When Van finally returned home, morning light had already spilled across the horizon in long gold streaks that painted the city awake.
The house stood still, draped in a silence that wasn't peace so much as fragility. It clung to him like a thin sheet of calm, delicate, ready to tear at the slightest touch.
He didn't bother with the knob. He didn't need to. He moved through the front door as if he were mist, phasing through the barrier like a ghost returning to ruins that remembered him but no longer cared.
The faint creak of wood beneath his shoes, when he finally touched the floor inside, was the only acknowledgment of his arrival.
No voices greeted him at the door. No clatter of utensils in the kitchen. No footsteps pacing the hall. Not even the ordinary chatter of a waking household. It was the kind of silence that noticed him but didn't welcome him.
The hallway swallowed him whole as he passed rooms like memories, each one holding its breath, waiting. He said nothing, and did nothing that could disturb the quiet. The walls seemed tense with the weight of absence. Not a clock ticked, not a hinge groaned.
At last, he found a place that felt alive in a way none of the others did, the room that smelled faintly of lavender and cotton.
The scent wrapped around him, soft and fragile, a mixture of sun-warmed sheets and something floral, like the memory of someone who had been there but was gone now. It was a room that still remembered how to breathe.
Without thinking, he fell forward onto the bed. The mattress dipped beneath his weight, yielding, as if it had been waiting specifically for him to return. His body sagged into it, his breathing steadying in uneven waves, slowing bit by bit. But the tightness in his shoulders didn't loosen.
The storm in his chest refused to dissipate. Even here, even after everything, Van felt half-present, as if a piece of him had stayed behind somewhere else and had no intention of coming back.
It wasn't only exhaustion holding him down. It was memory, sharpening, circling, refusing to let him rest.
Now that I think of it… I do remember that old man.
The thought stabbed like a splinter.
He's from the White Unit facility. Is he back? Back to drag Master there, to shut him in that sterile prison again, one wrapped in words like "protection" but laced with chains?
His head throbbed. The memory was too clear.
The last time Master had been in that place, he had torn it apart, leveled it in fury when the lies were too loud to ignore. Fire and steel had collapsed together, screams buried under falling concrete. Their "experiments" were nothing but cruelty dressed up as science.
Van's pulse quickened. He tried to shove the thoughts away, bury them under the heavy quilt of fatigue, but they clung like wet cloth, suffocating, impossible to peel off. The images flickered, unrelenting: sterile walls, Master's fury, the burning of steel, the thunder of collapse.
What if the past isn't finished with us yet?
---
Meanwhile, Grandma and I had gone into the city to shop.
But the city… wasn't the one I remembered.
It had grown; Taller, sharper and louder. Towers climbed into the sky like they wanted to scrape the clouds raw. Streets pulsed with electricity, with rhythms unfamiliar to me, as though the ground itself thudded with a heartbeat I hadn't learned to match.
People flowed around me in tides, purposeful, confident, as if every step was part of some choreography I had never been taught. Vehicles slid past like streams of iron blood, the city's veins carrying urgency I couldn't grasp.
It felt as if time had skipped me entirely. Like the world had leapt ahead and left me standing still.
Grandma drifted quickly into her errands, commanding the furniture shops with the brisk tone of someone who'd been doing this all her life. She left me with a short wave, telling me to find what I needed; Shirts mostly. Mine had long since been torn or burned, reduced to scraps by fire, by spars, and by the seal mark seared into my back.
I was about to cross the street, resigned to the mundane task of clothing, when something tugged at me.
An alley. Narrow, tucked deep between two high-rises that gleamed with glass and steel. The alley curved inward like a secret trying to hide itself. And at its heart, a shop; quiet, shy. As though it wasn't meant to be noticed at all.
The sign above it was old wood, cracked down the center, its letters faded into near-oblivion. It had the look of something ancient left behind while the rest of the city moved on, forgotten by time but not gone.
I froze.
Something about it pulled at me not with force, but with a thread soft and invisible. Like a whisper brushing the back of my neck. A call not in words but in presence.
---
Through its dusty windows, I caught glimpses; shields, blades, armor. Relics that didn't belong in a city like Elaria, modern and buzzing with neon. They didn't look dangerous, not exactly, but they didn't look safe either. They looked like they had walked out of someone else's story and accidentally stayed behind.
At the entrance, a young man stood talking with the old man behind the counter. The boy looked near my age, maybe a little older, but there was a difference in the way he carried himself. Every motion was deliberate, precise. His stance was disciplined, honed, like his body knew rules his voice hadn't explained.
He gestured toward the armor, asked questions I couldn't hear, his tone sharp even in silence. He wasn't browsing, he was choosing, evaluating, weighing.
And then he turned, swiftly. Too swiftly, as though he had felt my gaze pierce him.
Golden hair caught the morning light and burned like a crown.
Our eyes locked across the distance, and something in me stalled. His gaze wasn't cruel, it wasn't warm either. It was steady, too steady, deep with awareness. The kind of eyes that didn't just look, they saw, they read. As though he had grown used to looking through people rather than at them.
