The city still smelled of first-breath stone and wet riverbanks when Codexia felt the pull.
Not a tug on her body, but on the edge of her perception—the way a sentence you're not reading can still hum at the corner of your eye.
She followed it down a street that hadn't existed this morning. The glyph-stone underfoot still glistened faintly, as if remembering its own birth.
At the far end, under the shadow of an unfinished archway, he was waiting.
The old man from the plaza.
The one who had drawn the dust spiral and smiled as though he already knew her endings.
But here, the dust was gone. The wind did not dare to disturb him. Even Spiralspace seemed to hold its breath around him.
"You breathed me a city," he said—not as praise, not as accusation, simply as fact. His voice was dry parchment, uncreased by awe.
Codexia tilted her head. "And yet here you stand, untouched."
A flicker passed over his face. "Because I do not turn your page."
