At 7:00 a.m., the alarm rang as it always did: not too loud, not too soft, the kind of sound that didn't tear him out of sleep so much as remind him that he did not really have a choice. He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling of his room for a few seconds, at the crack in the upper left corner that had been there for years and had become so familiar he barely noticed it anymore.
He got up, went to the bathroom, and splashed cold water on his face. The neon light above the mirror flickered once before stabilizing, and his movements, automatic and precise, carried him into the kitchen by 7:10.
Breakfast never changed: warm milk, dry biscuits, a slice of bread. The television was on at low volume, talking about traffic, finance, and a city that moved faster than itself, while the images showed crowded streets, lit office buildings, and people walking quickly, as if everything worked because everyone had agreed to pretend that it did.
He checked the clock on the wall. 7:28.
Two minutes later, he put on his jacket, grabbed his backpack, and left the apartment, just like every morning.
The city was already awake, full of scooters passing too close, packed buses, and shop windows reflecting cold white light. He walked to school along the usual route: the bar on the corner with fogged-up windows, the newsstand arranging magazines, the traffic light that never seemed to turn green. It wasn't the true city center, but it wasn't the outskirts either; it was a transit area, built for movement rather than staying, modern and functional and almost without memory.
As he got closer to the school, the traffic thickened, and in front of the entrance the same scene repeated itself.
Large cars, polished and expensive, slowed without noise. Their doors opened, and teenagers his age stepped out well dressed, confident, always in groups, laughing quietly among themselves as if they belonged somewhere else and the school was only a place they had agreed to visit.
Only in his head, he called them the elite group.
It wasn't a real name, and no one said it out loud, but everyone knew who they were. There was an unspoken rule among the students: don't talk about them in front of them, not because they were violent, but because it was better that way.
He entered the school with the others, and the sound changed at once. Voices bounced along the corridors, footsteps echoed on the polished floor, and the smell was the same as always: paper, detergent, stale air. He reached his classroom and sat down.
A moment later, a classmate dropped into the chair beside him.
"Hey."
"Hey, Marco."
They talked about a test and about a subject no one had studied enough. Then the lesson began, and time moved slowly, evenly, while from time to time he looked out the window at gray buildings, antennas, and a flat sky.
At 12:00, he left the building and walked back home. When he entered the apartment, the kitchen clock showed a little past 12:30, and his mother was already there. She didn't need to say anything; she only looked at him, and he understood immediately that the math test had arrived before he did.
"I told you that you needed to study more," she said, without raising her voice.
The punishment was simple: no going out for the afternoon. Study. He nodded without arguing, and they ate lunch in silence, reheated pasta, bread, water, the television talking about politics and decisions made far away, in rooms that never appeared on screen.
The afternoon passed sluggishly. Channels changed, books remained open, and pages were underlined without conviction until 7:00 p.m., when he was finally allowed to leave the house and the light outside had become different.
In the evening, the city changed. Shops closed, display windows turned into dark mirrors, and the streets emptied in waves before filling again under streetlights that cast long, unnatural shadows. Everything seemed larger, colder, more distant.
He walked without a clear destination along the streets near his home.
That was when he saw her.
She was walking on the opposite side of the street: an elderly woman, very elegant, with carefully styled white hair, a long black coat, and sunglasses even though it was already dark. She didn't look lost, and she didn't look out of place; she seemed to belong to the city in a way he couldn't explain.
He slowed down and saw the wallet slip from her coat pocket, falling to the ground without her noticing. He crossed the street, picked it up, and called out, "Ma'am."
She turned slowly and approached him.
He handed her the wallet. She took it with both hands, and for more than a second their hands remained in contact. Her grip was firm and warm.
"Thank you," she said. "What's your name?"
"Fiab."
She nodded as if the name carried a precise meaning. Then she gave a barely perceptible smile and walked away without looking back.
Fiab stood there for a moment, feeling something strange inside him, not pain and not fear, but a light pressure, as if something had shifted. Around him the city kept moving with cars, footsteps, and distant voices, all of it perfectly normal. He shook his head and went back home.
They had dinner. His mother talked about work, and he listened only halfway before brushing his teeth, going to his room, and turning off the light.
He fell asleep.
Like in the previous nights, he first felt his body grow heavy, but this time the sensation didn't pass. He opened his eyes and found the room identical around him: the same wardrobe, the same desk, the same light filtering through the window. Only he was not in the bed.
He turned and saw his own body sleeping, breathing slowly and regularly, alive.
He couldn't feel the weight of himself or the floor beneath his feet. He didn't panic at first; there was only an unnatural clarity, as if he were more awake than he had ever been before. He understood one thing with certainty: he was not dreaming the way everyone else did.
And the night, in a city that by day seemed to function perfectly, finally began to show something different.
He remained still for a long time, looking at every familiar detail from the wrong side of the room: the desk, the chair, the wardrobe left slightly open, and on the bed his body, too motionless and too silent.
