༺ The Fractured City XVII ༻
The first thing Rowan noticed was the sterile scent of antiseptic, sharp against the back of his throat.
The second was the ceiling above him — an endless stretch of dull white, interrupted by hairline cracks.
He blinked. His body ached faintly, like an echo of pain rather than the thing itself.
It was not death.
Not yet.
Slowly, he turned his head. He was lying in a hospital bed, the sheets tucked neatly around him.
An IV pole stood to his left, the line trailing down to an empty catheter taped to his arm.
There was no one else in the room.
He inhaled, testing his lungs.
They worked.
His mind, sluggish at first, began to rouse itself from the fog.
He shifted, wincing — his muscles protested.
But no injuries. No searing agony.
Just… weakness. A strange, hollow weakness.
Rowan's gaze drifted to the clock mounted above the door.
The thin red second hand swept its way around without pause.
11:26 PM.
He pushed back the covers and swung his legs over the side.
The cold tile floor kissed his bare feet.
The room seemed too clean, too perfect, as if time itself had been frozen and scrubbed of its blemishes.
He rose unsteadily, gripping the edge of the bed for support.
A wave of dizziness washed over him — but he rode it out, breathing slowly.
The corridor outside was dimly lit.
Long stretches of pale fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting a tired glow over the scuffed floors and blank walls.
The scent of antiseptic was stronger here, almost cloying.
He walked.
Each step felt strangely disembodied, like wading through a dream.
There were doors lining the hall, each with small glass panels — darkened rooms beyond.
The corridor was long and sterile, lit by the cold hum of fluorescent lights. Rowan's bare feet padded silently against the tile. He kept a hand against the wall to steady himself; though the bleeding ache in his chest had faded, weakness still clung to his bones like a second skin.
He walked, disoriented, the halls a twisting sameness of white doors and identical metal placards.
Then he saw it — a door, slightly ajar, with a name printed on the silver plate.
ROWAN
No surname. Just that single word, as if whoever had prepared the room believed that more would only confuse matters.
He pushed the door open.
Inside, the space was simple — cleaner than the room he had woken in. A wide desk sat beneath a wall-mounted clock, its hands still ticking steadily: 11:29 PM.
A bed was pressed into the corner. A small nightstand. A standing wardrobe, half-open. The air smelled faintly of old paper and antiseptic.
On the desk, an object caught his eye:
A notebook — leather-bound, though the leather was cracked and torn with age. The spine was crumbling at the edges, and the pages within were yellowed, some torn, others covered in the faint scratchings of ink.
Rowan stepped closer, drawn by something he couldn't name. He opened the notebook carefully.
Inside, the first few pages were diagrams: sigils intertwined with elemental glyphs. Fire, Water, Wind, Earth. Beneath each were scrawled dense notes, sketches of forms, handwritten guides that seemed at once meticulous and half-insane.
Sub-elements, too: Electricity, Ice, Metal — all presented as natural extensions of the core.
No signature. No explanation of origin. Only quiet, careful desperation bleeding from every line.
Rowan frowned, the heavy feeling of displacement growing in his chest. He placed the notebook on the desk. He opened the drawer, saw the gun he'd left there, and closed it with a soft click.
Then, his eyes shifted.
A box sat beside the desk, sealed with a simple waxed paper ribbon.
Rowan pulled it open.
Inside, neatly folded, was a new set of clothes — almost identical in style to his old ones. Plain black trousers. A sturdy black shirt. A coat, long and heavy, much like the rugged one he remembered.
Tucked into the folds was a card. Rowan picked it up, reading.
Specifications:
• Outer Layer: Dyneema-blend — slash-resistant, flame-retardant, aesthetically normal.
• Inner Layer: Removable Kevlar liner — lightweight protection against knives, bullets, and heat.
• Weight: 3.2 kg.
• Features: Concealed pockets, fireproof stitching, magnetic armor attachment points.
The attention to detail unsettled him. Someone — whoever they were — had prepared this for him specifically. They had known he would come.
