Pain arrives without warning.
Not sharp enough to scream, not dull enough to ignore. It presses behind my eyes in a slow, deliberate way, like something is testing how much strain my mind can endure before it fractures. Thinking feels resisted, as if my thoughts are being pushed back into place.
I open my eyes.
The sky above me is gray—flat, endless, and wrong. There are no clouds, no movement, no sense of distance at all. It looks less like a sky and more like an unfinished backdrop waiting to be filled.
This is not where I fell asleep.
I try to sit up, and my body responds a fraction of a second too late. The delay is subtle, but unmistakable, enough to make my stomach tighten. It feels like wearing a body copied from memory rather than built from origin.
The ground beneath me is pale stone fractured into uneven plates. Shallow markings run across it, symbols that sharpen when I focus and blur when I look away, as if they refuse to exist without attention.
The silence presses in.
It isn't empty. It feels attentive, deliberate, like a pause stretched too long. Even the air feels hesitant, cool and faintly metallic, carrying no scent at all.
I draw a slow breath and release it, forcing myself to stay still. Panic would only make this worse. Whatever this place is, it doesn't feel hostile—but it doesn't feel indifferent either.
I speak without thinking.
"Hello?"
My voice collapses the moment it leaves my mouth. It doesn't echo or fade—it simply disappears, as if sound itself is unwelcome here. My chest tightens as the implication settles in.
This place doesn't respond to sound.
It responds to attention.
The moment that thought forms, pressure blooms behind my eyes again. Not pain—scrutiny. The unmistakable sensation of being examined by something that does not need eyes to see.
Text appears in front of me.
It doesn't glow or animate. It simply exists, as if it has always been there and I've only just learned how to notice it.
[Observation detected.]
My breath catches.
I don't question how I understand the words. Whatever governs this place isn't translating for me—it's recognizing me.
Another line follows, precise and merciless.
[Foreign Record confirmed.][Status: Unfinished.]
For a moment, the words don't register.
Then they do, and something inside me tightens. My name is Elias Crowe, and until tonight, I was just a man with an ordinary life and an unexplainable habit of writing things down. I wasn't summoned, chosen, or prepared—I was sitting alone in my room, staring at a screen, trying to record a thought that felt unfinished.
That realization hits harder than the silence.
Because whatever this place is, it didn't take a hero.
It took me.
The pressure eases slightly, as if a condition has been satisfied. I become aware of my breathing again, of the way my hands tremble faintly at my sides. The fear doesn't vanish, but it sharpens into something more manageable.
Focus.
Space distorts in front of me, not visually but conceptually, like distance folding over itself. Rectangular shapes assemble from the gray, hovering at eye level with unsettling precision.
A deck of cards.
They aren't ornate or dramatic. No glow, no symbols, no sense of power radiating from them. Each card is blank, matte, and heavy in a way that has nothing to do with weight.
They don't feel like tools.
They feel like documentation.
I don't touch them, but I don't need to. Their presence presses against my awareness, carrying the uncomfortable certainty that these aren't meant to help me. They're meant to record what happens next.
One card slides free from the deck, drifting toward me with deliberate slowness. A single word etches itself onto its surface.
WITNESS
My instincts scream to refuse. Everything about this feels wrong—too sudden, too final, too absolute. But beneath the fear, a colder understanding settles in.
Refusal won't send me home.
Refusal will erase me improperly.
The moment I accept that truth, the card dissolves. The deck snaps shut and drifts to my side, hovering just out of reach.
The world exhales.
Color bleeds into the horizon where there was only gray before. Lines form beneath my feet, straightening into a deliberate path that stretches forward.
A road.
It doesn't ask where I want to go.
It assumes I will follow.
I hesitate, then step forward. The instant my foot touches the road, a faint pressure tightens around my chest, subtle but unmistakable.
[Foreign Record interaction registered.]
The message vanishes immediately. No explanation follows. No warning. Just the quiet certainty that everything I do here is being logged somewhere beyond my reach.
I walk.
With each step, the gray recedes further, replaced by muted stone and shadow. Structures rise ahead—towers too straight to be natural, banners hanging motionless between them in air that doesn't move.
A city.
It stands intact and unfinished at the same time. Streets are empty. Windows are dark. Symbols etched into the walls sharpen only when I look directly at them.
As I cross into the first silent street, something tightens around my awareness.
A presence.
Not distant scrutiny—something closer, focused, and alert. The sensation crawls across my skin, sharp enough to make me stop.
I am not alone.
The presence doesn't announce itself.
It settles.
I stand at the edge of the street, every sense stretched thin, waiting for movement that never comes. The buildings remain still, their dark windows unlit, their surfaces etched with symbols that seem to sharpen when I look directly at them and blur the instant my attention slips.
This city is watching me back.
I take a careful step forward, placing my foot deliberately, testing whether the street will accept the motion. Stone meets my shoe with a dull sound that feels too loud in the silence. The presence tightens immediately, not hostile, not curious—focused.
So it reacts to movement.
I slow my pace, forcing my breathing to stay even. Panic would be a mistake here. If attention is the currency of this place, then fear is an extravagant expense.
