He moved through Ash Harbor like a ghost haunting his own death.
The city had become a graveyard of architecture, skyscrapers leaning against each other like drunk friends supporting one another through a catastrophe none of them remembered. Glass covered the streets in sheets and shards, rivers of it catching the bruised light of a sky that had forgotten what blue meant. Every step crunched. Every sound echoed. The silence between footsteps felt deliberate, as if the buildings themselves were holding their breath, waiting to see what he would do next.
Gray had stopped counting the days. Time had become a smear, one bleeding into the next without the markers that once gave it shape. No work shifts. No meal times. No sleep schedules. Just the pull in his chest and the cold sensation that came and went like a tide he couldn't predict.
The sky pulsed.
It happened every few hours now, that wrong color rippling across the clouds like ink dropped in water. Purple and green and something that had no name, spreading in waves that made his teeth ache. And each time the sky pulsed, he felt a matching pulse behind his eyes, a throb of cold pressure that made his vision swim with silver threads for just a moment before fading.
He had started to notice a pattern.
The pulses were stronger in some places. A park here, its trees twisted into shapes that hurt to look at. A collapsed school there, its bricks arranged in spirals that seemed almost intentional. A fountain that still ran with water that glowed faintly in the darkness between pulses. The land itself seemed to remember something, to hold echoes of whatever had changed the world, and those echoes resonated with the cold sensation in his skull.
He had found a map in a dead woman's bag three days ago. The leather was cracked, the zipper broken, but the paper inside was still intact. A tourist's guide to Ash Harbor, with streets and landmarks marked in cheerful colors that now seemed obscene. He had started adding his own marks to it, small x's and circles noting where the pulses felt strongest, where the cold sensation surged without warning, where the threads in his vision seemed to thicken into something almost solid.
He didn't know why he was marking them. The rational part of his mind, the part that had once worried about rent and deadlines and whether he'd remembered to buy milk, told him it was pointless. But the pull in his chest disagreed. It directed him toward these places, made him pause and feel the resonance in his bones, and something in him needed to record it, to create a picture of what he was experiencing even if he couldn't understand it.
The street he walked now had once been a commercial district. He could tell by the empty shells of storefronts, their windows shattered, their displays scattered across the pavement like the contents of a giant's junk drawer. Mannequins lay in pieces, their plastic limbs arranged in poses that suggested flight or surrender. Clothing drifted in winds that carried no scent, fabric catching on broken glass and twisted metal.
A pharmacy on the corner had partially collapsed, its sign hanging by one bolt and swinging in a breeze he couldn't feel. Inside, he could see shelves still standing, bottles and boxes arranged with the logic of a world that no longer existed. He should check it. The pull in his chest said so, a gentle tug toward the door. Supplies were always needed. Water. Bandages. Anything that might keep him alive for another day.
But the cold sensation flickered as he approached, a warning that made him pause at the threshold.
The threads appeared without his permission.
They spilled across his vision like a net thrown over reality, silver and gold lines mapping the structure of the building in ways his eyes couldn't see. He could feel the stress points, the places where the remaining supports were holding weight they were never designed to hold. He could see the cracks spreading through the foundation, invisible from outside but screaming in the language of the threads. And he could see something else, a darkness gathered in the back of the store, a mass of shadow that pulsed with its own rhythm.
Not again.
He stepped back. The threads faded, leaving behind the headache that always came with them, a sharp pressure behind his eyes that made his nose bleed. He wiped the blood away with the back of his hand and marked the pharmacy on his map with a different symbol, a circle with a line through it. Danger. Stay away.
The pull in his chest redirected him, pointing down the street toward a cluster of buildings that had somehow remained standing. He followed it, stepping over debris and around obstacles, his feet finding paths that his conscious mind didn't choose. The cold sensation guided him, and he had learned to trust it even when he couldn't understand it.
A park appeared on his right, or what had once been a park. The trees were wrong now, their branches reaching in directions that defied the logic of growth, their leaves shimmering with colors that shifted as he watched. The grass had turned silver, each blade reflecting the bruised sky like a mirror. And in the center of the park, where a fountain had once stood, something glowed.
The pulse hit him before he could react.
The sky rippled, and the cold sensation surged through his skull with a force that drove him to his knees. The threads exploded across his vision, mapping everything, the trees and the grass and the glow in the center of the park, all of it connected by lines of light that pulsed in time with the sky. He could see the pattern now, could feel it resonating in his bones. This place was a node, a point where whatever had changed the world had pooled and concentrated, leaving behind a scar that still throbbed with power.
He didn't have words for what he was seeing. He only knew that it mattered, that it was important, that he needed to remember it.
He pulled out the map and added another mark, this one larger than the others. A star. Something significant. Something that might matter later, when he understood more about what was happening to him and to the world.
The headache faded slowly, leaving behind the familiar pressure and the taste of copper in his mouth. He stood on shaking legs and looked at the park one more time, at the silver grass and the twisted trees and the glow that pulsed in the center like a heartbeat. Then he turned away and continued walking, following the pull in his chest toward whatever came next.
The street stretched before him, empty windows watching his passage like hollow eyes. He was a ghost haunting his own death, and the city was his graveyard. But somewhere in the distance, the pull in his chest suggested, there might be something else. Something alive. Something worth reaching for.
He walked on, marking the map, feeling the pulses, and trying not to think about the girl he had buried under rubble she didn't deserve.