And then, his heart caught.
Folded neatly beneath the coat were two more familiar shapes:
His old rugged coat — the one he had worn for what felt like years — frayed but carefully repaired.
And his keris, its blade wrapped in soft linen.
Rowan unwrapped it slowly.
The keris shimmered under the cold light, its twisted blade gleaming with a soft dark luster, almost breathing in the air.
He closed his hand around its hilt. The weight was perfect, as if it had been made for no hand but his.
Gathering his things along with the notebook, Rowan stepped back into the hallway.
He didn't wander long before he found him.
At the far end of the corridor, a figure sat hunched on a metal bench beside a vending machine — an old man in a simple dark jacket, his white hair neatly combed back, reading something from a small, tattered book.
Rowan recognized him instantly.
Elias.
Not merely a stranger from this world. Someone Rowan had met before, someone whose presence had been threaded into his path like an old melody you hear on the wind.
"Elias," Rowan called, his voice rough.
The old man looked up, his face crinkling into something like a smile.
"You're awake," Elias said simply, his voice steady, warm. "Good. I was beginning to think you'd decided to stay asleep forever."
Rowan approached, sitting heavily beside him. For a moment, neither spoke.
Then Rowan asked — almost without thinking — "Why am I healed?"
Elias tucked the book away into his coat pocket. His expression grew distant, almost regretful.
"There are… old methods," he said. "Worn and dangerous. We used one."
Rowan frowned. "But my wounds… they were—"
"Deep," Elias interrupted softly. "Yes. Mortal, almost certainly. Yet here you sit." He studied Rowan for a long time, as if measuring something invisible. "Not everything must be explained tonight."
Silence fell again.
Until Rowan, without quite meaning to, spoke again.
"I want to tell you a story."
Elias smiled slightly — not surprised, not expectant.
As if he had been waiting.
"Then tell it."
Rowan closed his eyes for a moment, drawing in a slow, deep breath. The words were still there, ready to spill from his lips. This was no ordinary tale. It was a story that intertwined with his own soul, woven into the very fabric of his existence. A story that, somehow, felt both distant and immediate. He wasn't sure why he was telling it now, or why to Elias. But it felt right. There was a strange kind of clarity when he spoke the words aloud.
"The story begins in a desert."
The memory pulled him under.
The sun was a white wound in the sky, and the desert stretched endlessly, dunes piled like the bones of giants.
Rowan had wandered for days, led only by half-burnt maps and whispered stories of something ancient lying hidden beyond the edge of all known paths.
He found it at twilight — a half-buried ruin of crumbling pillars and broken stone arches, nearly lost to the sands.
The entrance was a narrow fissure. Rowan slipped inside.
The air within was still and heavy with dust. The ground beneath him was treacherous: the stone tiles bore faint carvings, pressure plates to trigger ancient defenses. He moved carefully, picking his way across — once narrowly avoiding a sudden snap of rusted blades from the wall, another time dodging a puff of poisoned darts.
At last, he reached the heart of the structure:
a vast chamber, round and high-ceilinged, where the walls soared up beyond the reach of his lantern's light.
All around him, the murals began.
They were crude in some places, exquisite in others — but unmistakably alive with meaning, despite the decay of time.
Rowan stepped closer, drawn to them like a moth to flame.
The first image stretched across half the wall.
A colossal being floated in the blackness of space, so vast that it dwarfed entire stars.
Its form was tangled: part smoke, part stone, part crackling light, as if no material could contain it. It was named Azzar.
The next panels showed its death.
The being collapsed in a slow, majestic fall, shedding fragments of itself into the void. One tiny shard — depicted as barely a fleck against the darkness — broke off and hurtled toward a small, vibrant world: Earth.
The shard blazed like a comet as it pierced the sky.
It struck a kingdom — a city of towers and gleaming streets, built atop cliffs by the sea. The impact shattered part of the city, but amid the wreckage, a burning fragment remained, pulsing with strange energies.
