Eidolon City never slept. Even at midnight, its streets pulsed with neon veins—cyan and crimson tracing the contours of skyscrapers that scraped clouds like jagged teeth. Yet tonight, there was a silence that set it apart from any ordinary night. A silence that was neither peace nor calm, but a stillness that felt like the city itself was holding its breath.
Detective Elias Crowe stepped out of his car and onto the rain-slicked asphalt, the heels of his boots echoing against the concrete canyon. A thin mist hung over the street, curling around flickering streetlights, turning each drop of rain into a tiny prism of distorted light. He pulled his coat tighter around his shoulders and surveyed the alley.
Nothing was missing. Nothing out of place.
And yet, the man he had been sent to find—the man who never came home—was gone.
Officially, the man's apartment reported a clean disappearance: no signs of struggle, no forced entry, no surveillance footage. But Elias had learned long ago that when people vanish in Eidolon City, the records were never reliable. Authorities always wanted it to be ordinary. Bureaucracy preferred simple explanations. The truth—the kind that lingers like smoke in the lungs—was far more complicated.
He crouched by the doorstep. The faint echo of a child's laugh—a memory that didn't belong here—rippled through the empty hallway. Elias shook his head. He didn't believe in ghosts. Not literally. Not anymore. But Eidolon City… it had a way of remembering the people it had erased, even when the city itself pretended they never existed.
The apartment door had no lock picks or broken hinges to show forced entry. Nothing but a faint, sticky residue—something almost imperceptible—clinging to the threshold. Elias pressed a gloved finger to it and frowned. It felt… wrong. Wrong in a way that made his chest tighten.
He rose and checked the building's security panel. All recordings past thirty days had been wiped clean. No footage. No alarms. No entry logs. Just a blank digital void.
"Again," Elias muttered under his breath. Another one. Another erased life. The city had a schedule, and the disappearances always came like clockwork: the same date, the same night, the same impossible vanishing act.
Elias lit a cigarette. The tip glowed red, burning like the heat in his chest. As he inhaled, the mist seemed to bend around him. Something shifted. A shadow moved. But when he turned, nothing was there.
A faint humming from above caught his attention. He looked up at the building's exterior. A single window glowed faintly—a light that had no source, or perhaps a source that should not exist. The hum became a low vibration in the air, almost imperceptible, like the city itself was breathing.
And then it hit him—the unsettling, incomprehensible thought that had been growing in the pit of his stomach all week:
This wasn't random.
It wasn't coincidence that people vanished. And the city… the city wasn't entirely innocent either.
The door behind him clicked. Elias spun, hand on his gun. Empty. No one. The mist swirled, and he caught a fleeting glimpse of a figure: tall, leaning against the far wall, almost like it was there only in the corner of his vision. And then it was gone.
Elias exhaled slowly, forcing his heartbeat to settle. This was what he did. Solve puzzles. Connect impossible dots. Bring light to things others preferred to forget. But tonight, something felt different. The city felt… aware. Watching. Judging.
He opened the door to the apartment and stepped inside. It smelled faintly of burnt coffee and old leather. The apartment was pristine, as though its occupant had simply vanished mid-step. Clothes hung neatly in the closet. The kitchen counters were clean. A cup still held the remnants of cold tea. Nothing disturbed.
Except one detail.
On the floor, a faint smudge of residue—like the fingerprints of something that had existed and was no longer there. Elias knelt. The residue shimmered in the faint neon light, almost like liquid glass. He touched it. Cold. And then—his vision blurred.
Not pain. Not dizziness. Something else. Something like memory being rewritten. He stumbled back, gripping the counter. Every word, every thought, every recollection of this apartment began to shift, as if it had never existed at all.
The phone on the table buzzed. Vibrating against the wooden surface. Elias froze. He didn't remember picking it up, but his hand moved anyway. A message flashed on the screen:
"You were never here. But they know."
Elias swallowed. A whisper echoed in his mind, impossible and external at once:
"Run. Or you disappear too."
He bolted out of the apartment, through the misty streets of Eidolon City. The neon lights stretched and fractured around him, reflecting his own panic in impossible angles. Somewhere behind him, the faint sound of footsteps—too fast, too light—echoed in rhythm with his own heartbeat.
Then, a scream. Not loud, but sharp, slicing through the fog. Elias spun. Nothing. Nothing but the shadows of the city bending unnaturally, stretching like liquid.
He realized something terrifying: these weren't ordinary vanishings. Not random. Not accidental. The city itself was a trap. And tonight, Elias Crowe might be next.
He needed answers.
But answers, in Eidolon City, always came at a price.
Elias notices his reflection in a puddle—but his reflection doesn't mimic him. It smiles. And then it's gone.