The dying city still held its charm—broken, stubborn, and almost beautiful in its refusal to fall quietly.
Between rubble and flame, shattered archways glimmered with remnants of ancient light. The scent of saffron, rust, and smoke lingered in the bones of the marketplace.
Here, once, people had danced. Songs had risen—laughter and barter, old arguments beneath the drone of turbines.
Now only memory remained, stitched into stone and ash.
Tattered banners fluttered weakly in the wind, their sigils half-eaten by time, whispering names of festivals no one remembered.
Statues stood with broken faces, moss-grown and wind-scoured.
And the cracked fountains—those hollow gods of rust and wire—still dripped water, slow and steady, like clocks counting down the last breath of the world.
Casamir and Narel walked through it all like phantoms.
Their boots crunched over shattered mosaics—glass tiles that once told stories.
Now just scattered color beneath the feet of those too young to know what they meant.
The city stretched before them: collapsed domes, hollow towers, alleys thick with smoke and silence.
Karnox had once soared.
Now it sank.
Casamir said nothing.
Not because he had no words, but because the quiet meant more.
The ruins didn't need commentary. They needed remembering.
Above them, skeletal skyscrapers loomed like rusted giants. Powerlines sagged like broken sinew.
One snapped loose behind them, whipping through the air before crashing in a rain of sparks.
"I told you it would fall," Narel said, calm as ever. His grin cut through the dusk—sharp, dry, too familiar.
"You owe me rations for two nights."
Casamir exhaled. "You already owe me three weeks."
"Then this evens us."
He shook his head. The smile that almost rose never quite formed.
The moment passed like breath on glass—there, then gone.
They passed a mural barely clinging to a scorched wall.
Its paint was cracked and fading, but the image was clear: obsidian wings wrapped around a faceless sun.
A woman without eyes held a bleeding star in her palms. Cities floated above oceans of ash.
Narel slowed, head tilting.
"This world," he murmured, "never wanted to live. It just forgot how to die."
Casamir paused, watching the wind tug loose flakes of the mural. "Maybe it just didn't know how to stop."
Narel didn't respond.
He looked skyward instead. The clouds above were red and raw, bruised with stormlight.
They always looked wounded—like something trying to heal, and failing.
But now… they pulsed.
Not with wind. Not heat.
A tremor ran through the ground. Not enough to knock anything over—but enough to feel.
Like something deep had shifted. Something breathing beneath the bones of the city.
Casamir felt it in his chest.
"What was that?"
Narel didn't answer. His expression flickered—calm still, but unreadable. Watching something just past the visible.
"Look," he said, voice thin.
Casamir turned—and froze.
A vein of silver light carved across the clouds. Not lightning. It shimmered wrong—raw, angular. Like a rift being torn open.
No thunder followed. No wind. Just a pressure in the air. A waiting.
And then the sound came.
Not a sound, really. Not one meant for ears.
It moved through him like a memory he'd never had.
In the teeth. In the spine.
A toll.
He didn't know why it shook him.
Only that it did.
It rang once—and the city held its breath.
He stumbled backward. The mural began to peel, the stone beneath it curling as if in retreat.
"Narel," he whispered. "What is that?"
But Narel didn't move.
Didn't flinch.
He was still watching the sky.
"Go help them," he said.
Casamir blinked. "What?"
"There." Narel pointed toward the market corridor, now sagging and smoke-filled.
A scream cut through the air.
Human.
Casamir didn't ask again.
He ran.
Through scattered tiles, past burned-out stalls. Smoke clawed at his lungs.
Ahead, shadows moved. A child's cry. Metal twisting. Wood snapping.
A family was trapped behind a fallen support beam, one of them trying to lift it, another shielding the youngest.
Casamir didn't stop to calculate. He dropped beside them and pushed.
His arms shook. The beam groaned. He shifted angle, found leverage. Lifted just enough for the child to crawl out.
The next tremor hit harder. Sparks rained down from a split in the tower overhead.
He kept moving.
Not because it was safe. Not because he could win.
Because someone was still screaming.
Another stall had collapsed inward. A man was pinned beneath a heavy cart, his legs twisted beneath him.
Casamir crouched, locked his shoulders, and shoved. The thing didn't move.
So he repositioned. Dug his heels into scorched stone.
Lifted again.
The cart shifted. The man gasped—and rolled free.
Casamir slumped beside him, panting. But only for a second.
He moved on.
More ash. More blood. More weight than one person should carry.
But still he went.
Narel reappeared beside him, dragging another boy, coughing and soot-smeared.
"You stayed," he said.
Casamir kept working. "They needed someone."