In the next scene, the King stood atop the battlements, robed in black and gold. His name was written in old glyphs that Rowan struggled to decipher: something like Maradien.
King Maradien gathered his council, who knelt around him in concentric circles. His command was clear: investigate the fallen star.
From the crowd, a young voice protested.
A boy — no older than sixteen, slender and crowned with silver laurels — stepped forward.
"My King," the boy said, words inked in curling banners across the mural,
"There is wisdom in caution. Shall we not first pray, and seek omen?"
But Maradien, stern-faced, lifted a heavy hand.
"Progress demands daring," he declared.
"The gods favor those who seize the fire."
The council obeyed.
They sent scouts, engineers, priests — all to the crater where the fragment smoldered.
Some returned whispering of miracles: tools sharpened themselves in its presence, dead crops sprouted new life when sprinkled with the dust clinging to their boots.
Others returned sick, hollow-eyed, marked by strange burns on their flesh.
Still, the King pressed forward.
Rowan moved slowly down the chamber, following the story.
The kingdom split.
Two factions emerged — their conflict painted with desperate energy on the walls.
On one side:
the New Forge — engineers, mages, visionaries. They saw in the fragment a path to transcendence. They fashioned artifacts that bent wind, shaped fire, harnessed gravity. Their leader was Master Avelin, depicted with a flaming hammer in his hand.
On the other:
the Circle of Stone — scholars, priests, cautious rulers. They urged restraint, warning that tampering with such forces could unravel not only their kingdom, but the very balance of the earth itself. Their leader was Sister Elira, robed in deep blue, clutching a staff tipped with a crystal.
In the murals, Rowan saw them arguing in the high court:
Avelin: "We are no longer bound by weakness. We can raise cities into the clouds, end all suffering!"
Elira: "And if we tear the heavens apart in the attempt? Must all growth come through fire?"
The court was torn.
Some cheered for the New Forge's promises of progress and prosperity. Others clung to the old ways, fearing catastrophe.
The artists had carved the faces with aching detail — hope, fear, ambition, doubt — so vividly that Rowan almost heard their voices echo through the ruins.
At last, Rowan stood before the final mural.
It depicted a great machine, half-organic, half-metal, built around the fragment itself — a towering spire that reached toward the sky, veined with molten veins of the shard's energy.
On the steps of the machine stood two figures: Avelin and Elira, facing each other for the last time.
Avelin extended a hand.
"Join me, Sister," the words flowed across the stone.
"Let us remake the world — not in fear, but in triumph."
But Elira lowered her gaze and turned away, her figure melting into the faceless crowd behind her.
"I would rather preserve what wisdom we have," she said,
"than gamble and lose even that."
A final panel showed the machine awakening, light bursting from it in rings — and in the distance, the kingdom crumbling, towers toppling, cliffs splitting, as the sea rushed in to claim the ruins.
No victor was painted.
No clear judgment given.
Only the stark choice:
Progress through risk.
Or security through stagnation.
Faith in becoming.
Or worship of stability.
Rowan stood for a long time, staring at that final image.
It felt less like a warning, and more like a mirror — a reflection of the world he knew, the choices he had yet to make.
Rowan felt the air around him grow heavier as he passed deeper into the ruin. It was as though the walls themselves were watching him, silently awaiting the unveiling of some ancient secret. The space was a labyrinth of corridors, each turning into another forgotten chamber, each with its own collection of murals.
But it was one mural that caught his eye. It was a vast, sprawling canvas, its edges crumbling but still vibrant with color despite the years of decay. The first panel depicted two cities, one grand and shining, with towers reaching toward the heavens, the other shadowed and decrepit, its buildings hunched low, clinging to the earth like the gnarled roots of a dying tree.
In the city of light, people danced in the streets, their faces alight with the joy of discovery. Great thinkers and dreamers stood at podiums, heralding new ideas. Machines of wonder sparked to life, carrying the weight of their creators' ambitions. The murals showed them building, creating, risking — a society driven by progress and becoming, their path unstable, but full of potential.
