They called it the Pale District.Not because the buildings were white.But because nothing in this place kept its color—or its memory—for long.
The air was wrong here. Cold in the wrong places, quiet in the wrong ways. Streetlights hummed without power. Shadows stretched longer than their sources. Even time seemed... off. Too slow. Or too fast. Kairo Vale could never tell which.
He kept walking.
His boots scraped against cracked tiles, dislodging fragments of old signs, pieces of shattered stained glass, and bones so clean they might've been bleached by more than sunlight. No birds. No footsteps. No sirens.
Just the wind, whispering like it remembered something you didn't.
He stopped in front of what had once been a cathedral—or maybe a courthouse. Now, its steeple leaned like a broken finger, pointing at a sunless sky. The doors were gone, replaced by torn black drapes that didn't move even when the wind blew.
Beneath his feet, carved into the stone steps, was the symbol he'd seen in his dreams:
Three triangles, interlocking, inside a circle.
The Eye of the Architects.
Kairo knelt, brushing ash from the symbol with his sleeve. There, hidden in the grooves, was a question.
A question no one sane would ask.
"What would you trade to be remembered?"
He pulled the blade from his belt.
No hesitation.
The metal gleamed silver-black, etched with spiraling runes he couldn't read. Not yet. He dragged it across his palm, slow and steady. Blood welled up, bright against the gray air. It dripped onto the triangles.
They absorbed it instantly.
And then the world stopped.
Not like silence. Like deletion.
The color bled from the buildings. The wind vanished. Even the weight of gravity loosened—as if the universe itself were holding its breath.
A voice spoke, but not aloud.
It arrived in the bones.
"Kairo Vale. Firstborn of the Unmarked Line."
The voice had no gender, no source. It sounded like it had always existed. Like it had spoken before humans learned to understand speech.
"You seek remembrance."
"I seek more than that," Kairo said, though his mouth didn't move. "I want to know the design. I want to write my own."
"Then offer something of equal weight."
Kairo didn't flinch.
"I offer my name."
"Irrevocably?"
"Irrevocably."
"Accepted."
The triangles blazed white-hot—and then exploded outward in a circle of fire and ink. Kairo's scream was swallowed by a silence that fell like a guillotine.
Time skipped. Not forward. Not backward. Sideways.
When he woke, he was somewhere else.
Same district—but different. The streets were cleaner. The buildings sharper, less decayed. As if the Pale District had been... younger.
People passed by.
Dozens of them.
No one saw him.
Their eyes moved past his face like water around stone. He looked down—his shadow was still there. He felt real. But something had changed.
He reached for his phone.
The screen flickered, showed the date—Null. No contacts. No recent calls. Even the emergency call button gave no response.
He wasn't just forgotten.
He was unwritten.
He opened his coat. Inside, tucked in the lining, was the same blade.
But something had changed.
There was a name now, carved into the edge of the steel:
Kairo Vale
He didn't remember writing it.
But he remembered why it was there.
A whisper rose again—this time colder. Hungrier.
"This is your first draft, Kairo Vale. Do not disappoint the Architects."