a giant fish above water.
At the first stop, the platform paused and the operator raised his hand.
"Wait," he said, listening to something I could not hear. "There is a low song in the west span."
Lio looked out across the gap. I followed her gaze. The far bridge glowed a little more than the others. The light along its edge thickened, then thinned, like breath.
"Still safe," Lio said. "Just a tired seam."
The operator nodded and we rose again. The platform opened into a wide deck that ran along the inside of the tower. We stepped onto it and the lift continued without us. Lio led me to a narrow door and knocked once.
A voice from inside said, enter.
The room beyond was small. A clear table. Two clear chairs. A wall of maps, all drawn in the same soft grey, as if the air had decided to remember where things were. The maps showed the bridges from different years. I could tell by the notes in the corners. Dates. Weather. Names of crews who had repaired small faults. A narrow shelf held a bowl of glass beads and a stack of papers weighted by a smooth stone. The stone had a thin crack in it that glittered when it caught the light.
The person behind the table stood. He was older than Lio by a few years, or by a few hard days. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow, and a thin coil of measuring tape wrapped his wrist like a bracelet. His eyes moved over me the way a craftsman looks at a piece of wood and tries to see the table inside it.
"Visitor," he said. "Welcome. I am Iven. What do you need to know."
"I need to know why the bridges sing," I said, because the operator had said there was a song, and because questions were safer than lies.
"Because they were made to sing," he said. "Reciprocal resonance, that is the old phrase. You strike one string, and another answers. If a seam grows loose, the song goes wrong. We listen all day. We listen all night. We keep the chorus together. Where are you from."
"A library," I said.
He smiled with one side of his mouth, as if that answer pleased him.
"Good," he said. "We like people who keep things in order." He looked at Lio. "Is there a fee."
"First day free," she said. "He owes me a story next week."
"I see," Iven said. He gestured to the chair. "Sit, Row of the library. Tell me what you see when you look up."
I sat. The glass did not chill me. It held a little warmth, like a seat where someone good had just been.
"I see a city that trusts its own light," I said. "I see people who walk above the ground as if it were normal. I see a bridge that breathes wrong."
Iven looked toward the west span. His eyes narrowed a little.
"You do," he said. "You have a good ear, even when you use your eyes."
Lio leaned her hip against the table and watched us both. She looked pleased. She looked like she had brought a guest who might buy an entire plate of sweets.
I opened the book on my lap.
New words formed, neat as always.
Do not lie. If asked, tell what you know and only what you know. Touch nothing with your right hand.
I looked at my hands. My right hand rested on my knee. The skin over the knuckles had a fine line from when I cut myself on a nail last year. The line looked white in this light. I folded my right hand under the book and kept it there.
"What do you need to know to keep the song true," I asked.
"Patterns," Iven said. "Where the seams answer to each other. Where the bridges carry more than they should. Who crosses and when, to shift the rhythm. We trust weight more than we trust promises."
"Who breaks the pattern," I asked.
"Sometimes no one," he said. "Sometimes everyone at once. We get waves. A popular path. A new cafe. A view that grows famous for a season and then is forgotten. The bridges love steady pace. Slow, light steps. A dancer who remembers to breathe. They do not love a stampede."
"Has there been a stampede," I asked.
"Not yet," he said. His voice did not change, but the air between words seemed to cool. "We have chatter. Visitors from the outer wards. A festival tomorrow that will bring more. Guides tell people where to stand for the best photo. We build temporary braces. We ask for patience. The city says yes, of course, and then forgets."
Lio sighed and nodded as if she had said these things to the air many times.
I looked down at the page.
Another line had appeared.
If you must choose, save one who looks away.
I closed the book. I set it on my left thigh and held it there.
"What would you do," I asked, "if a seam failed at the crown."
Iven did not answer for a long breath. When he did, his voice had a new weight.
"We would clear the span," he said. "We would shift traffic. We would set a cradle and catch what we could. We would take the bridge down on purpose rather than let it take itself."
"And the people," I asked.
He lifted his eyes to mine.
"We do not let people fall," he said.
Lio's mouth tightened. She looked at the west span again. It hummed, a little louder now. The sound moved along the line of the bridge like a small tremor under a table when a heavy cart passes outside.
"I will walk the crown," she said. "If there is a seam that sings wrong, I will feel it in my teeth."
Iven nodded. "Take a rope," he said.
She made a face. "I will take my good sense," she said. "I will not fly today."
She left the room with a quick step and was gone before I could ask her not to.
I stood. The chair made a small sound as it let me go. I followed Iven to the balcony where a narrow path ran along the inner curve of the tower. From here, the span to the west felt impossibly thin. People crossed without fear. A small group paused at the crown to look down. One of them lifted a child to see better. The child reached for the light that ran along the edge, fingers open and bright.
"Can you feel it," Iven asked.
I closed my eyes. I listened. The city had many sounds and many silences. The hum of the bridges lay under all of it, like the note you only hear when you stop trying to hear it. The west span had a thread in it that did not match. It pulled a little. It lagged. Then it surged. A tired seam, the operator had said. It felt like a heartbeat that missed now and then.
"Yes," I said. "I can feel it."
"Good," Iven said. "Stay with me."
We walked along the balcony. The tower breathed cool air from its stone lungs into the corridor. The light shifted on the glass floor as a cloud passed, then cleared. On the bridge, Lio stepped into the crown. Her feet were sure. She did not look down. She did not look up. She listened with her bones.
The book warmed.
I looked down. Words rose from the page as if the glass were water that had decided to speak.
Do not run.
My body wanted to run. My heart had found a faster rhythm. It pushed at my chest like a fist. I made my legs move at a steady pace. One step. Then the next. The open air to my right felt wide and kind. The stone to my left felt old and patient.
Do not lie.
I breathed.
If you must choose, save one who looks away.
Lio reached the middle of the span. The light along the edge of the glass trembling line thickened, then thinned, then thickened again. She put her hand on the seam. She nodded once, as if to herself.
The book pulsed.
A small boy ran past his mother and stepped backward toward the edge, eyes on a flock of clear birds that had risen from the far tower like soap bubbles. He looked away from his own feet. He looked away from the seam that was tired. He looked away from the hand that reached for him a heartbeat too late.
The bridge sang a wrong note.
The glass under him shivered.
The book in my hands began to glow.