In contrast, the shadowed city below was stagnant. Its streets were empty, its buildings cramped, and its people cloaked in silence. Stone faces stared out from the murals, their eyes blank, lifeless. The city was static, frozen in a moment of false stability, where nothing moved, nothing changed. The murals showed the people trapped in their own desires for safety, their craving for a world that did not change — a world that did not risk.
Rowan stepped closer, his fingers brushing the worn stone. His breath caught in his throat as the figures began to speak in the narrative of the murals. They were no longer just images — they were voices, ancient echoes of the past.
First Voice (from the bright city):
"Progress requires the heart of a warrior. It is only through risking the foundations of our world that we build something greater. The road is fraught with peril, yes — but it is the peril that forges us, that sharpens our minds and bodies. There is nothing to be gained from safety alone. To become, we must dare the unknown."
Second Voice (from the darkened city):
"What is progress if it costs us peace? What is a dream if it shatters with every step? I have seen those who burned with ambition, only to find themselves consumed by their own fires. Better to preserve the stability we have, to maintain the balance that keeps the world from breaking. The unknown is a monster, and its hunger never ceases."
Rowan's eyes scanned the scene. The voices began to fade, replaced by newer images that showed the conflict between these two ideals. The figures in the bright city tried to reach beyond, building great machines that could pierce the heavens, yet their creations faltered, collapsing under their own weight. Meanwhile, the people in the shadowed city clung tightly to the old ways, rejecting the advancements that could've lifted them to greater heights. Stagnation had become their only truth.
Then, the final image struck him like a hammer. The two cities were collapsing inward upon each other. The light from the shining city flickered, dimming under the weight of its ambition, while the shadowed city slowly consumed itself, as though it could no longer survive without the progress it had long rejected. Both had failed.
Third Voice (from the mural):
"Beware of progress without wisdom. Beware of stability without change. For the world is neither fixed nor fluid, but a tapestry of both — woven together with threads of vision, will, and compromise. To embrace change is to risk all that we know, but to cling to what is stagnant is to surrender the future to rot."
Rowan stepped back from the mural, his mind whirling. The questions lingered, the ideas pressing like the weight of the earth itself. Was the cost of progress truly worth the sacrifice of stability? Or was it a matter of balance — a dance between the two?
Rowan finished speaking, his voice low and rough.
Across from him, Elias said nothing.
He simply watched Rowan with a steady, thoughtful gaze.
The silence between them felt deep, not empty — like the stillness between two deep breaths.
After studying the murals until the dust prickled his throat, Rowan moved deeper into the ruin.
The air grew heavier, warmer. The stone corridors narrowed, twisting downward into the earth. Rowan lit a fresh lantern. Its flame danced over carvings that had long since lost their meaning.
Then, in a collapsed chamber, half-buried beneath broken slabs, he saw it.
The shard.
It was about the size of a human head, dark like obsidian but threaded through with veins of faint, living light that pulsed slowly, like a heartbeat.
Rowan approached cautiously. The air around it shimmered with a subtle heat. When he drew closer, the hairs on his arms rose.
He knelt and pried it free from the debris.
It was heavy — denser than iron — and strangely warm to the touch.
Rowan stared at it, feeling a deep sense of significance, of something vast and unseen pressing at the edges of his mind.
Without knowing why, he wrapped it in a torn scrap of cloth and tucked it carefully into his pack.
He left the ruin behind, the desert swallowing it once more without a trace.
The desert wind howled around him as Rowan stood at the edge of the ruined city, the fragment heavy in his pack. The sky was a blistering white, the sun already beginning its slow descent toward the jagged horizon. Sweat clung to his back, and the ground beneath his boots felt like it could catch fire at any moment. He adjusted the ragged scarf around his neck and turned away from the broken bones of the old world.
The ruin had yielded its secret. Now, the real journey was about to begin.
