The Serpent's Coil alley had a name only for cartographers and debt collectors.
To Catherine, it was just another fetid fold of the city, a festering scar between two leprous buildings where the sordid lapping of rain in the clogged gutters composed an eternal lament.
Leaning against the seeping brick wall, the cold biting at her bare skin through the thin fabric of her dress, she closed her eyes, not in pleasure, but to exile herself.
The man heaving against her was an anonymous mass of sweat, cheap ale, and crude desires. His ragged breath near her ear was background noise, as meaningless as the buzzing of the carrion flies feasting nearby.
Catherine had learned to fragment her mind.
One part of her, the shell she called Catherine, performed the learned gestures, the feigned sighs, the mechanical caresses that promised a pleasure she had long since ceased to feel. The other part, her true self, floated far above, taking refuge in the detached observation of the most trivial details.
She counted the cracks in the uneven cobblestones beneath her feet. Seven.
One of them vaguely resembled the profile of a toothless old man. She focused on that image, an anchor in the storm of disgust that constantly threatened to overwhelm her.
The man, Garrick or Garmon, she no longer knew, grunted, his fingers clenching her hips with brutal ownership. He was buying a body for a few minutes, and he fully intended to take possession of it.
Her mind soared higher, toward the dilapidated roofs where the stone gargoyles, eroded by acid rain, seemed to weep black tears. She imagined being one of them, cold, immutable, a silent witness to human misery without ever taking part in it. A statue. That was her dearest ambition: to become stone, unfeeling.
"You like that, don't you, little bird?" the man whispered, his voice thick with satisfaction.
"Yes…" Her own voice sounded distant, an echo from another life.
The lie was a second skin, worn so often she sometimes forgot the feeling of her own flesh. She forced a tilt of her head, a shift of her hips tricks learned through pain and repetition. Every gesture was currency for survival. A sigh for a piece of bread, a caress for a precarious shelter.
As the man's rhythm grew more frantic, a pressure built behind Catherine's eyes. It was not the usual headache, born of hunger and lack of sleep. It was something else.
A sharp sensation, as if an ice needle was slowly sinking into her skull, aiming for the very center of her consciousness. She tried to ignore it, to focus on the old man's profile in the stone, but the pressure mounted, becoming a blinding pain.
The world wavered. The stench of the alley, the weight of the man, the sound of her own breathing everything seemed to stretch, to distort.
A moan escaped her lips, but this time, it was not feigned. It was laden with a pure, cold terror.
The man took it as a sign of ecstasy. He quickened his pace, letting out a final, triumphant groan before slumping against her. It was at this precise moment, at the peak of her physical vulnerability and mental detachment, that the fracture occurred.
It was not a sound, but a sensation. As if a pane of infinitely thin glass, layered over her perception of the world, had just shattered.
A torrent of raw, incomprehensible information flooded her mind. Fleeting, violent images overwhelmed her: a starless sky where impossible geometries danced a silent waltz; fiery symbols that seared themselves onto her retina, carrying a meaning she instinctively understood without knowing the language; the memory of a dizzying fall through eons of darkness.
She felt a forbidden knowledge seep into her, not as a lesson learned, but as a memory recovered. Complex schematics, occult laws, principles of power that governed the very foundations of the world.
It was knowledge not meant for a human mind, and the pain was exquisite, intolerable, as if her soul were being torn asunder to make room for a universe.
The man pulled away, adjusting himself clumsily. He noticed nothing. For him, the transaction was complete. He fumbled in his purse and tossed a copper coin onto the wet cobblestones. It landed near the old-man-shaped crack with a derisive clink.
"That wasn't bad. Maybe some other time."
He staggered away, disappearing into the twilight mist.
Catherine did not move. She remained pressed against the wall, trembling, her body aching, but her mind on fire. The pain receded, leaving behind a strange, vibrant silence. The world that returned to her was no longer the same. The rain falling on her skin no longer felt merely wet and cold. She could almost… feel the sorrow of each drop torn from the clouds. The brick against her back was no longer inert; she could perceive the slow, inexorable process of its own decay.
Then, she saw.
At first faintly, then with blinding clarity, filaments of light began to weave an invisible web over reality.
Pale golden threads connected the stagnant puddle to the distant cloud.
Strands of liquid silver linked the abandoned copper coin to the purse of the man walking away, then to the mine from which the metal was extracted, and to the greed in the hearts of all who had touched it. Links of a dark, pulsing red emanated from her own body, clinging to the walls, the ground, and the memories of every man who had touched her a scarlet tapestry of shame, desire, and survival.
She was seeing the hidden laws. The connections. The structures of power invisible to the naked eye. The forbidden knowledge that had poured into her was not just information; it was a new way of seeing.
Catherine slowly looked down at her hands. They were still trembling, but not just from cold or fear. A new sensation shimmered within them.
A latent power. The world had always treated her as an object, a thing to be used and discarded. But in this filthy alley, under a merciless sky, something infinitely ancient and powerful had just whispered the rules of the game to her.
And for the very first time in her life, a thought as sharp as a shard of glass formed in her mind: what if she was no longer the toy, but the player?