Einar's apartment was less a dwelling and more a confinement cell he had chosen. The small room was a repository of his unraveling mind, a claustrophobic space dedicated to his obsession. Every available surface—the flaking plaster walls, the scarred floorboards—was covered in a frantic, dense tapestry of charcoal and pencil. Eyes, spiraling vortices, and complex, cryptic patterns that resembled corrupted source code filled the space. The only light was the weak, intermittent pulse from a cracked utility lamp.
He stood before the single, curtained window, his reflection caught faintly in the grimy glass. He drew the heavy drape back a fraction, and the distant glare of the city's neon washed over his face, revealing the depth of his internal distress.
Einar spoke, his voice a low, raspy whisper, addressing the hostile, rain-slicked metropolis. "The dream… it is not a dream. It is a vision. A certainty of what is coming, a logic gate opening."
His hand, trembling almost uncontrollably, gripped a stick of charcoal. He began to add a new, intricate helix to a vast mural of coded dread. The drawings were not art; they were an attempt to transcribe a language that existed only in the architecture of his own damaged psyche. They were the physical manifestation of the recursive cipher.
The sudden, sharp rap of knuckles against his reinforced door caused Einar to freeze, dropping the charcoal. He instinctively dropped to the floor, scrabbling under a makeshift table, his breath held tight and shallow. Silence. The knock had been isolated, precise, and utterly terrifying. He emerged slowly, pulling a small, battered communications device—ancient and analog—from his inner pocket. It emitted a faint, intermittent blue light: his only anchor to the world he desperately sought.