Not all vanishings are noticed. Some are agreed upon.
— ✦ —
The day felt wrong before it even began.
Erevale's morning light was always a little gray, filtered through the constant haze of exhaust and rainclouds. But today, it was thinner — like sunlight projected through static. The streets shimmered faintly, as though the city were underwater and Elian Ward was trapped beneath its surface.
He hadn't turned his phone on since last night. It sat on the counter, screen black, humming occasionally like it was dreaming.
He'd tried to sleep. Failed. Every time his eyes closed, he saw that billboard — the courier with the hollow grin, FEEDING EREVALE — ONE SOUL AT A TIME. The words had burned behind his eyelids, alive and whispering.
Now he just sat by the window, staring at the traffic crawling past. People moved like nothing had happened. He envied them — their forgetfulness. Maybe that was the trick to surviving here: just forget fast enough.
He finally reached for the phone.
It lit up on its own.
[System Log: Cycle Initiated.]
[Fear Points: 10.0 FP]
[Status: Stable.]
[Observation Mode: Active.]
The faint hum under his skin — the mark — responded to the notification, pulsing once, warm and rhythmic. He could feel the words moving through him, as if the message wasn't on the screen but in his bloodstream.
He whispered, "I don't want this."
The reply arrived before the thought was finished.
[Acknowledged.]
[Desire logged.]
[Desire irrelevant.]
Elian dropped the phone. It landed on the floor, screen up, a soft reflection of his own terrified face staring back. He turned away and grabbed his jacket.
If the city was going to eat him, it would have to find him moving.
— ✦ —
The streets looked sharper today, every angle outlined like a sketch redrawn too many times. Pavement lines doubled. Reflections lagged. Something was off.
He rode through Old Spine toward the market district, his tires splashing through puddles that rippled in delayed rhythm. The radio chatter from nearby shops kept cutting in and out — snippets of laughter, then silence, then the same sentence repeating.
"…delivery reports missing—delivery reports miss—"Click. Silence.
At the intersection near Calder Avenue, traffic had halted. Dozens of people stood in the road, heads tilted slightly upward, staring at the same thing — a street sign.
The green plate above them flickered.
CALDER AVE →
then
CALDER AVE ←
then nothing.
The name dissolved into static, leaving a blank gray rectangle.
No one moved. No one screamed. They just blinked — once, twice — and continued walking in whatever direction they'd been facing, as though nothing had changed.
Elian froze on his bike. His throat felt dry. "Did… did anyone just—"But the words died. They couldn't see it. They couldn't remember.
He tried to pull his phone out, but before he could touch it, the display lit up again.
[Local Anomaly: Detected.]
[Shift Precursor Active.]
[Recommendation: Remain Calm.]
The letters glitched, distorting into mirrored symbols for half a second before snapping back.
He whispered, "You mean it's happening again?"
[Confirmation: Pending.]
He looked up. The crowd was gone. Only empty cars sat at the intersection, engines running, doors open. A coffee cup rolled down the gutter, steaming faintly in the cool air.
The silence was so complete it felt engineered.
Elian gripped the handlebars tighter. "Stay calm," he muttered, echoing the machine. "Yeah. Sure. Easy."
The traffic light turned red. Then blue. Then began to pulse — steady, heartbeat-like — in time with the mark under his skin.
He didn't wait to see what came next. He gunned the engine and sped away.
— ✦ —
He didn't remember choosing the direction. His hands just moved, guided by something older than panic. Erevale streamed by in warped motion — buildings stretching, billboards twitching with half-formed faces, clouds dragging low enough to scrape glass.
When he slowed, he realized where he'd gone: back to the street from last night. Only, it wasn't there.
He stopped the bike at what should have been Harrow Road. The nameplate was missing. The row of shops that had lined the block — gone. In their place stood an empty expanse of pavement, smooth as unpoured cement, leading nowhere.
It wasn't a demolition site. It was an erasure.
