On misty evenings when the mist crept in with a panting serpent, the town became an awe-inspiring shape gasping its last breath.
The roads twisted like curled intestines, exhaling quiet moans from among the splintered walls. The windows, as wide eyes full of fear, closed their eyelids swiftly, and the doors trembled under a silence that was more stifling than screams. The air was heavy with unreaped memories that had never been buried. At every turn, the city held a sorrow that would not be uttered and a nameless terror.
It was on one such night that the air felt so heavy—as though it carried the trace of pain itself. A pain none had felt individually, yet all inhaled like dust that would never be rooted out.
On the seventh floor of a vacant tower on the fringes of the western quarter, Mir sat alone facing an old mirror whose glass only caught fragmented features.
The room was black, except for a faint sliver of light coming from a crack in the wall, where the dust swirled slowly—as if it did drift in an ocean of trapped time.
Her hand trembled as she swept the glass—not to clean it, but as a summoning: a face, a feel, an age-old promise. Her own face wasn't enough. She needed something beyond eyes and skin. something beyond a lost center time had left inside her.
There was a light tap on the metal door behind her, as if something hesitated before claiming identity.
"Mir?"
It was Elsa's voice—soft, tentative, soaked in anxiety.
Mir responded without turning:
"Come in."
Elsa entered cautiously, bearing the hesitancy of a person reaching out to a friend on the verge of toppling over. She surveyed the room, then sat next to the window, as if searching for something that would not shatter the silence.
"What is it? You missed the meeting."
Mir did not respond. Her fingers drifted slowly over her cheek, as if testing to see if she existed.
She then produced from the coat pocket a small metal disk—black and engraved with the number 13, hardly visible.
For an instant, it reflected the light—like an eye, watching.
Elsa looked at it quietly and raised her eyebrows slightly.
"What is that?"
Mir put the thing back into her pocket and said quietly:
"Something from the past…"
"Do you want to talk about it?" Elsa asked softly.
Mir smiled—not with happiness, but fatigue. As if fatigue was the only language she knew. Then she spoke:
"Some secrets can't be told… they have to reveal themselves. When it's already too late."
And in a low but firm voice continued:
"Where we are now… it's far too late."
In another part of the city, in a neglected corridor below the main library, a man with the gray hood moved in measured steps.
There was no light—nothing but the echo of his footfalls down thin stone steps. Each step echoed like the plodding beat of a heart.
He stopped before a wall of stone with letters hardly readable. He drew a circular shape into which thirteen points were etched. He murmured words—unmeaning, in a language no known age possessed—and extended a hand to set one of the points.
The wall trembled, as though what lay behind it were taking its first breaths in centuries.
A hidden door creaked open to a spherical chamber, dark but for black candles that smoldered very slowly. Their fumes scented the air with the scent of ancient ash.
Inside, four creatures gathered—faces hidden behind smooth bone masks.
The intruder used an icy voice, free of any tone human:
"Phase One is completed. The echo has grown into habit, not anomaly."
One of them replied:
"And chaos… it's starting to take shape. We don't have much time."
The third of them questioned, his tone hollow:
"And the number? Is it confirmed?"
The fourth, unrolling a black-threaded scroll, said:
"Still not complete. But the city watcher works in silence. She reveals more than she speaks."
A heavy silence filled the room.
The next day, Mir returned to the group's temporary office.
Her face was okay, but eyes ran over everything with the gaze of someone absorbing every detail. The chairs, the old computers, even the footsteps—everything was a sign, as if she was sitting in an exam whose beginning she had missed.
Naiv, who was by the stone table they used to plan their operations, sensed it. He kept quiet, but nodded gently.
"We'll need your services. Today we begin Phase Two of the Reduction Plan."
Mir did not respond. She merely nodded, her hand resting lightly on the inside pocket of her jacket—beyond the view of all.
In a room deep beneath the city, Mir sat before another mirror. This one was not hers—it belonged to another.
The mirror was wrapped in gray cloth. When she removed it, the light recoiled a bit, as though afraid of the reflection from the mirror. She sat in front of it and pulled out a rusty little box from under a torn piece of cloth. She opened its rusty lock.
Inside: a worn file. Yellowed sheets, filled with symbols, names, and dates….
Some written in trembling handwriting. Some typed on yellowing paper.
All pointing to one destination: Circle 13.
She read in silence—tests reaching back before the Crack had revealed itself. Sneaky aims to explore "the psychological structure of reality," experiments with "stimulating consciousness by non-verbal means," and accounts of an "echo not made, but regained through shared pain."
On one page, bottom line, it read:
"Sounds don't originate outside. They reflect off inside us—repeating the First Echo.".
And in the evening, when they all met again at headquarters, and Naiv called the commencement of Phase Two, Mir watched him silently.
There was this odd feeling that went through her. It was not a fear, or a longing… but a gentle understanding that that which had begun would not end as one might wish.
And for the first time,
Mir understood that the circle was not an ending… but a beginning