The city itself felt as if it was slowly folding inward around them. Another fracture split across the sky.
KRRRRK—
The white crack overhead spread further through the dark blue sky, branching outward like shattered glass.
Lune's gaze remained lowered toward the empty street ahead. Her hands stayed loosely clenched at her sides. Not tense anymore. Just uncertain.
Vayne glanced at her briefly.
Up until now, she always seemed like she knew more than him. Even when she panicked, there was still direction behind it.
Now—
it felt like she'd reached the edge of whatever she'd been taught.
Their footsteps echoed softly through the empty streets. Everything still looked real. That was probably the worst part.
Vayne's eyes drifted across the city slowly. Nothing here looked destroyed. Nothing seemed hostile, except for that entity they had encountered at the start. It simply felt disconnected.
Lune slowed slightly.
"...Something's wrong."
Vayne almost responded before noticing it too.
The street ahead looked longer now—not by much, but enough to feel as though it had stretched while no one was watching. The distance between the lights had stretched subtly. The intersection ahead felt farther away than before.
Vayne stopped walking. His eyes scanned the buildings around them.
"We've already passed by here."
Lune turned slightly
"Have we been looping?"
A small neon sign buzzed faintly near the corner of a nearby building.
CAFÉ ASTRA
Vayne recognized the cracked corner beneath it. They had passed it only minutes ago. He looked toward a table by the wall. A cup still sat there, steam curling from its surface. It had been steaming exactly as it had before.
Lune turned sharply behind her, eyes fixed on the empty street. Her eyes darted across the empty road, wide with unease, a thin bead of sweat slipping down her temple.
Vayne followed her gaze.
The street stretched empty beneath the pale glow of the overhead lights. Storefront windows reflected back at them in long strips of dim color. Somewhere farther down the block, a dark mist covered the area.
There was nothing there.
Still, Lune kept staring.
Vayne looked back toward the café table again. The steam from the cup drifted upward slowly before curling to the left.
A few seconds passed.
Then it curled the exact same way again. Like the air itself had repeated.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
"...Lune."
"I know."
Her voice was a little quieter now.
The two of them stood there listening without meaning to. The city had this strange habit of making silence feel noticeable. Every small sound stood out too clearly. A loose sign somewhere creaked softly. Farther away, something metallic clattered once.
Somewhere in the distance, a single footstep echoed faintly through the street. Vayne felt his shoulders tense before he even processed the sound fully.
One step.
Then another.
Each one came too far apart to sound like someone simply walking. There was a pause between each step. It was almost careful. Like whoever—whatever—made the sound had learned not to move too often.
The sound itself was wrong too. Quiet, but hollow. Not the clean tap of shoes against pavement. More like a footfall landing inside an empty room, softened by distance.
Vayne kept looking forward.
"That... sounds awfully close."
The silence after it felt worse than the sound itself. Vayne kept his gaze forward. He did not look behind him.
Not this time.
Every instinct in Vayne's body told him to turn around, to look back, to confirm whether the hollow footsteps were still behind them. But this same curiosity is what almost made him lose his senses.
Lune subconsciously did the same. Neither of them said anything about it. They didn't have to. The street ahead stretched seemingly forever into an endless blanket of mist. Somewhere overhead, another distant fracture glowed across the heavens, branching wider with every passing minute.
But neither Vayne nor Lune looked up for long.
They walked slowly at first but it slowly turned into fast steps. Not enough to seem like they were running.
Vayne could hear his own breathing. He hated that. He hated how loud it sounded in this cold silent city.
Lune walked beside him with her shoulder slightly raised. Her gaze stayed fixed on the road ahead, but her pupils kept drifting to the corner of her eyes. She was looking behind her without actually turning. Vayne understood why. Even though there was nothing to be seen there by their eyes. Their instincts screamed at them to not acknowledge it.
A distant footstep echoed behind them. Both of their faces tensed up with beads of sweat dripping down their temples.
They kept walking.
Another footstep.
Lune's hand twitched at her side, but she didn't turn back.
They kept walking forward. Vayne's gaze turned to Lune next to his side.
"What if we... have to defeat it to get out?"
"...Defeat what? We can't even see it."
Another footstep echoed behind them. It felt closer.
Not close enough to be directly at their backs, but close enough that the sound crawled up Vayne's spine before fading into the hollow space between the buildings.
The restraint in their shared decision almost felt worse than running. Running admitted fear. But admitting fear might not be the correct move right now.
Vayne's fingers curled slowly at his sides.
"Was this..," he said under his breath. "The thing at the start?"
Lune's eyes stayed forward.
