Sometimes I think every road we walk through life is bound to people as much as to time. It’s a strange feeling—if nothing matters, why do these connections persist? It occurs to me that throughout a life, our lifeforce is inextricably linked with certain people and places. Are these connections themselves part of something beyond this world? And is this divine force more than nothingness?
Is this, then, fate in some form—something divine that tugs at us throughout our stay in this world of flesh and bone? And in that truth, can we say we are more than the meat on our bones? Is it a script, and if written, can we deem it proof of purpose—proof of a design far larger than ourselves, a puzzle made by something otherworldly, the threads of fate itself?
I suppose the question lingers: is this love? And is it as eternal as it feels? Does it outlast the void, or simply delay it by memory? Perhaps love is the only thread strong enough to bind us to meaning, the only force that resists the silence of nothingness. Perhaps it is not eternity we seek, but the echo of connection that makes eternity bearable.
And when memory becomes the last vessel, it is not whole but fragmented. Pieces of us remain, embedded in others—the way a laugh echoes in a friend’s recollection, the way a gesture lingers in a child’s habits, the way a word spoken once can ripple through generations. We are scattered across the minds of those we touched, shards of ourselves carried forward in their stories, their choices, their dreams.
In this way, we do not vanish entirely. We fracture, we disperse, but we persist—woven into the fabric of others, stitched into their lifelines. Perhaps this is the true immortality: not the preservation of the self, but the diffusion of it, the countless remnants of our being living on in the memory of those who remain.
And yet, even fragments fade. Memories distort, voices blur, gestures lose their sharpness. What remains is not us, but the impression of us—an outline, a shadow, a trace. Perhaps that is enough. Perhaps the meaning of existence is not permanence, but the brief resonance we leave behind, the echo that proves we were here.
If eternity is silence, then memory is its rebellion. And if love is eternal, it is because it teaches others to carry our fragments forward, to keep the thread alive even when the body is gone.
–Martin Gravesend
I already knew an enforcer would be tough to scare. Criminals and law enforcement alike are trained to endure, conditioned both physically and mentally until fear becomes something distant, almost unreachable. That kind of discipline meant intimidation wasn’t going to come easy. It brought me to a crossroads, and I understood I’d have to get dirty.
But here’s the strange truth: the scariest things in life don’t happen to us directly—they happen to the people we care for. I could beat this man senseless, torture him, hang him on a hook, but none of that would touch the core of his strength. The worst vulnerabilities aren’t carved into flesh; they’re etched into the heart. They’re emotional. They’re the bonds we place so much value on, the ties that give us meaning but also leave us exposed to endless pain and guilt.
Love is the sharpest weapon of all. It gives us purpose, but it also makes us fragile. And in pain—real, unprotected, unpreventable pain—we are all terrified, because we are all vulnerable. Strip away the armor, the conditioning, the bravado, and what remains is the same for everyone: we are human, and humanity is the one weakness no training can erase.
My own life had fallen by the wayside. I had lost many of those connections, yet the pain remained. From time to time, I still held them in my memories, and I knew them physically—there was more weakness than I could bear anymore. And then, the moment I set one foot outside, a realization hit me. I saw a building in the distance, which was almost unusual at the time, and even though I knew I had a job to do, I couldn't help but watch in misguided nostalgia as the idea of this is not my home began to dance with the duality of engineered attachment from birth. I saw two knights and swords fighting over a princess in the street, the wooden toys of the children clanging visibly, and the young girl laughing as she watched her friends realize they had dreams that dark town hadn't extinguished every light in its entirety, knowing they fade with age. First, I had to examine those connections. So I unfolded my mental notes, trying to reconstruct where the man had resided. They’d mentioned I was to head toward Vedas — a direction that felt more ritual than geographic. I stepped outside, the air thick with static and memory.
Turning once, I asked the children for directions. They clustered like minor witnesses, half-mocking, half-curious. I flicked a Soril coin toward them — both sides bore the heads of state, no tails. It was almost an insult, a sovereign joke inscribed in metal. The absence of tails made the gesture feel rigged, ceremonial, and the children snickered as if they understood.
They pointed east, toward the shopping centre — not a sacred path, but a corridor of fluorescent containment. “Smelly,” one of them called out, a final benediction or curse. I walked on, carrying the insult like a credential, the coin like a cipher, and the directions like a half-truth. I followed the road with caution, my boots tapping against the graphinite flooring. The metal sheets beneath it gave off a muted clang with every step, a hollow resonance that travelled ahead of me like a warning. Darkspire loomed above, its shadow stretching across the walkway as water leaked from the ceiling plates overhead. Each droplet fell with mechanical precision, striking the road, blooming into shallow puddles, and then slipping away into the drainage grates like they were being swallowed by the structure itself.
I kept moving, monitoring the faces of the people walking against my direction. Their expressions drifted past me like masks—some placid in their denial, others predatory, indifferent, or simply worn down by the endless repetition of this place. It struck me again how this cage never ends. You exist or you fail, and either way you’re absorbed into the machine. It grinds you down until you match its rhythm.
