Neon lights flicker with a sickly glow over the wet asphalt. The whole city feels like a corpse rotting in slow motion—each crumbling building an open wound, each empty street a whisper no one listens to.
Dave walks behind Heinz, though he isn't sure if he's truly following or merely being pulled along by him. Every footstep echoes too loudly in the artificial stillness of this world. As if reality itself were holding its breath. As if something were watching them.
The streets are plastered with faded posters, forgotten political propaganda, and dark stains that could be shadows… or scars from something worse.
Heinz moves with unsettling composure, as though none of this affects him. As if he were part of the decaying scenery around them. The sickly light carves shadows into his skin, sculpting his face with an otherworldly, almost unreal elegance. And Dave hates how long his gaze lingers on it.
"Don't expect to find anything familiar," Heinz says without turning, his voice slipping between the debris like an echo from something that no longer exists. "What you remember… is just a mirage here."
Dave frowns.
He knows Heinz is right. What he's seen already tells him enough: ruined buildings, shattered storefronts, air thick with the stench of death and abandonment. But there's something else—something he can't quite name. A sensation that this world isn't just destroyed, but torn off its axis, suspended in a limbo between now and oblivion.
"So what happened?" he asks, because he needs to know—because the hollow in his chest grows unbearable every time he tries to compare this world to his own.
Heinz lets out a crooked smile, devoid of amusement.
"Axel happened."
Two words. A brutal blow to the gut.
Of course.
Dave feels a chill crawl up his spine.
"What exactly did he do?" His own voice sounds distant, like the air swallows it before it can register.
Heinz stops. He leans against a rusted railing overlooking an abyss of concrete and twisted metal. Below them, the city sprawls like a sleeping beast, breathing stale, toxic air.
"The Axel from this world isn't the man you remember. He's not a man struggling for control or seeking power because he thinks it'll give him answers. Here… he simply destroyed everything he couldn't dominate."
Dave clenches his jaw. His Axel has never been easy to understand, but there was always a method to the madness. Here, from what Heinz suggests, there's only a tyrant—hungry for total annihilation.
Heinz glances sideways at him.
"And yet, you still love him."
The comment stings like a needle under the skin.
Dave crosses his arms, more out of reflex than anything else.
"And what do you expect me to do? We don't get to choose when we stop loving someone, do we?"
Heinz lets out a humorless laugh. Rough. Dry. Painful.
"I didn't expect anything different from you."
Dave looks away. He doesn't know what's worse—that Heinz is right, or that he knows him well enough to say it.
What unsettles him most, what coils in his stomach like a knot, is the way Heinz looks at him. As if he understands. As if he knows exactly where the fracture is—the one that keeps him awake at night. And that… that's dangerous.
Heinz has always been a riddle wrapped in shadow, but here, in this world, that shadow feels heavier. More… magnetic.
The wind lifts his dark hair, tousled in a way that makes him look disturbingly good. There's something in his calm posture, in the way his eyes reflect the ruin around them, that makes Dave's throat tighten.
And that's not right.
Heinz is supposed to be a means to an end. Nothing more.
But then… why does his presence make Dave forget Axel, if only for a moment?
Why does his voice cling to his skin like a venomous whisper?
"Be careful what you wish for," Heinz murmurs suddenly, pulling him from his thoughts. "Finding the answers isn't always a blessing."
His tone is low, almost intimate, as if the warning is meant only for him.
Dave lets out a bitter laugh, trying to reclaim control.
"I was never one to leave things unfinished."
Heinz smiles—barely. But in his eyes, there's something else. Something Dave can't name.
Beneath their feet, the city groans, as if it shares the sentiment.
And somewhere, deep within the darkest shadow… Axel watches.