"No. That thing had a shape. This one isn't even visible to us."
Vayne's pupils moved to the corners of his eyes.
"So we can only assume that they both must have similar motives?"
"That's why we shouldn't turn around. No matter what."
A loud thump came from behind. Alongside the sound of scraping. Like something long dragging lightly across stone.
The walked until they approached the café again.
CAFÉ ASTRA.
The red neon glow trembled over the sidewalk. The same table sat outside. The same cup rested on its metal surface, untouched, steam curling upward into the cold air.
"We're back to the same place," Vayne murmured.
Lune stopped walking. Vayne turned his head to look at her.
There was fear in her face now, but also anger. Not at him exactly. At the situation. At the city. At whatever rulebook she had been given that was failing them page by page.
A deep thump sounded behind them.
THOOM.
Both of them went still. The sound did not echo normally. Then came the scrape again.
They had to keep walking.
The street ahead stretched open. The intersections looked farther apart than before. The buildings leaned inward without moving, their windows dark and flat. Every pane of glass reflected the street, but Vayne kept his gaze fixed low, toward the pavement directly ahead.
THOOM.
Vayne's palms began to sweat. Then a loud scrape followed. It didn't even sound like something walking anymore.
"It wants us to check."
Vayne felt like they would never get anywhere at this pace. Something had to change. They couldn't run away forever. Time was ticking and he didn't want to find out what would happen at the end.
Lune glanced at Vayne.
"Don't do i—"
Lune's warning reached him too late. Vayne had already turned. His eyes were met with nothing but an empty street clouded by mist. No distorted shape appeared beneath the fractured sky. No white eyes opened in the mist.
The street behind them was empty. Vayne stood frozen, waiting for the consequence. Lune stared at him, horrified at first, then confused.
"Why did you do that?"
He slowly turned back around and ignored Lune's question.
"I don't think looking back is the trigger."
Lune just stared at Vayne. Her expression was caught somewhere between fear and disbelief. The red light from the café sign trembled across one side of her face.
THOOM.
Vayne turned around again to check where the sound was coming from.
There was still nothing there.
Lune's face changed slightly. Her eyes widened. She put her hand near her mouth. A finger resting on her lips and one on her chin.
Vayne looked at her.
"What?"
Her eyes moved toward the red neon glow of the café sign, then to the pale streetlights above them, then finally to the café window itself. The glass reflected the sign in a blurry red smear.
"Ever since we came here, the light near us has been acting strange."
Vayne frowned.
"What does that mean?"
Lune didn't answer immediately. She kept staring at the café window, but not like she was looking for the entity. Not yet. Her gaze moved across the reflection, tracking the shape of the street behind them, the way the red glow stretched too far along the glass, the way the streetlights seemed to lean in the wrong direction.
Then her eyes widened slightly like she had come to a realization.
"...We haven't been looping."
Vayne looked at her. Lune turned her head slowly toward the street they had just come from. The dark mist still covered most of it, but the road itself was empty. No figure. No white eyes. No visible threat.
Lune's voice lowered.
"We were never being placed back here."
"Then how do we keep ending up at the café?"
"Because we're walking in circles."
He stared at her.
"We've been walking straight the entire time."
Lune shook her head, frustrated now, but not at him.
"We thought we were walking straight."
Another hollow thump echoed from the mist.
THOOM.
Neither of them turned fully toward it. Lune pointed toward the café sign, then toward the streetlights overhead.
"The light is bending. Not just reflecting wrong. Bending. The street looks straight because the light reaching our eyes says it is. The distance looks longer because it's being stretched visually. The turns don't look like turns because the light is smoothing them out."
Vayne's eyes moved down the street ahead. It did look straight. But now that Lune had said it, he noticed small things. The curb on the left didn't line up with the curb ahead. The shadows from the streetlights all leaned at slightly different angles. A storefront across the road appeared farther away than the building beside it, even though their walls should have been level.
"So the city isn't moving."
"Maybe parts of it are,"
She moved a strand of hair off her face.
"But not here. Here, it's just making us see the wrong path."
Vayne looked back toward the mist, where the sounds were coming from.
"I think it's using the same distortion."
Lune stepped nearer to the café window.
"If light bends around it, then looking directly won't show us anything."
Her eyes stayed on the glass.
"But a reflection might catch the bend differently."
Lune stared at the window hoping for a revelation.
For a moment, there was nothing else but the empty street and their reflections. Then the mist in the glass shifted. Lune froze.
"Lune?"
Her reflection stared into the window, eyes widening slowly as the color drained from her face. In the glass, something impossibly tall leaned out of the mist behind them.