"You think that makes you different?"
"No."
"Then why?"
Casamir looked up, his face streaked with sweat and ash.
"Because someone once did it for me."
Another crack above—louder than before. The tower above groaned again.
Still, Casamir didn't turn to the sky.
Whatever force was coming—whatever tore the heavens open and screamed into his blood—it could wait.
He had lives to lift first.
And somewhere, quiet and unnoticed beneath the surface of his skin, something pulsed.
Not pain. Not light.
Just heat.
Waiting.
---
Casamir remembered the last time he and Narel walked this same path—years ago, before the outer wall fell.
They'd taken shifts during the firewatch, both too young to carry real weapons, but old enough to be left on the towers. Narel had told stories back then—about a Bell before it cracked, and stars that didn't bleed, and names that meant things. He'd spoken like memory mattered. Casamir had believed him.
That was before Narel learned to speak in riddles.
Before the dreams turned violent.
Before Casamir learned that memory and silence sometimes shared the same face.
Still, he followed him.
---
The mural pulled at his attention again. He turned back as the first flakes peeled away in the wind.
The woman with no eyes.
He couldn't explain why, but looking at her made his stomach clench. Something about her silence—her face turned upward to the star she held—reminded him of a truth he had never been told, but always carried.
The star in her hands bled down her arms, staining her ribs. The wings behind her were not feathers, but blades. Cities floated above her like offerings—and below her feet: ash.
He stepped closer.
There were designs in the paint. Ancient, burned almost invisible. Words scratched in the language of memory-recorders.
One pulsed faintly.
"Remembrance."
He flinched.
It didn't shine. It pulsed.
As if echoing something inside him.
Then the light tore the sky.
---
The silver fracture widened across the heavens.
A seam between worlds. A wound in reality.
It didn't flicker. It held. Wrong. Solid. Like a line that had always been there, waiting for someone to notice.
Around him, the light shimmered over debris, highlighting every crack, every edge. Shadows bent wrong. Wind curved where it shouldn't.
The toll came.
It wasn't heard. It was felt.
The world exhaled, and Casamir's vision blurred. He clutched his chest. Not in pain—*pressure*.
The mural behind him flared, then peeled away in sheets. The walls wept dust. The broken city stilled.
He felt his breath slow—against his will. As if something older than choice was pressing down on him.
In the distance, something—some part of Karnox—collapsed. The tremor chased the sound. But the toll held longer.
It ended.
The silence after rang sharper than the toll itself.
---
Then came the screams.
Casamir ran without hesitation.
Tiles crunched. Smoke rose. Heat licked at his eyes as stalls blazed and cracked. He hurdled debris and slid beneath a bent support beam. Something exploded nearby—pressure, not fire.
The family came into view—two adults and a child, caged by broken masonry. The father braced the beam while the mother held the child beneath her, shielding his head with her arms.
Casamir skidded in beside them.
"Don't move," he said.
He wrapped both arms around the support, tested weight, adjusted angle. He could see where it wedged against a collapsed canopy. With a shout, he shifted his weight—and lifted.
The metal screamed.
The mother pulled the child free.
The father stumbled out after.
Casamir let the beam fall behind him.
Another tremor shook the ground, this one stronger.
He barely had time to move before a section of wall sloughed down like rotted meat. He leapt aside and rolled behind an overturned cart.
There—another voice. Deeper. Choked.
A man pinned beneath a broken wagon, blood streaking his cheek. Casamir rushed him, already knowing it was too heavy for brute force.
He ducked low, scanned the break. Found a bent wheel axle, and wedged his foot beneath it.
He shoved.
The man screamed.
But the cart shifted.
Casamir dropped beside him, hauled one arm over his shoulders, and dragged him clear before the axle buckled.
Dust rolled through the square like a second sky.
---
Later—maybe minutes, maybe hours—when the smoke began to clear, Casamir stood alone again.
The square was broken, but not lifeless.
A girl, no older than seven, clutched a rusted pendant in her hands—its chain snapped, its symbol scorched. She didn't cry. Just stared at the spot where her mother had vanished in the collapse.
Casamir knelt beside her. She didn't flinch.
He reached into his coat and pulled out a ration bar, torn in half.
She took it.
No words passed between them.
Somewhere, a vendor's stall finally burned through, collapsing into glowing cinders.
In the silence, Casamir turned—looking back at the mural's ruins, the tower, the rift in the sky.
And he realized:
He didn't need to ask what the toll was.
He was already inside it.
---
And beneath his skin—quiet, patient—something pulsed again.
Not pain.
Not fire.
Just heat.
Waiting.