He followed the shadow.
Not because he trusted it — he didn't trust anything that didn't breathe —
but because it knew.
It moved like it had direction. Like it remembered why this place forgot him.
And in a city that devours memory, even the hint of purpose was holy.
The streets changed behind him.
They always did, but this time he noticed.
Buildings stretched taller, thinner — almost embarrassed to be seen.
Signs lost their letters.
Benches wilted like flowers, peeling into rust.
And the light...
The light didn't come from the sky anymore.
It came from the cracks.
The shadow turned into an alley that hadn't been there before.
He turned after it — but the alley was gone.
Instead, he stood before a wall of eyes.
Dozens. Maybe hundreds.
All blinking in unison — except one.
That one stared wide, trembling, as if it had just woken up from itself.
Do you remember what your last name was?
He didn't.
The eye shut.
The wall crumbled.
Behind it: a stairwell leading down, impossibly far.
He descended.
No light. No railings. Just the sound of echoes that weren't his.
Each step felt like it aged him.
Not his body — that stayed unchanged.
But his memories.
He forgot what rain smelled like.
Forgot what windows looked like from the inside.
Forgot what his mother called him when he was too tired to pretend.
Still, he kept walking.
And eventually...
...he found her.
Not the woman from the voice.
No.
This was a girl. No older than ten.
Sitting on the floor. Legs crossed. Surrounded by mirrors that showed everywhere but here.
She was drawing.
Not with crayons — with bones.
Tiny ones. Bird bones, maybe.
She dipped them into her wrists like they were ink wells, then scratched symbols into the floor.
She didn't look up.
"Took you long enough," she said.
"Who are you?" he asked.
She shrugged.
"I'm the part of you that stayed when you left."
"You're bleeding into the wrong layer. The others are waking up too fast."
He didn't understand.
So she stood, and suddenly she wasn't a girl.
She was everyone he'd ever forgotten.
His father's coughing laugh.
A girl with stormcloud eyes.
A dog that never came back.
She wasn't shifting. She was flickering.
Like memory played through broken glass.
"You're an anchor," she whispered. "They built you to break. But breaking made you remember."
"Remember what?"
She smiled sadly.
And then pointed upward — through the concrete, through the city, through everything.
"The world doesn't end where you think it does.
It ends where they stopped looking for you."
Then she faded — no scream, no drama. Just absence.
The mirrors shattered.
And in their place: a door.
A real one. Wooden. Carved with a symbol he had never seen before…
…but recognized instantly.
It was his.
Not a name. Not a word.
Just… his.
He opened it.
And stepped through.
Above him, the glass gate finished cracking.
And far across the city, something blinked for the first time.
End of chapter 2.