Rowan knew he could not stay. Something about the shard seemed to pull at the world around it — a magnet for unseen things, old things that should have been left sleeping. That night, sheltered in the crumbling remains of an ancient watchtower, he laid out his possessions: a battered canteen, a few strips of dried meat, a compass with a cracked face, a dagger dulled by time, and the fragment — wrapped carefully in oilcloth.
He examined the map he had stolen from the ruin's library, tracing the faded lines with a calloused finger.
There: to the south, where the golden sands gave way to choking vines and rain-heavy skies — a jungle so dense it was said even the stars were forgotten beneath its canopy.
It was madness, perhaps, to cross half a continent on a whisper of intuition. But there was something about the fragment… something that demanded completion, a path that Rowan could not yet see but could feel, pulsing faintly in the marrow of his bones.
He tightened the straps of his pack, slid the dagger into his belt, and stood.
The moon hung low and swollen as he began to walk.
Days became a blur of heat and dust. Rowan crossed dry plains where the cracked earth split like old parchment. He bartered with nomads for supplies — rough, wary men who spoke in low tones and watched him with distrustful eyes. In forgotten border towns, he mended his boots, patched his coat, and traded what little silver he carried for guidance to the south.
And always, always, the fragment weighed on him.
At times, he thought he heard it hum faintly at his side — a song just at the edge of hearing, like the breath of a forgotten god.
Weeks later, the land changed. The air grew thick and wet, heavy with the scents of loam and unseen blooms. The sky, once vast and endless, narrowed to a canopy of emerald and shadow. Insects buzzed in great clouds, and unseen things moved in the undergrowth, their movements silent but palpable.
Rowan stepped through the first wall of trees and felt the forest close around him like a living thing.
It was not the jungle of children's stories — no, this was an older place, a wilder place. Here, every root and vine seemed woven with intent. Rowan felt as if he were trespassing in a temple whose gods had never been named.
He paused just beyond the treeline, pulling the fragment from his pack and unwrapping it. In the damp half-light, the shard seemed to pulse, faintly but unmistakably — a beat that matched his own heart.
A sign.
With a final breath, Rowan wrapped the fragment once more, tucked it carefully into his inner coat pocket, and tightened the belts across his chest.
He adjusted the strap of his pack, steeled his mind against the uncertainty ahead, and stepped deeper into the green cathedral of the rainforest.
The trees swallowed him whole.
And so, the true journey began.
On the seventh night, as Rowan hacked through a wall of vines, he stumbled into a clearing.
There, by a fire of blue-white flame, sat a man.
He was old, his skin like polished teak, his hair silver but thick. His clothes were simple — a loose tunic, worn leather leggings — but around his neck hung a curious pendant: a spiral of bone and gold.
The man looked up as Rowan entered the clearing.
His eyes, sharp and unclouded, fixed immediately on the wrapped bundle at Rowan's side.
He smiled — not kindly, but knowingly, like someone who had been waiting a long time.
"You carry a burden heavy enough to split the world," he said, his voice deep and gravelly.
Rowan hesitated, then approached the fire.
"You know what this is?" Rowan asked.
The smith — for that was what he seemed to be, judging by the tools scattered around the fire — nodded.
"A shard of the Titan's Heart," he said.
"I thought it only a legend."
He motioned for Rowan to sit.
"Come. You and I have much to speak of."
The Smith's Legend: Pursuit of Power vs. Preservation of Wisdom
As they sat by the fire, the smith began to tell his tale.
His voice blended with the crackle of the flames, the rain dripping from the canopy, the distant hoot of night beasts.
"Long ago," said the smith, "when the world was young, men found another shard — much smaller than yours, but powerful still.
They built a city around it, hidden deep beneath the earth.
Two great Houses ruled this city: the House of Embers, and the House of Roots."
He stirred the fire absently, sending sparks into the air.
"The House of Embers sought to forge wonders. They believed the shard could elevate mankind — end hunger, end suffering, perhaps even end death.
