The alley stank of wet ink, old garbage, and rusted pipewater.
Alric stumbled into it like a man reborn wrong. The wall behind him—an uneven brick arch veined with copper tubes—sealed itself with a hiss, leaving no trace of the glowing recall gate he'd passed through.
> No sound.
> No alarm.
> No Order.
He was outside the Archive for the first time in nearly a year.
Above, the heavy roofs of the Sunken Quarter leaned inward like gossiping old women. Chimneys wept soot. Iron drainage chains ticked against stone. Rain slicked the cobbles. There were no lights—no glyph-globes or memory beacons. Just oily puddles and broken doorways.
The city hadn't noticed him leave.
But the world felt... wrong. Quieter. Like something fundamental had been cut loose.
He stepped forward.
His left arm still burned beneath the sleeve. The mark—Noxa's glyph—was no longer shifting. It had stabilized. Now it resembled a spiral etched in broken script, like a child's attempt to redraw a god's name.
He looked up.
A tattered banner hung over the alley mouth, half-torn by time.
> SUNKEN QUARTER: INHABITABLE ZONE 3
ABANDONED – CENSUS ERASED BY ORDER OF CITY SCRIPTURE
Of course.
This place wasn't just ignored—it had been deleted.
No patrols. No archivists. No rites of preservation. Just a slum built atop forgotten brick and smudged memory.
> "Fitting," Alric muttered aloud.
> "Where better for a man no longer written?"
No response.
Noxa was silent now.
Not absent—he could still feel it, coiled somewhere behind his eyes—but it had gone still. Dormant. Satisfied, maybe. Or waiting.
He leaned against a rust-stained wall and slid down to the wet ground. The adrenaline crash hit him like a wave.
His legs trembled.
His breath came shallow.
He had no plan. No allies. No sanctuary.
And then—
A sound.
Not mechanical. Not a patrol.
A footstep.
Soft. Deliberate. Nearby.
He froze.
Across the alley, half-hidden in a shadowed doorway, someone was watching.
Not a Custodian.
Not a guard.
Just a pair of eyes—sharp, narrow, alert.
They blinked once.
Then disappeared.