The deck of cards hovers at my side, silent and unmoving. It doesn't warn me. It doesn't guide me. Its presence feels less like protection and more like proof that whatever happens next will be recorded regardless of whether I survive it.
I walk deeper into the street.
The buildings grow closer together, their shadows overlapping in ways that make judging distance difficult. The air thickens, carrying a faint metallic tang that wasn't there before. It feels heavier here, like the city is compressing space around me.
A sound reaches me then.
Soft. Almost imperceptible.
Not footsteps—something less defined, like fabric brushing against stone or breath passing through a place where breath shouldn't exist. It comes from somewhere ahead, then stops abruptly.
My muscles tense.
I stop walking.
The silence deepens, coiling tightly around the street. For a moment, nothing happens, and I wonder if I imagined it.
Then something resolves at the far end of the street.
At first glance, it looks human.
Tall. Upright. Motionless.
The longer I look, the more wrong it becomes.
Its outline lacks depth, flattening and stretching in subtle ways that make it difficult to focus on. Edges blur where they shouldn't, rearranging themselves to match what my mind expects to see rather than what's actually there.
A head.Shoulders.Limbs.
All approximations.
The presence I felt earlier sharpens, narrowing until it locks onto the figure and then onto me. The pressure behind my eyes returns, stronger than before, making it difficult to think clearly.
This isn't distant scrutiny.
This is local.
The figure tilts its head slightly, the motion delayed, as if the concept of movement is being applied manually. The air around it distorts, and for a brief moment I see something else layered beneath its shape.
Lines.Symbols.Incomplete annotations.
Text flickers at the edge of my vision.
[Unresolved Record detected.]
The message vanishes almost as soon as it appears, but the meaning lingers. This thing isn't alive in any way I understand. It's an event that never reached a conclusion, given form because no one finished observing it.
And now it has noticed me.
The figure takes a step forward.
The sound it makes is wrong—stone grinding against stone, softened, as if the echo lost its origin halfway through. The pressure clamps down on my thoughts, pinning my attention in place.
Instinct screams at me to run.
I don't.
Running would draw attention. Sudden movement would escalate whatever fragile balance I've stumbled into. If this is an observation, then panic would only make it worse.
Instead, I focus.
Not on the figure as a threat, but as a detail.
I observe the hesitation in its movements, the way its outline flickers as if struggling to remain coherent. I note the symbols beneath its surface, half-formed and unstable, as though they're waiting for something to lock them into place.
The deck at my side reacts for the first time.
Not by moving, but by settling.
One card grows heavier than the rest, its presence pressing against my awareness like a marker sliding into place. I don't see it separate from the deck, but I feel it align, snapping into relevance.
Understanding dawns slowly, unwelcome and unavoidable.
This isn't a fight.
It's a process.
The figure stops a few steps away, its blurred features angled toward me. It doesn't attack. It doesn't retreat.
It waits.
The pressure shifts again, transforming into something disturbingly clear.
Expectation.
It wants to be seen.
I hesitate for half a second too long.
The city reacts.
Symbols etched into the surrounding buildings sharpen abruptly, lines locking into place as if the street itself is bracing. The figure convulses, its outline distorting violently as fragments of imagery bleed through—moments that aren't mine, memories without context or ending.
Pain lances through my head, sharp and sudden. I stagger but don't fall, teeth clenched as the sensation threatens to tear my thoughts apart.
The card's weight intensifies, dragging my focus toward it whether I want to or not. I understand then what refusal would mean here.
If I don't witness this properly—
The city will.
And the city won't be careful.
I force myself to meet the figure's shifting gaze.
The moment my attention fully locks onto it, the pressure snaps into something almost unbearable. Images flood my mind—an empty street, a scream cut short, a presence arriving too late to matter. The record stutters, struggling to complete itself through me.
I grit my teeth and hold on.
This is what it means to be recorded too early.
Not chosen.Not prepared.
Just present when something unfinished needs an ending.
The figure's outline begins to stabilize, its shape growing clearer as the fragments align. The pressure eases fractionally, just enough to let me breathe again. The symbols beneath its surface settle, no longer flickering.
The record completes.
The figure dissolves without sound, collapsing inward and vanishing as if it was never there at all. The street exhales, the tension draining from the air in a slow, unsettling release.
I sway, exhaustion washing over me in a sudden wave. My head throbs, and for a moment I struggle to remember where I am, what just happened, and why my chest feels so tight.
Then the understanding returns.
Text appears one last time, brief and clinical.
[Unresolved Record stabilized.]
No praise.No relief.
Just confirmation.
The deck of cards hums softly at my side, a vibration felt more than heard. Somewhere deeper within the city, something else shifts—something larger, older, and far more attentive than the thing I just witnessed.
I straighten slowly, forcing my breathing to steady.
This was only the first entry.
The city hasn't rejected me.
It has accepted my function.
And as the silence settles once more, heavier than before, a single thought takes hold with terrifying clarity.
If this world runs on unfinished things…
Then it will never run out of work for me.