There was no sensation of moving—no falling, no shifting. One moment they stood in the howling ruin of the Fold.
The next, they were elsewhere.
The sky bled ink.
Not black—but thought black, the color of censored pages, of minds that had chosen to forget. Clouds scuttled like insects across its surface, too slow to be wind, too purposeful to be natural. Below them stretched a city. Familiar and wrong. Towering buildings leaned at impossible angles, facades split open like rotted fruit, revealing hollow rooms suspended mid-moment.
Time had rotted here.
Cecilion and Zixuan stood on a cobblestone street made of fragmented mirrors. Each step echoed—not into the air, but into their own skulls. Their reflections in the ground twitched a moment out of sync, watching them, mimicking emotions they hadn't yet felt.
Zixuan clutched his arm. "Where are we?"
Cecilion didn't answer. Not because he didn't know—but because he was starting to. This wasn't a world.
It was a memory.
