The city did not sleep.
It only dimmed itself, lowering its voice the way predators did before striking. Neon signs hummed softly above the streets, their reflections stretching across rain-slick pavement like wounds that refused to close. Ashen moved through it all without urgency, his steps steady, measured, as if the rhythm of the city had already failed to keep pace with him.
She walked beside him.
Not close enough to touch.
Not far enough to ignore.
Ashen did not look at her, yet he was aware of her presence in the same way one becomes aware of a scar—something no longer painful, but impossible to forget. The sword at his back rested there with familiar weight, older than this city, older than the year stamped into its systems.
3054 meant nothing to him.
They passed through a plaza where crowds gathered beneath towering holo-screens. News streamed endlessly—corporate victories, market fluctuations, carefully curated disasters. Faces flickered and vanished. None of them noticed her.
Ashen slowed his pace.
She hesitated, then continued walking until she was half a step ahead of him. For a moment, she looked like she belonged—just another silhouette swallowed by light and noise.
A man brushed past her shoulder.
He did not flinch.
Did not turn.
Did not feel her.
She stopped walking.
Ashen stopped too.
The crowd flowed around them like water around stones.
"…It's getting worse," she said quietly. Her voice carried no panic, only a fragile kind of certainty. "Isn't it?"
Ashen's gaze remained forward. "Yes."
She wrapped her arms around herself, as if suddenly aware of the cold. "How long has this been happening to you?"
He did not answer.
The truth was scattered across centuries he could not yet remember.
They left the plaza and descended into a narrow street where the lights flickered, struggling to maintain coherence. The air felt heavier here, as if the world itself were resisting their presence. Ashen felt it pressing against his skull, subtle but persistent—like a hand trying to push him back into a place he refused to return to.
She spoke again, softer this time.
"When you look at me," she asked, "what do you see?"
Ashen stopped.
This time, he turned.
Her expression was carefully composed, but her eyes betrayed her. She was afraid—not of danger, not of death, but of something quieter and far more final.
Being unseen.
"I see you," he said.
The words were simple. They carried no warmth. No promise.
But they were true.
Her breath hitched. She nodded once, as if that was enough. Perhaps it had to be.
Above them, hidden far beyond human sight, systems recalculated. Probabilities collapsed. Data loops fed into themselves, searching for an answer that did not exist.
ANOMALY PERSISTENCE: INCREASING
REALITY SYNC: UNSTABLE
Ashen turned away and resumed walking.
She followed.
And somewhere, deep within the machinery of the world, something ancient shifted—
not in anger,
not in fear,
but in recognition.