The city had no name. It never did. No signs, no maps, no exit.
Fog draped over everything like dead skin on a bleeding body, and the voices of vendors repeated in the same monotonous tone, as if the street were replaying a century-old recording no one had ever listened to. Children ran, but their faces were blurred. Men smoked, but the smoke from their cigarettes didn't move. Time was frozen in a single, breathing moment.
In this place, in a corner no one cared to remember, stood Ethan Cray.
A dust-colored leather coat, unblinking eyes—as if he were waiting for something that hadn't yet happened… or had happened and been forgotten.
He pulled an old pocket watch from his coat, its hands missing. He opened it, heard a faint hum, then closed it.
The echo.
Not the sound, but the feeling. A sense that something inside him was staring back. Not from the outside, but from the depths of his own mind.
*"You're not here,"* the voice whispered. No one heard it. And no one answered.
Ethan moved with heavy steps through the market, and every person who passed him didn't glance his way. Some bumped into him without noticing, as if he were a ghost—or an illusion.
But he wasn't.
He turned into a narrow alley, its walls cracked, the air thick with the stench of mold. Then he stopped. He wasn't alone.
On the ground sat a little girl.
Naked, inside a chalk circle, staring upward with hollow eyes. She wasn't crying. Wasn't moving.
Her head tilted slightly, as if her neck bore a weight that wasn't hers.
He approached her, kneeling.
"What's your name?" he asked.
She answered in a whisper:
*"What is my name if I don't exist?"*
He gasped silently. The hum grew louder.
Then he saw it—his shadow wasn't the only one on the ground. There was a third shadow behind them, long and coiled, moving without a light source.
Slowly, he lifted his head.
No one.
The shadow had no body. Yet it moved, circling the girl. Suddenly, the wall behind her exploded, and a massive black hand burst forth—twisted fingers gripping his chest, lifting him into the air.
He felt no pain. Only the sensation of being pulled… out of reality.
But just before he was swallowed, he remembered.
The watch.
With trembling hands, he opened it and read what hadn't been there before:
> *"If you understand the echo, you are not of this world."*
He fell.
But not to the ground—through it, into a place with no ground.
A black sky, floating towers, and an echo ringing in his ears like a single note repeating endlessly.
*"Welcome, doubter… Your journey has begun."*
Back in the city, in that alley, the little girl still sat. But she had never existed.
The wall had never been broken.
And Ethan… had never been born at all.