The House of Roots counseled caution. They saw in the shard a power too vast, too wild, to be tamed without consequence."
Rowan listened, silent.
"In the end," the smith continued, "the House of Embers crafted weapons. Engines that could split mountains. Machines that could rend the sky.
The House of Roots, powerless to stop them, withdrew into silence — preserving only what little wisdom they could in secret libraries."
His voice grew softer.
"The city fell, in the end.
Not to war, but to ambition itself.
The engines they built ruptured the veins of the earth. The city sank. The rivers swallowed it."
He looked at Rowan, his eyes gleaming in the firelight.
"The lesson is simple, but hard:
The pursuit of power leads ever toward destruction if wisdom is not preserved alongside it."
He tapped Rowan's chest, right over the heart.
"Strength without understanding is a blade turned inward."
Rowan sat very still.
The fire crackled between them, its light making the cavern walls shiver and dance like restless spirits.
The smith leaned back, his hands resting on his knees.
For a while, neither spoke. Only the distant drip of water from unseen places and the slow breath of the earth surrounded them.
Finally, Rowan found his voice, low and rough:
"Why risk it, then?" he asked. "Why forge anything at all from this?"
The smith smiled — not kindly, but with something fiercer, a spark of ancient defiance.
"Because to live," he said, "is to risk.
Because to stand still is to rot.
Because to turn away from power out of fear is no better than dying with your hands tied behind your back."
He threw another piece of dry wood onto the fire, and the flames leapt higher.
"You must remember the lesson of the fallen city," the smith continued. "Not to fear the shard — but to respect it. To know yourself, before you touch the forge."
Rowan bowed his head slightly, absorbing the words.
He thought of the murals he had seen before, carved into the ruins of the desert: of kings who worshiped stability, who crushed change before it could flower.
He thought of the stories hidden under stone and sand — stories not of villains and heroes, but of choices, and consequences.
And he thought of himself.
Of how easily he could lose everything, chasing after shadows of strength.
The smith rose then, moving with a grace that belied his age.
"Come," he said. "The forge waits."
The platform in the center of the cavern was no mere floor.
As Rowan stepped onto it, he could feel the thrum of ancient mechanisms buried deep beneath the stone, humming in time with some long-forgotten pulse.
The smith joined him, laying a hand on the fragment that Rowan carried.
It glowed faintly in response — a deep, living red, like the slow heartbeat of the world.
"You must trust the path," said the smith. "There is no map. No certainty. Only the will to continue."
Rowan nodded once.
The smith murmured something under his breath — a prayer, or perhaps a command — and the platform shuddered.
Light spilled from the carvings around its edge, cascading upward in thin, brilliant lines. The floor beneath them softened, became translucent, until Rowan could see the layers of rock and molten rivers of magma far, far below.
A deep pull, not physical but something more ancient, seized them.
And they began to descend.
Through the World's Veins
It was not a fall.
It was not flight.
It was a surrender to gravity's oldest memory.
The world rushed up past them — the crust, thick and broken; the mantle, burning and slow as dreaming gods.
The heat should have seared them to nothing, but the fragment's glow wrapped them in a shield of impossible equilibrium. They moved through pressure that could crush continents, and yet they moved unbroken.
As they passed deeper, Rowan glimpsed strange things:
• Rivers of molten metal flowing like veins.
• Great beasts of stone sleeping in the depths.
• Wrecks of civilizations long since forgotten, buried by time and heat.
Finally, they slowed.
Before them, suspended over an ocean of living fire, lay a platform of black stone — ancient beyond words, untouched by any human hand for millennia.
The smith stepped forward lightly, as if treading holy ground.
"This," he whispered, "is where it must be done."
The smith knelt, pulling tools from his belt: a hammer of meteoric iron, tongs carved from the bones of something ancient, a blade to shave spirit from flesh.
Rowan laid the fragment down upon a pedestal at the center of the platform.