Above me, the roof plates shifted with the weight of the weather. Steel girders crossed overhead like ribs, holding up the second floor where the rain first gathered. The droplets travelled along the beams, hesitating at the seams before falling through the gaps. They came from the third floor—where the sky was supposedly visible, though no one I trusted had ever confirmed it. The water carried the rumour of open air, but by the time it reached me it was just another part of the system’s slow decay. As I drew closer to Vedas, the street shifted into a harder register. Shops along the corridor were already sealing themselves for the night, pulling reinforced steel sheets over their windows with a grinding finality. The panels were layered—outer plates scarred from past attempts at vandalisation, inner plates smooth and cold, built to absorb impact rather than resist it. Some storefronts still relied on manual locks, but others had auto‑shutters that descended with a hydraulic hiss, scanning the pavement before sealing flush with the frame. The whole row looked less like a marketplace and more like a series of bunkers preparing for an unseen threat. Each shutter that clamped shut echoed through the walkway, merging with the clang of my steps and the distant drip of water from the upper floors, until the entire street felt like it was armouring itself against the night. Each shutter that clamped shut echoed through the walkway, merging with the clang of my steps and the distant drip of water from the upper floors, until the entire street felt like it was armouring itself against the night. The corridor narrowed as I approached the central block, the ceiling dropping just enough to make the steel beams feel closer, like the building was lowering its head to watch who passed beneath it. The lights dimmed in staggered intervals, each fixture surrendering a fraction of its brightness as the grid shifted into its night cycle. The far end of the walkway darkened into a single vanishing point, a throat closing.
Veda Hair Salon sat in the middle of the block like a relic from a different era — not because it was old, but because it refused to die. The name wasn’t a person; it was a holdover from the building’s original layout, a designation etched into the metal frame above the entrance long before the current tenants arrived. The letters were welded in a looping script that didn’t match the brutal geometry of the surrounding architecture. They flickered now, their backlights struggling against the corridor’s dimming grid, casting a pale, uneven glow across the reinforced glass.
The salon’s front plate hadn’t fully descended yet. The locking rails were extended halfway, like a jaw preparing to close but waiting for a final signal. The glass beneath was thick enough to distort reflections into elongated silhouettes. My own shape stretched across it, broken by the spiderweb cracks radiating from the lower corner — a reminder of the last time someone tried to pry the panel loose during a blackout.
Inside, the space was lit by a single overhead strip, humming with the kind of electrical fatigue that made the light pulse rather than shine. The interior was cleaner than the corridor deserved: chairs bolted to the floor, counters wiped to a sterile sheen, mirrors polished until they reflected the dim corridor lights like distant stars. The posters on the walls were outdated, their models smiling with a confidence that didn’t belong to this building.
A figure moved in the back — Veda, the current tenant, not the namesake. She wasn’t the type to match the salon’s faded optimism. Her hair was tied back in a tight, functional knot, her posture straight despite the hour. She stepped into the light with the quiet precision of someone who had learned to navigate the building’s moods. Her eyes flicked to the half‑lowered shutter, then to me, assessing the corridor the way others might check the weather.
“You’re cutting it close,” she said. Not a warning. Not a complaint. Just a timestamp, spoken by someone who had lived long enough in this building to know that timing was its own form of survival.
Behind her, the mirrors multiplied the corridor’s shadows, stretching them into shapes that didn’t quite match the originals. The salon felt like a pocket of brightness carved into the building’s ribs — temporary, fragile, but stubbornly present. Veda stepped out from behind the counter, wiping her hands on a cloth that had long since lost its colour. She didn’t bother with small talk. She tilted her head toward the service corridor that ran behind the salon, the one that fed into the narrow alley where the building’s waste ducts and emergency conduits converged.
“Through this way,” she said, already moving.
She pushed open the side door with her shoulder. The hinges groaned — not from neglect, but from the building’s age, the kind of fatigue that no amount of maintenance could erase. The corridor beyond was lit by a single strip light that buzzed like an insect trapped in plastic. Two of her workers were lingering near the back exit, smoking in the half‑dark, their silhouettes sharp against the glow of the alley.
Veda clicked her tongue once. A quiet signal, but it carried authority.
“Clear out,” she said. “Now.”
They didn’t argue. They stubbed their cigarettes on the metal railing and slipped past Martin without meeting his eyes, disappearing into the main corridor before the shutters finished sealing. The alley felt suddenly larger without them — colder, too. The rainwater from the upper floors dripped steadily into the drainage grate, each drop echoing like a metronome.
Martin’s pager vibrated against his hip.
A short, sharp buzz — the kind that meant priority, not routine.
He pulled it free. The screen flickered, then stabilised, displaying a block of text in the agency’s compressed format:
TARGET: TOM WHITEMOORE
AFFILIATION: RAT COVEN (FORMER ENFORCER)
STATUS: ACTIVE, UNSTABLE
LAST SEEN: SECTOR 6 / LOWER VENTS
OBJECTIVE: TRACK + REPORT. DO NOT ENGAGE.
A second message followed immediately, the timestamp identical:
WHITEMOORE IS OFF GRID. A low, distant hum drifted up through the drainage grate beside him — the rail line that looped the six districts, each one sprawling enough to be its own city. The trains ran deep beneath the alley network, their engines sending tremors through the metal latticework. Tonight the sound felt heavier, like the whole system was bracing for something.
Veda watched him read, her expression unreadable in the dim light.
“Trouble?” she asked, though she already knew. People in this building always knew when trouble was moving through its corridors. The structure carried rumours the way the beams carried rainwater — downward, inevitably, until they reached the ones who needed to hear them.
Martin slid the pager back into his pocket.
“Just business,” he said.
Veda nodded once, a small gesture of acknowledgement — or warning.
“Then you’d better move before the vents cycle,” she said. “They’re running hot tonight.”