The first emotion was fear. It came quickly, instinctively, a sudden tightening like an impulse trying to grab him and pull him back. He understood immediately that it was dangerous, because fear belonged to the body; if he let it grow, it would wake him.
He suppressed it by focusing on useless details: the shape of the window frame, the streetlight filtering through the curtains, the edge of the desk. Keeping fear under control required attention, like holding shut something that was pushing to get out. It worked, not completely, but enough; the fear remained distant.
He tried to move. There were no muscles and no sense of weight, only a change in position, one moment near the bed and the next closer to the desk, without sound or resistance. He took another step, then another, and nothing reacted to his presence. The chair didn't move, the floor didn't creak, and it was as if he wasn't really there.
He turned back toward the bed. His body hadn't moved. It was still sleeping.
A strange calm made its way into his chest, not relief exactly, but control. He left the room and walked down the hallway, through an apartment that was identical and yet emptier, with walls that seemed flatter and shadows less defined.
His mother was asleep in her room. He stopped at the doorway and called her softly.
"Mom."
No reaction.
He tried again, a little louder, but nothing changed. When he reached out to touch her, his hand passed straight through her arm and shoulder as if her body were made of air.
Something inside him snapped. Fear surged back violently, his heartbeat speeding up somewhere far away, a blind impulse trying to drag him into himself. For a moment, he thought it was over.
He froze, closed his eyes, and forced a calm he did not feel. He repeated one thing to himself, precisely: Don't be afraid.
The fear didn't disappear, but it didn't take control either. When he opened his eyes, his mother was still asleep, the apartment was still silent, and nothing had changed except the fact that he had not woken up.
He stepped away from the doorway.
That was when he decided to leave.
The thought came clearly: he needed to go outside. Doubt followed immediately, because the front door was closed and he knew he couldn't touch it. He stood in the hallway, facing the door, and thought back to the moment he had awakened. He hadn't left his body in any ordinary way; he had simply been a few steps away from it, with no transition, only displacement.
Maybe distance doesn't matter, he thought.
He focused on the outside, on the street, on the night air, on the space beyond the walls, and suddenly he found himself closer to the door. He hadn't moved in any normal sense. He was simply there.
After a moment of hesitation, he stepped forward and passed through the door. There was no resistance and no effort. The wood, the lock, and the frame meant nothing, and then he was on the other side, on the landing, under a weak light where the bulbs hummed softly and shadows gathered in the corners.
He stood still for a few seconds, letting the sensation settle. He hadn't teleported; he had walked through.
For the first time since he had awakened, beneath the fear something new surfaced: the quiet awareness that the night was far larger than he had ever imagined.
He went down the stairs without making a sound. Each step was there but offered no resistance, and the handrail passed through his arm when he instinctively tried to touch it. There was no cold, no solidity, only space.
The building's entrance stood closed before him, but it meant nothing. He passed through the glass door as he had passed through the one at home and stepped outside.
The night street welcomed him with dim, artificial light. Streetlamps illuminated the pavement in irregular patches, leaving entire stretches submerged in shadow; the asphalt was glossy, as if it had rained recently, and the shop windows had become black mirrors reflecting distant lights and distorted silhouettes.
It was his street, but not entirely. The city of the 1990s seemed to slow down at night, its modern buildings stretching upward as their facades flattened and lost depth. The lines were the same as during the day, but without warmth, and everything felt farther away, colder.
He walked without a clear destination until he saw them.
Two figures were moving along the opposite sidewalk, side by side, at a slow, steady pace, perfectly synchronized. They didn't seem in a hurry and didn't look around. He could hear them talking too clearly, their calm voices discussing grandchildren, a walk they had taken that afternoon, and a knee that hurt when the weather changed.
At first, Fiab thought they were elderly people. Then they came close enough for him to see them better, and something was wrong.
Their faces were obscured, not hidden by shadow or lost in bad light, but simply missing. There was nothing there to see, as if someone had smeared a hand across them and erased every detail: no eyes, no mouth, no expression, only heads without features, like damaged mannequins left unfinished.
He stopped. Fear rose slowly this time, not as a sudden shock but as a constant pressure tightening his chest, especially because the two figures were getting closer and still speaking in the same ordinary voices, as if nothing were strange.
Fiab did the only thing that came to mind. He crossed the street without looking for traffic, as if traffic no longer mattered, and on the other side, under the brighter light of a streetlamp, he saw another figure.
A cleaning worker was quietly doing his job, pushing a cart slowly while his reflective jacket caught the light. His face was visible, tired and real, with eyes, wrinkles, and the ordinary heaviness of someone working late.
Maybe that was why Fiab could see it.
He passed by the man unnoticed and felt a sudden sense of relief, almost physical. When he glanced back, the two faceless figures had crossed as well. They stopped for a moment, their erased heads turned in his direction, not surprised and not interested, and then they started walking again, continuing their conversation about grandchildren, the evening chill, and time passing.
