Chapter XXV: The Urban Arteries
Morning was no longer morning.
The sun hung weak and pale through the blinds of Nathaniel Cross's flat, as though someone had wrung the warmth from it. He sat slouched at his desk, face buried in the crook of his arm, the notebook lying open beside him. His eyes burned from tears and exhaustion, but he didn't dare close them. Sleep meant doors. Sleep meant the cathedral. Sleep meant mirrors that lied and smiled back.
The radiator hummed. The city outside his window stirred awake, car horns and chatter bleeding faintly through thin glass. London still moved in its indifferent rhythm. But Nathaniel... Nathaniel could hear something else.
The cracks in his ceiling pulsed. Slowly. Steadily. Like veins carrying light instead of blood. He stared up at them, throat dry, whispering:
"...Already inside. Already inside..."
The words from the notebook clawed at him. What did it mean? Inside what? Was this flat not real anymore? Was he walking through his own mind, already split open?
His chest burned where the scar was etched into his skin. He touched it lightly, through the fabric of his shirt, as though to test if it was still his body at all. The heat lingered, like embers refusing to die.
And then, faintly, beneath the hum of the radiator and the stir of the city—
Knock.
He stiffened. His eyes darted to the door. No one.
Knock.
This time, not from the door. From the floor.
The boards beneath his feet trembled. The glow of the ceiling cracks bled downward, spiderwebbing along the walls, crawling into the wood beneath his chair.
He stumbled up, backing away, heart slamming in his chest. The cracks shimmered brighter, and he realized with a dawning horror:
The flat itself was becoming a vein. A vessel. A body.
He couldn't stay.
Nathaniel grabbed his coat, didn't even bother with his satchel, and bolted out the flat. The stairwell echoed with his footsteps, each step landing too loudly, too hollow. He swore the walls breathed around him. He didn't look back.
Out on the streets, the drizzle clung to him immediately, seeping through his clothes. He kept walking, then running, then stumbling again when his lungs burned. He didn't know where to go. University? His parents? A café with too many people inside for the silence to reach?
But London itself was changing.
At first it was small things. A lamppost bent slightly, as though melted at its base. Windows that reflected not the buildings opposite, but fractured static like television snow. A crosswalk light blinking red even when no cars passed, frozen in an endless cycle.
Nathaniel's eyes darted everywhere. His hands shook. "No... no, not again..."
Pedestrians passed him normally, their umbrellas bobbing like black mushrooms in the rain. They didn't see it. Didn't notice. They brushed shoulders with him, muttering apologies, moving through a city that hadn't torn itself open.
But Nathaniel saw.
And he heard.
The knocks followed him. From every closed door he passed, from every manhole cover, from beneath the tires of buses that hissed by. Always in threes.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
His chest seared with each one, a pulse of fire through his veins.
By midday, his feet had carried him without thought to the university library. Its looming stone façade rose before him like a fortress, windows dark against the gray sky. Normally, the place gave him refuge. The smell of books, the quiet. A reminder of order, of study, of the future he once believed he could reach.
He pushed the heavy doors open. The hinges groaned like something waking from sleep.
Inside, silence swallowed him whole. Too much silence.
The air was dust-heavy, unmoving. Rows of shelves stretched endlessly, books stacked like bricks in a labyrinth. He walked slowly, his shoes squeaking faintly against the polished floor. His fingers brushed the spines of volumes—cold, too cold, as though they hadn't been touched in centuries.
At the far corner, he found an empty table. He sank into the chair, trying to steady his breath.
For a moment, the world felt normal.
Until the book fell.
It came from the highest shelf—no one had touched it, no one was near—but it dropped with a dull thud onto the floor beside him. Nathaniel froze. The sound echoed unnaturally loud.
The book was leather-bound, old, its spine cracked, its title long worn away.
His fingers trembled as he reached down. The cover creaked as he opened it.
Blank pages. Dozens of them. Empty, untouched.
Until the last one.
Ink sprawled across it in jagged strokes, as though carved by a frantic hand:
The city veins. The city breathes. The city opens.
Nathaniel's pulse raced. He shoved the book shut and backed away.
Then he noticed it.
Every other student in the library—scattered at tables, perched at desks, wandering the aisles—were staring at him.
Not reading. Not writing.
Just staring.
Their eyes glowed faintly silver.
Nathaniel's chair clattered to the floor as he bolted. He sprinted between shelves, heart pounding. The whispers followed him, layered voices murmuring in perfect unison:
"Watch. Watch. Watch."
He slammed through the doors, stumbling back into the rain.
The city twisted again as he fled. Streets he had walked a hundred times bent wrong, turning him down alleys that narrowed until he could barely breathe. Buildings leaned too close together, shadows pooling like ink at their bases.
And then—him.
The man. Gray coat, sharp features, eyes that devoured light. Waiting at the alley's end.
Nathaniel staggered to a stop, breath fogging in the cold air. His voice cracked. "Leave me alone—why do you keep following me?"
The man tilted his head, the faintest smile curling his lips. "You still believe it is I who follows. But no. You are simply walking where the veins already lead."
Nathaniel clutched his chest, the scar blazing with heat. "I don't want this! I don't want to see it!"
The man's voice was calm, almost pitying. "Wanting has never mattered. Doors do not ask. Veins do not ask. They only carry."
He stepped closer. The rain didn't touch him. The alley seemed to stretch with each of his strides, pulling Nathaniel toward him no matter how he backed away.
Nathaniel lifted his fists uselessly. "What... what happens if I fight it? If I close the door?"
The man's eyes flickered with something sharp. "You cannot close what has no hinge."
And then, like before, he vanished. Dissolving into the rain.
Nathaniel collapsed to his knees, choking back a sob.
That night, Nathaniel didn't return to his flat. He wandered instead, through streets that bent wrong, across bridges that seemed to stretch farther than they should. The knocks never left him. Neither did the silver glow spiderwebbing across the cracks in pavement, in walls, in lamplight.
It all led him, slowly, without choice, to the river.
The Thames churned black beneath the bridge, swollen with rain, its surface slick like oil. Nathaniel gripped the railing, staring down, his reflection rippling back at him.
For a moment, it was just him.
Then it smiled.
Silver eyes. Too wide, too sharp. The reflection raised its hand and tapped the surface of the river.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The sound reverberated through the bridge itself. Nathaniel clutched the railing, teeth gritted, as the world around him seemed to bend inward.
The water split.
Not waves. Not current. Split. Like a wound tearing open across the river's skin. Light spilled upward from the depths, silver and searing, painting the clouds above in fractured veins.
The entire city seemed to tremble.
Nathaniel fell back onto the wet pavement, eyes wide in horror as the light stretched outward, racing along the Thames, climbing into streets, pulsing like arteries feeding a living thing.
The city was alive.
And he was inside it.
The scar seared. His vision blurred.
And in the blinding light of the river, the cathedral formed again.
The black door waited at the center, mirrors screaming silently around it, every reflection of Nathaniel clawing at their glass prisons.
He dropped to his knees, gasping, whispering, "Please... please stop..."
The door pulsed once. Twice.
Then it knocked.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
"You are the vein," the voices whispered. "You are the fracture. You are the silence that watches."
The door split wider, light pouring through.
Nathaniel screamed—
And woke.
His body jolted upright. His flat. Morning light dripping through the blinds. Radiator humming.
But the cracks had grown.
They weren't just on the ceiling now. They covered the walls. The floor. The desk. The very air shimmered with them.
And the notebook lay open, waiting.
Fresh words scrawled in jagged ink:
The veins are awake.
Nathaniel pressed his palms to his face and sobbed, because he knew—
There was nowhere left to run.