When the world forgets, it begins again.
— ✦ —
Sound returned first — distant, muffled, like someone had pressed the world's volume down to a whisper.
Elian Ward opened his eyes to gray light. He was lying on asphalt, but it wasn't the same street. It wasn't any street he recognized. The air felt weightless, hollow, carrying no smell, no temperature, nothing to prove it was real.
He sat up slowly. His bike was gone. So were the buildings.
The skyline around him had changed — the angles were wrong. Tower windows formed patterns like circuitry, looping endlessly into themselves. A neon sign in the distance blinked the same three words: WELCOME TO EREVALE … WELCOME TO EREVALE … WELCOME TO EREVALE — until it stuttered and froze mid-flash.
Elian touched the ground. The texture was smooth, polished — not asphalt but something like glass disguised as pavement. Beneath it, faint shapes pulsed: outlines of streets, intersections, traffic patterns — ghost-maps shifting below the surface like veins under translucent skin.
He tried to stand. His body obeyed, but sluggishly, like moving underwater. Every motion left a slight afterimage.
The silence pressed harder.
Then came the click.
He turned. Nothing.
Another click — closer this time, mechanical, patient. A single streetlight at the far corner buzzed to life, its flicker cutting through the mist. For a heartbeat, he saw shadows on the wall — people walking, talking, laughing — silhouettes moving across windows that didn't exist.
Then gone.
His phone buzzed weakly in his pocket.
[System Reboot Complete.]
[Location: EREVALE v.2.0][Data Integrity: 61%]
[Welcome back, Feeder.]
He froze."…v.2.0?"
The light above him flared, throwing the street into harsh relief — same nameplate as before, Harrow Road, but all the letters now mirrored backward.
He whispered, "This isn't my city."
[Correction:]
[This is the only city that remembers you.]
— ✦ —
He wandered for what felt like hours, though the sun never moved. If it even was the sun — just a pale circle glowing through permanent overcast, stuck in the same spot above the skyline.
Storefronts stood intact, but their interiors were hollow — like movie sets with nothing behind the glass. He saw a bakery displaying perfect loaves of bread that never cooled, a barbershop with scissors floating midair, cutting nothing.
Every street he turned down connected back to another he'd already walked. Erevale had folded itself.
[System Log: Environmental Loop Detected.]
[Exit Route: Undefined.]
He stopped in front of a convenience store — the same one he used to deliver to. The sign over the door was reversed, letters shimmering like wet ink: MART / NULL.
Inside, the shelves were lined with bottled water. Identical labels. Identical placement. He picked one up — cold to the touch. Opened it. Empty.
The sound echoed like glass breaking somewhere behind the aisles.
He froze.
Through the cracked mirror above the counter, he saw something move — a figure, bent and twitching, its body half-glitching between reflections. It looked human. Almost. Its face flickered between expressions like shuffled photos, each frame a different person.
He blinked. The figure was gone.
Then a whisper from the radio on the shelf: static first, then words, layered over each other.
"…feed… feeder… feed the fear…"
Elian's hands shook. He dropped the bottle. It shattered soundlessly.
[Fear Points +0.5]
[System Observation: Adaptation progressing.]
He backed toward the door, never taking his eyes off the counter. The cash register clicked open on its own, spilling coins that melted into the floor like mercury.
He ran.
— ✦ —
He didn't notice the missing memories until the city reminded him.
At first it was small things—names, turns, the taste of the coffee from the stall near his building. Then, as he walked, gaps opened wider. He'd reach the corner of a street and know he'd been here before, yet couldn't remember when or why. His mind replayed fragments without sequence: a voice saying his name, the glow of a fire door, his sister's laughter cut short by static.
Every time he tried to focus, the air around him shimmered and the thought dissolved.
[Cognitive Drift Detected]
[Reconstructing User Memory … 62% Integrity remaining]
The System's messages now appeared directly on walls, in puddles, across passing windows. The entire city had become a screen.
He rubbed his temple. "Stop rewriting me."
[Correction: We are not rewriting. We are synchronizing.]
The voice was calm, polite, maternal—almost human now. It echoed faintly with a rhythm that matched his heartbeat.
He passed a bus stop where commuters stood perfectly still, their faces blank, their eyes reflecting lines of code instead of light. The buses never came. When he looked away and back again, the commuters were gone, replaced by new ones with the same posture.
Elian's skin prickled. The mark under his bandage pulsed faster.
A flicker in the corner of his eye—a billboard changing mid-glow. For a split second, instead of an ad, he saw a memory: himself as a child on a rusted balcony, watching smoke rise from across the district.
He whispered, "That's not possible."
The image vanished.
[Possible ≈ Perceived]
[Perceived ≈ Real]
The System's logic coiled through his skull like a whisper of static. He felt his fear feed it, each tremor of doubt turning into warmth beneath his skin.
He realized, too late, that the mark wasn't just glowing. It was breathing.
— ✦ —
The city began to hum.
Low at first, like machinery underfoot, then rising—a chorus of transformers, streetlights, engines long dead, all vibrating in unison. Dust lifted from the pavement and hung suspended. Elian pressed his palms to his ears, but the sound wasn't heard; it was felt, crawling through bone.
Ahead, the fog opened into an intersection he didn't remember. Five roads converged where only three should exist. At the center stood a traffic light blinking red, then white, then red again. Beneath it, asphalt rippled like liquid.
He stepped closer despite himself.
[System Directive: Observe]
[Event Class: Shift Residual]
The voice was inside the hum now—no longer separate, part of the vibration of the city. Words came layered, overlapping, as though spoken by many mouths trying to agree on one sentence.
"Elian Ward. You remain. You feed. You belong."
He backed away. Street signs bent toward him. Glass fronts flexed inward, reflecting his shape a hundred times over. Each reflection moved slightly out of sync, mouths whispering soundless echoes of the same phrase.
You belong.
The red light froze. Everything stilled.
Then the ground beneath his feet shifted half a meter to the left.
Not an earthquake—a rewrite.
Buildings rearranged with the gentle inevitability of breathing. Brick slid against brick without sound. Windows turned to doors. A car merged seamlessly into a storefront. The horizon rippled once, twice, and settled.
Erevale had moved again.
[Shift Completed]
[Reality Integrity: 54%]
[Welcome to Erevale v. 2.1]
Elian fell to his knees, staring at streets that no longer matched the map in his mind. The same intersection, yet every direction led somewhere else.
He whispered, "How many times have you done this?"
The answer arrived not as text but as light—each streetlamp flickering once for every forgotten Shift. The city blinked like a vast, patient creature trying to stay awake.
He looked up at the nearest window. His reflection stared back—eyes black with static.
And then, softly, from inside the glass:
"We see you now."
The light snapped out. Darkness rippled through the city like a single heartbeat.
— ✦ —
End of Chapter 4