"So that's it, huh?"
Asveri's voice broke the silence as his feet dragged slightly across the cracked, pale stone beneath them.
"We're really doing this?"
There was no answer from ahead. Only Anor'ven's back, steady and distant, as if the question had been thrown against a wall and left to hang there.
Asveri sighed, rubbing his face as he followed.
"I mean… I'm just saying. Maybe turning back isn't the worst idea we've ever had. Feels like it might actually be a smart one for once."
Still nothing.
He kicked at a small rock, watching it skitter ahead, bounce once, and vanish entirely into the thick, choking fog that swallowed the path.
"Yeah, okay," he muttered bitterly. "Great talk."
They had been walking for what felt like days, though Asveri knew — thanks to his increasingly natural omnipresence — that it had been barely two.
Two days since they left the camp of the Strayed of Selmor.
Two days of uneven roads, vague barter deals with passing merchants who seemed more ghost than living men, and endless grey sky pressing down like a lid over a boiling pot.
But this… this was different.
Ahead, the land itself seemed unwilling to continue. The cracked road fell away into uneven rubble. Strange, thin trees — or what resembled trees — hung downward from stone arches overhead, their roots curling into spirals that dripped faint streams of light.
And beyond them, the city waited.
At first, Asveri couldn't even process what he was seeing.
The city did not rise.
It hung.
Buildings — jagged, spired, glass-fronted and rust-worn — clung to the underside of a colossal stone shelf that split the sky. Chains as thick as towers reached downward, or upward, depending on one's perspective, swaying gently like metal vines seeking something lost.
Bridges arched sideways and twisted back on themselves. Windows, dark and cracked, peered downward as though watching the world like hollow, dead eyes.
And at the very core, suspended and inverted beneath everything else, was a shattered clock.
Massive.
Monumental.
Frozen at midnight, its hands cracked but stubbornly unmoved.
Asveri felt his mouth go dry.
"…Seriously?"
He let out a shaky laugh, more out of disbelief than humor.
"So, yeah. Not just a metaphor then."
Still, Anor'ven moved forward.
Unshaken.
Unmoved.
Of course he did.
Asveri hurried after, muttering bitterly under his breath.
"Sure, just march right into the upside-down hellhole. Why not."
The descent into the city was quiet.
Too quiet.
No wind.
No animals.
Not even the creak of ancient metal protesting their intrusion.
It was a vacuum. A place where sound came to die.
Asveri's skin prickled as they walked beneath hanging buildings and bridges that served no purpose but to loom ominously above.
Steam occasionally hissed from broken pipes, but even that felt tired — more like sighs than mechanical functions.
The walls were covered in faded posters, their edges curled like dried leaves. Faces stared back from them — or would have, if the eyes hadn't been violently scratched out long ago.
Here and there, figures stood frozen.
Automatons.
Once elegant, perhaps. Now rusted, fused to the metal they stood upon.
Servants holding trays of decayed nothing.
Children mid-step, mouths frozen mid-laughter.
Lifeless.
But somehow still wrong.
Asveri slowed, glancing nervously at them as he passed.
"…They look dead."
Anor'ven, without missing a beat, replied softly.
"Everything is… eventually."
The words hung heavier than the mist itself.
As they pressed deeper, the tension climbed.
Asveri extended his senses almost instinctively, letting his mind stretch and brush against the city's shape.
What he found was not comfort.
"Stay."
"Stay."
"Stay."
He recoiled slightly, his teeth clenched.
"Great. Voices. Exactly what I wanted."
The minds weren't malicious — not yet — but they felt… hungry. Slow and yearning.
Asveri kept close to Anor'ven now, almost against his pride.
"This place isn't dead," he muttered. "Not really. It's waiting."
Anor'ven said nothing.
The moment came quietly.
After winding paths and broken streets, they found the gate.
It wasn't grand.
Hidden between two collapsed towers, it stood hunched and rusted — an arch of tarnished metal and slow-turning gears.
At its center, however, sat the anomaly.
A mirror.
Not glass. Not liquid. Not anything truly understandable.
A surface of perfect silver that refused to reflect them.
It simply waited.
Anor'ven approached without hesitation. He pressed his palm flat against it.
Asveri flinched as the surface rippled, silent as breath, and swallowed the immortal whole.
Gone.
Just like that.
Asveri stared.
"…Wait. What?"
Panic bloomed.
"Anor? ANOR?!"
He rushed forward and slammed both hands against the mirror.
No ripple.
No give.
"…Oh no. No no no no—"
Asveri slapped, shoved, kicked.
Nothing.
The voices surged around him now.
"Stay."
"Stay."
"Stay."
His breaths came fast, shallow.
"This isn't happening — this isn't happening —"
He hit the surface again and again until his palms ached. His knees threatened to give out. The world spun slightly, as though laughing at his refusal.
"…Shit," he whispered, falling back, hands trembling.
"I'm gonna die here. Alone. Stuck with— with upside down robots and… and this stupid mirror."
His voice cracked slightly, both desperate and absurd.
And then — when he could no longer scream or resist —
A voice.
Soft. Calm. Female.
Not cruel. Not mocking.
Just… gentle.
"You struggle too much."
Asveri froze mid-panic, eyes wide, chest heaving.
"…What?"
But there was nothing. Only silence and empty streets.
He gulped air, too drained to question further.
Meanwhile.
Beyond the mirror, Anor'ven walked in nothing.
The world was gone.
There was no floor.
No ceiling.
No edges.
Just endless, pale void stretching in every direction, oppressive yet thin — like standing in the belly of memory itself.
He did not pause.
The void spoke first.
"Designated subject detected."
A voice devoid of emotion. Mechanic yet ancient.
"Preparing protocol."
Anor'ven stared ahead, unimpressed.
"Why have you come?"
The void pressed in closer.
Watching.
Waiting.