I'm outside again.
But not where I was. The sky is lower here, pressing against the tops of buildings. The clouds churn like something alive, flickering with brief flashes of light — not lightning, but the glint of teeth.
The tower is gone.
The bone-road is gone.
Instead, the ground is covered in what looks like ash. My footprints sink into it as though it's snow, but it's warm and faintly pulsing. I kneel to touch it and feel something under the surface — not solid, but moving. Shifting with each beat of that faraway ticking.
A figure stands ahead. I know without knowing that it's the tall man from before.
Only now, his clock-hand fingers are gone. In their place are empty wrists, dripping something that isn't blood. He points at me, slow and deliberate, and the ticking stops entirely.
The silence is worse.
It's so quiet I can hear the ash breathing beneath my feet.
Then the city exhales.
The buildings slump inward, collapsing not with force but with relief, as though they'd been holding themselves upright for too long. The ground swallows them whole, the ash surging upward in a wave. I run, but the air feels thick, dragging at me, pulling me toward the center.
And then I see it.
Where the tower once stood is a hole. Not darkness — absence. My eyes can't decide if it's flat or infinite. It hums without sound, vibrating every bone in my body.
The man steps into it.
And without moving his mouth, without any sound at all, I hear him speak inside my head:
"Welcome back."
The hole swallows him. Then it swallows me.