The heat was unbearable — yet the fragment seemed to drink it in, glowing brighter, until it was a star captured in a mortal hand.
The smith worked quickly but reverently.
• First, he shaped the fragment — striking it with the hammer, each blow ringing out like the toll of a bell at the end of the world.
• Then he folded it, again and again, layering strength upon strength, until the shard became alive under his hands.
• He carved sigils into its surface — not magic, not spells, but reminders: memory forged into matter, wisdom etched into every inch.
All the while, he spoke in a low, chanting voice — words older than any tongue Rowan knew. Words of binding, of balance.
At last, after hours — or perhaps centuries — the blade took form: slender, wavy, gleaming like a captured river of stars.
A keris — not merely a weapon, but a testament.
The smith placed it carefully into Rowan's hands.
"Understand this," he said, his voice grave. "This keris is not power. It is a promise. Power without wisdom is death. Wisdom without courage is decay. You must bear both — or you will destroy not only yourself, but all who follow you."
Rowan looked down at the keris.
It was light.
It was heavy.
It was alive in ways he could not name.
Without needing to speak, they stepped back onto the platform.
This time, the earth did not resist them.
They rose — faster than falling — pulled by unseen currents through stone and fire and memory.
The world blurred past them until, with a suddenness that snatched the breath from Rowan's lungs, they burst once more into the cavern of the rainforest.
The fire was still burning, untouched by time.
Rowan staggered, keris in hand, heart thundering.
The smith watched him silently.
"You have chosen," he said finally.
Rowan met his gaze, and in his own eyes, he saw not fear — but understanding.
"Yes," he said.
The smith nodded once, satisfied.
"Then go," he said. "Your road lies ahead. May you have the courage to walk it."
Rowan fell silent, the last words of his tale still lingering between them like smoke.
Elias did not speak immediately. He merely watched, his eyes shadowed, unreadable, yet somehow understanding.
Rowan stood, quietly.
He gave a small bow — half out of respect, half out of habit — and said in a low voice, "Thank you for listening."
Elias inclined his head, offering no grand words, only a simple, grave nod — as if what had been shared needed no further blessing.
Rowan hesitated a moment longer, feeling the heavy weight of unspoken things pressing at the edge of his mind.
But he said nothing more.
Turning, he left the small room.
The corridor outside felt colder somehow, emptier.
His footsteps were muffled against the worn floor as he made his way back through the dim halls.
At last, he reached a door.
His door.
Simple, with a plain placard: "Rowan" etched in small, efficient letters beneath the number.
He pushed it open.
The room inside was spare — a bed, a battered desk, a narrow wardrobe — but it was his.
The soft scent of old books and faint ozone hung in the air, familiar and strange all at once.
Rowan crossed to the desk, absently running his fingers along the grain of the wood.
The worn notebook he had found earlier sat where he had left it, along with the newly provided clothes.
The world felt suspended, heavy, as if holding its breath.
He checked the clock on the desk.
11:57 PM.
Rowan sat on the bed, resting his elbows on his knees, staring at the second hand ticking its slow circle.
58… 59…
Midnight struck.
It began with a soft, almost imperceptible hum — as if the very fibers of reality were trembling.
Rowan's breath hitched.
The air around him wavered, bending as if seen through water.
A low groan echoed from the walls — the sound of old, stubborn things being forced apart.
Before Rowan could move, the ground beneath him fractured, veins of brilliant light spiderwebbing across the floor, the walls, even the ceiling.
Then, with a deafening crack, the world shattered.
Rowan was wrenched backward, pulled through the splintering air —
his body crashing through invisible walls, each one breaking apart like sheets of glass.
Again, and again, and again.
Each impact sent a ripple through his bones —
but there was no pain.
Only a profound sense of falling.
Faster.
Deeper.
The fragments of the room around him twisted and curled away into nothingness, swallowed by the void.
And Rowan —
gripping onto nothing, clenching his fists
against the rushing dark —
fell.