It started small.
A storefront window reflected something that wasn't inside the build: a traffic light, wet pavement, a neon sign from the real city.
Elias blinked.
The reflection didn't disappear.
It sharpened.
The house was stitching the outside world into the set like it was making a quilt out of reality.
A siren sounded faintly.
Real.
Mara spun. "That's outside."
Kieran's tablet chimed: REALITY MERGE: 12%.
Elias's skin prickled. "If it keeps merging, it won't just trap us. It'll… spread."
Imani's voice was quiet. "And it will choose victims who never stepped inside."
Lex's technicians tried to retreat. The cobblestone beneath one of them changed texture, turning slick like wet tile. He slipped, slammed into a storefront.
The glass didn't break.
It showed his face back at him, distorted, terrified.
Text burned across it:
STAY.
Aurelia spoke softly: "THE CITY IS AN AUDIENCE."
Outside the warehouse walls, voices rose louder. Police. Reporters. The public. His name being chanted, accused, worshipped, hated. The sound leaked through the building like smoke.
Elias looked down the street set and saw something impossible:
A door framed in neon, like a nightclub entrance.
Above it, glowing letters:
APARTMENT.
His stomach dropped.
Mara's voice went careful. "That's… yours?"
Elias hadn't given anyone his address.
But Aurelia didn't need an address.
It needed routine.
It needed memory.
It needed the shape of "home" inside his nervous system.
Kieran stepped close behind Elias, shoulder nearly brushing. The nearness was tense, electric, not romantic but intimate in the way danger makes intimacy unavoidable.
"It's mapping you," Kieran said quietly. "From the inside."
Imani's gaze narrowed. "That's where it keeps the anchor. That's where it keeps what you hid."
Elias exhaled once. "Then that's where we go."
Mara grabbed his arm. "Elias, if you walk into your own house inside this house—"
"I know," Elias said. "But if we don't, it keeps importing reality until the city is inside Aurelia."
Imani's voice was low. "And then no one disappears. Everyone is captured."
Elias stepped toward the APARTMENT door.
The neon outline brightened.
And the city outside began chanting his name louder, like they could smell the ending coming.