He dismounted slowly, helmet still on, as if that thin layer of polyglass could protect him from whatever this was. The air here was different — not cold, not warm, just absent. Even the rain avoided this place, droplets veering away like they refused to touch it.
At the edge of the blank road, something flickered. A faint shimmer in the air, like heat haze on a winter street. He stepped closer.
[System Alert: Unstable Zone — "Null Sector" detected.]
[Echo Level: +1]
[Warning: Exposure may alter perception of self.]
"Alter perception," Elian whispered, his voice dull inside the helmet. "Of course it will."
He raised his hand toward the shimmer. The air pushed back — elastic, breathing. A pulse vibrated through his palm, then through his bones. His reflection blinked in the visor — delayed again, but smiling this time.
He stumbled back.
The road ahead rippled like disturbed water, revealing flashes underneath — streets he recognized, overlapping, folding in on themselves. An apartment hallway. A blinking tunnel. The outline of Trellis Apartments, appearing for a second before sinking again.
It was as if all the erased pieces of the city were stored beneath this surface, pressed together like sediment — the city's discarded memories compacted into a single wound.
He whispered, "You're feeding on it, aren't you?"
The phone answered from his pocket.
[Affirmative.]
[Memory is sustenance.]
[You consume to exist. So do We.]
He froze. The voice wasn't a voice — not human, not mechanical — but something between a whisper and static, threaded directly through his skull. His pulse matched the faint flicker of the streetlight above him.
[Observation: Fear Levels increasing.]
[Reward: +1 FP.]
The words pulsed red across the inside of his visor — not on the phone this time, but burned directly into the reflection.
He ripped the helmet off. The letters stayed there, floating in midair for a few seconds before fading.
— ✦ —
The sound came first — not a siren, not thunder, but something like a massive exhale through the lungs of the earth. Every window along the street fogged at once.
Elian turned, heart hammering. Behind him, the city was moving.
The skyline tilted — only slightly, almost imperceptibly — but enough to make the horizon feel wrong. A row of buildings shuddered, their shapes softening, outlines blurring like wet ink. One by one, they began to slide — gently at first, then faster — their forms stretching upward into the mist until they vanished completely.
Elian stumbled backward, clutching the handlebars of his bike. "No. No, no, no—"
[System Notification: SHIFT IMMINENT.]
[Stabilization unavailable.]
[Feeder advised to seek shelter.]
He spun around. The blank road behind him was glowing now, veins of crimson light spidering out across the asphalt. They pulsed to a rhythm that wasn't random — a steady, terrible heartbeat.
The air distorted. The walls breathed.
He could feel it again — that vast consciousness pressing against the edges of reality, tasting for him.
He jumped on the bike and twisted the key. The engine sputtered, coughed, caught. He accelerated, but the street beneath him moved. Asphalt folded, turning corners that hadn't existed before. Lamp posts flickered past, repeating — the same graffiti, the same dented trash bin, over and over.
He was looping.
[Route Locked.]
[Navigation overridden.]
"Let me out!" he shouted.
[Error: There is no out.]
The words echoed from the phone, from the street, from the walls themselves. The sound vibrated through the air until it felt like the whole city was speaking through one voice — hollow, patient, hungry.
Then everything went still. Even the hum of the power grid went silent.
Elian looked up. The sky had turned the color of old screens — blank gray light shot through with faint, wandering static.
The buildings around him wavered. Some leaned inward, stretching as if made of paper. Others melted quietly into shadow.
And just as he realized he was standing on no known street at all—
[System Directive: OBSERVE.]
[Shift Commencing in 00:00:03.]
He dropped the phone. The screen reflected his face one last time, splitting into dozens of ghostly copies as the countdown reached zero.
The world inhaled. The pavement rippled beneath him. A whisper swept through the air — hundreds of voices layered as one, speaking his name.
"Elian…"
Then—white light.
Everything folded.
— ✦ —
End of Chapter 3