My chest tightened. For a moment, I forgot to breathe.
Then I shook it off, or tried to. Overthinking wasn't going to help.
Thud!
A small body slammed into my side. A child, grinning with sticky hands, her ice cream cone already half-melted. The mess splattered down my trousers in streaks of strawberry pink. She didn't stop, didn't apologize either. Just giggled, a bright chime of laughter, and ran off as though colliding with strangers was part of her game. The air behind her carried the sweet, cloying scent of strawberries.
I sighed, brushing at the stain pointlessly, sticky sugar clinging like an insult. When I straightened, I found myself facing a wide wall of glass.
Behind it was light, a pastel world of pink and mint green. An ice cream and cake shop, glowing soft under neon signs. Inside, tubs of ice cream lay like jewels in frosted glass coffins. Cakes spun slowly on displays, perfect and delicate, decorated with colors so sweet they felt like they belonged to some other realm, one that had never heard of hunger.
I stood rooted.
Cinder puffs.
Ms. Claire made those my favourite.
The craving struck like a knife, sudden and sharp. But reality followed quicker. My pockets were empty; no coins, no notes, not even the weight of a card. Miss Claire hadn't paid me. And I didn't know where her lab was, the Castalis Invention Lab, or whatever new name they gave it. I had nothing, no money, no phone.
For a moment, the city shrank me to size. I felt like an abandoned child again adrift, small, watching the world's sweetness from behind glass.
---
Another child arrived, a boy this time. He stopped beside me, staring through the glass just as I was.
We didn't speak.
But for a heartbeat, it was enough. His eyes flicked from the cakes to my stained trousers, then to my face. He didn't laugh, or mock. He only blinked once, slow, deliberately. Like a quiet nod. *Yeah, I get it.*
Then he turned and walked away without a word.
I lingered, throat tight.
---
When I looked back toward the alley, the strange shop was still there. The golden-haired boy too. Standing tall in the morning light, his head tilted slightly as though he was still watching me, measuring.
A part of me wanted to step forward, to walk inside, to ask what he was doing there, to know why the place pulled at me.
But I didn't. Because if I did, he might think I was following him. And that thought alone was enough to chain my feet.
So I let the crowd sweep me up, carry me down another street, and the moment passed like a shadow slipping into shade.
---
Even then, the sense of eyes never left me. Watching from alley corners, from glass reflections. From places I didn't even step into.
Strange presences, fleeting shapes.
I moved carefully, deliberately. I couldn't afford mistakes now, not in the city's center, not with so many lines I wasn't allowed to cross. My gut told me the truth: I was being tracked.
The city didn't feel welcoming. It felt alive like a storm alive, churning, watching, waiting to break.
People streamed around me like water breaking against a stone. Shoulders bumped, perfumes collided, words clipped my ears. Every step was a negotiation. I mumbled apologies, ducked my head, wove through currents that didn't want me there.
Eventually, I stopped and looked up.
A mall rose before me, vast and glassy. Its walls reflected sunlight so sharply I had to squint. It towered like a titan pretending to sleep, modern and flawless, a monument to wealth and weight.
I didn't think, and just walked inside.
---
The air changed instantly; cool, conditioned. The crisp scent of polish and perfume layered over something sterile. The mall stretched upward like a vertical world, each floor its own kingdom: electronics, clothing, furniture, and high above, a hotel glittering like the crown of it all.
The escalator hummed beneath my feet, carrying me upward as voices tangled around me, soft music above, conversations weaving like smoke, heels clicking like small metronomes against the tiles.
I followed the signs. *Clothing section.*
---
The clothes screamed for attention. Bright neon prints, sleeves that drowned arms, sequined jackets, layered chains. The mannequins stared out in poses no real body would ever choose, too sharp, too bold.
I drifted between racks, fingers brushing fabrics that felt expensive in ways my skin didn't trust. Loud designs that demanded to be seen, but none of them felt like me.
Turning into another aisle, I bumped shoulders with two women.
They turned, one whispering behind her hand, the other letting her gaze linger on me just a fraction too long. Not anger, not amusement, just… judgment. A quiet, cold, wordless judgement like static in the air.
I turned away, slipped deeper into the racks, pretending I hadn't noticed, though the weight of their eyes followed me for a few steps longer than it should have.
---
At last, I reached the shirt section.
Plain fabrics, light and breathable. Clothes that would fit without shouting. Perfect for the heat, perfect for me.
But then I looked at the tags. The numbers printed there glared back at me, red warnings telling me not to reach too far.
And just as I lingered, wondering how I could even begin, one of the attendants appeared.
She walked with precision, her heels clicking sharp against tile, her expression already prepared before she reached me. She was young, maybe twenty, maybe less, but she carried herself with the briskness of someone taught to watch, to measure, to decide who belonged and who didn't.
She stopped directly in front of me, her smile fixed, polished but hollow, the kind of smile that never touched the eyes.
"Are you from the city?" she asked.
The words landed sharp, polite on the surface but too pointed underneath.
I blinked, throat tight.
Was it that obvious?
Did I really look that different?