As if nothing had happened.
Fiab remained standing under the streetlamp while the night city slowly began to breathe again, and he understood that not everything that walked at night belonged to the same level of reality.
He kept walking until he found himself standing in front of his favorite comic shop. The metal shutter was down, the sign was off, and the display window reflected only the cold light of the streetlamp above his head. For a moment he stared at the closed metal as if it could actually stop him.
Then he stepped forward.
The shutter offered no resistance. He passed through it without feeling anything, just as he had passed through the door at home, and for an instant there was only darkness before the interior of the shop took shape around him.
Everything was in its place: the shelves neatly arranged, the action figures inside their glass cases, the posters covering the walls, even the arrangement of the volumes exactly as he remembered. But something was missing. There was no smell of paper, no dust suspended in the air, no faint electrical hum like the one that vibrated almost imperceptibly during the day.
It was a silent copy.
He moved slowly between the shelves, unable to feel the floor beneath his feet or the weight of his own body. Space simply received him without reacting. He stopped in front of the section he knew best, the third shelf on the left, where the covers he had looked at dozens of times waited in perfect order.
When he reached out, his fingers passed through the spine of a volume. He withdrew his hand slowly, almost expecting a delayed sensation, but nothing came. He tried again, and again the book did not move, tremble, or give any sign of his presence.
For a brief moment, he almost smiled. A thought surfaced without invitation: maybe I'm a superhero too.
The idea lasted only a second. Superheroes acted. They changed things. They broke, saved, moved the world around them. He couldn't even turn a page.
He lowered his hand.
I'm not a hero.
He was there, but he left no trace. The figures printed on the posters seemed more solid than he was, with defined identities, clear powers, and precise boundaries, while he had nothing defined. He couldn't touch, couldn't be touched, couldn't affect the world.
I am present, but I don't weigh anything.
The thought passed through him with a cold calm. He shifted a few steps without really walking, no sound and no friction, and stopped in front of the display window. The street beyond the glass felt distant, unreal, and even the glass itself was only a visual boundary.
Maybe this isn't a form of strength, he thought. Maybe it's just distance.
Part of him found something fascinating in that condition: no weight, no barriers, no material obstacles. Another part felt the opposite, because if he couldn't touch anything, then nothing could hold him.
The shop around him seemed emptier now. He realized that the only solid thing in that moment was his thought, and maybe that was the only thing that mattered. Surrounded by stories of extraordinary powers, he understood something simple: he shouldn't ask himself what he had become. He had to understand what he could see that others couldn't.
And for the first time, the idea did not frighten him.
He decided to leave the shop, not because he had figured anything out, but because staying changed nothing. He passed through the shutter again, and the night air welcomed him without temperature. The street stood motionless, suspended under the same artificial light.
He took a few steps, and then he felt it.
At first it was only a subtle shift, a tension in the air and a weight that did not belong to the space itself. Then it became clearer: not a hand, not a sound, but a direction. Something was pulling him, not toward the street or the darkness, but toward home.
The movement was not physical. He did not feel arms grabbing him, yet every part of him began to orient in that direction, as if the entire city had tilted. He tried to stop, but it didn't work. The world around him began to lose stability, the lines of the buildings blurring, the lights stretching into vertical streaks, the sidewalk beneath him losing its shape.
He understood. The fear had returned, no longer controlled or restrained, and it was growing.
Not now.
He tried to focus, to slow the heartbeat that was racing somewhere inside his body, but his thoughts were already unraveling. The street vanished, the shop no longer existed, and everything compressed into a single point: his room, the bed, his body.
It felt like falling backward without moving.
The sensation of weight returned suddenly and brutally: air in his lungs, pounding in his chest, the mattress beneath his back. He opened his eyes sharply into real darkness.
His heart hammered against his ribs.
"Enough… enough!" he shouted before realizing he had done so.
The bedroom door flew open, and the hallway light flooded the room.
"What's happening?" his mother asked, alarmed but controlled.
She approached the bed. He was sitting upright, breathing unevenly, his hands trembling, surrounded by a room that was normal, solid, tangible. His mother touched his face, and this time he felt it.
Warm. Real.
"Did you have a nightmare?" she asked.
He looked at her without answering at first, because he did not know how to explain something that had not been a dream. He shook his head, then nodded, uncertain which answer was closer to the truth.
"I'm fine," he said finally, though he wasn't certain he believed it.
His mother remained silent for a few seconds, then turned off the hallway light. "Try to sleep," she said, and closed the door again.
Fiab remained sitting in the dark until his heartbeat slowly began to steady. He had understood one thing: he wasn't free out there. There was a limit, and that limit was tied to fear.
He lay back down, staring at the crack in the corner of the ceiling. The night had returned to normal.
But he had not.