Fragr was a beautiful city. Key word, "was".
For a very long time, it had been beautiful. Its unique architectural style of building, although perplexing, was beautiful and matched the aesthetic of the people themselves–individuals who were living tales of culture and history that should have long since been lost but continues to persevere through the eroding passage of time.
Buildings were laid out in an intricate format, stretching and wrapping themselves into a living lattice—distinct structures interlocking until the whole read like the façade of some patient, impossible beast. Streets did not merely run; they braided. A narrow lane might arrive at a door ten stories above the river and still be "ground" to those who used it, while a plaza two terraces below claimed the same title with equal certainty. Here, "ground" was not a place but a permission.
The earliest foundations bit straight into cliff and shale, a grid hammered into topography rather than laid upon it. Later waves of construction learned to negotiate instead of conquer: platforms stepped out from the rock like shelves; stilted galleries bridged gullies; whole courtyards hung in the air, roof to one block, basement to another. You could step into a market at "street level," cross three aisles of steam and spice, and exit onto a different street entirely–one that chiseled through the city's ribs as if it had always been there.
Architecture here spoke in vertical sentences. Stairwells the color of old coins climbed through towers like arteries, depositing people onto mid-air squares where trees took root in planters as deep as wells. Skybridges carried the weight of neighborhoods: homes pressed shoulder-to-shoulder along their spines, laundry lines strung over the void like weak smiles. On festivals, the bridges became boulevards; on ordinary days, they were shortcuts, markets, rumors.
Light and air found their own routes. Voids were designed, not accidental: atriums that vented heat upward like chimneys; slot canyons widened just enough to welcome noon; mirrored panels bounced daylight down into levels that never saw horizons. You could smell rain long before you saw it—heard first as a far-off hiss on upper terraces, then a drum on copper roofs, then a quiet rush through runnels cut into stairs, every drop channeled to cisterns nested beneath plazas that served as both water halls and community rooms.
At night, strings of lamps traced the circulatory system, revealing connections no map could keep up with; in the morning, fog made everything strange again, and the locals navigated by habit, counting steps, counting turns, trusting the slope underfoot.
Engineers spoke of "anchoring and bridging," the two verbs that made the city possible. Anchors drove deep: caisson foundations nested into bedrock, shear walls that read the hillside's grain, piles that went down farther than the tallest towers rose. Bridges did the rest, not just over water but over air; spans between blocks, ribs thrown across chasms, concrete vines that made neighbors of strangers. Where there wasn't enough earth to accept a load, the city borrowed from itself: rooftops became plazas, plazas became roofs, and the old notion of a single ground dissolved into a stack of agreements.
Orientation demanded humility. Wayfinding posts listed not only street names but levels, with arrows pointing up as often as forward. Addresses came twinned—Terrace and Elevation. A place might be "Elm Court, Level 5, North Aspect," which told you more than any postal code ever could. Still, the city loved its jokes: a lane called Bottom Way that cut across a fifth-story cornice; a staircase titled The Descent that rose for half a mile.
Was…
Now…
When the disaster came, it did not tear the city apart in a single violent instant, but left it slumped and wounded, its balance broken. Bridges that once carried whole neighborhoods sagged and stood empty, streets that braided so cleverly now led into silence, and the stairwells that had always promised passage only climbed into dust and shadow. The markets were gone, and the air hung heavy.
Nothing had been completely destroyed, yet everything felt hollow; the structures remained, proud and stubborn, but the life that had filled them was drained away, leaving the city to stand like a shell that remembered too much of what it had lost.
Andrew had been on a vacation to Fragr a couple years back and he definitely knew how it was. Now, it was nothing but a hollow shell of what once contained so much vitality.
It was sad. It was truly unfortunate how so much of what's been built over millennials could be altered in such a disastrous manner within the span of mere days. Truly unfortunate.
Andrew and Isabella strolled through the desolate streets of Fragr, streets that once teemed with life, amusement, the cries of children playing, the complaints of the elderly, the calls of street merchants looking to sell you their products…
Now, only few people shuffled through the streets, there were no cries of children having fun, no complaints of the elderly, no calls of the eager merchants anymore; it had been replaced by silent murmurings that suffused the air with heavy melancholy.
People stared; their gaze, filled with a kind of soulless tranquility, stared at them as one would stare at differing creatures; something was definitely wrong somewhere, Andrew just couldn't put his fingers in what it was exactly. They knew, somehow, that we weren't from here.
Was it our dress? But we dressed no different from them. Tattered clothes coated in dust like those of the people around them, their faces hidden by a scarf to protect their lungs from the dust-filled air.
Yet, they still seemed to know. Was it the way they carried themselves? It couldn't be that. Even in this somewhat desolate street, some people moved with a certain quickness that told of anxiety, others dragged their feet across the asphalt road; a hopeless wandering, and few moved at the normal pace; a certain kind of uncaring attitude pervading around them.
Why they stared didn't seem to concern Isabella and so, Andrew decided to take his mind off the matter.
They were heading somewhere. Indeed, that was all Isabella revealed, "somewhere". Nothing more. She seemed not to be in the mood for any talks; not even the casual kind.
Silence followed behind them as "confusion" walked beside Andrew. This carried on as they walked through multiple streets and stairs navigating any kind of elevation or depression of the "Fragrian" architectural style.
Eventually, they came to a halt before a humongous dome shaped building. A towering construct that Andrew assumed to be over two hundred metres in height as for the area it covered, that was beyond him.
This was "Delmefre Fermere Gapdelm" in the old tongue, a name it still retained and was most commonly used by the locals. Though in the modern tongue, the name "Delmefre Fermere Gapdelm" translated vaguely into "Where one shall find what they seek". It was vague but still conveyed what the name entailed.
Isabella paused for a moment, was it to admire the unique construct before them–something he still deemed to still be beneath her in preeminence–or was it for other reasons that he didn't know because he obviously didn't know what their purpose was here.
But he waited. He waited long enough for Isabella to sort whatever was going through her mind.
Finally, she turned to him and motioned for him to go in.
Andrew stared at her for a moment, ignoring all her allurement, his scrutiny greater than any strange bliss, before finally moving inside.
Isabella paced beside him as they walked into the impossibly intricate structure whose true complexity was hidden by its not so "simplistic" shape.
'The deal with a Devil's spawn, you say? Then, why am I here? I don't know how my abilities work. No manual on how to activate them. Nothing at all. I'm only going to be a hindrance, so, why am I here?'
Thoughts ran through Andrew's mind as the world of books and scrolls submerged his senses. The complex mixture of scents–weathering books, timeworn papers, ink, old wood of the shelves–attacked him.
A world of surreal brilliance.
"Beautiful," That single word of his, although failed to truly embody what he saw, echoed truthfully.