The first sound broke the silence like a mistake. A single metallic note rang out somewhere in the ruins, faint as a spoon dropping onto stone. Elias halted, cigarette paused at his lips, and listened. The echo folded into the hum that pulsed beneath the city, the endless vibration gnawing at bone and teeth. He exhaled smoke slowly, eyes half-lidded. Berlin was waking again.
He resumed walking.
The streets were no longer streets, just ribs of concrete, staircases climbing toward nothing, window frames like empty sockets. Dust stirred with each tremor. Elias adjusted his scarf, once a bold red, now the color of dried brick, and pressed it against his mouth. No matter how far he walked, he carried the smell of ash with him.
The hum rose and fell, rhythmic, almost like breath. He passed a rusted tram where graffiti shouted in flaking white paint: THE PLAY HAS NO END. Below it, someone had scratched a prayer in chalk: Let me sleep. Elias glanced once, then looked away. To stare too long at anything in Berlin was to risk being stared back at.
A scraping sound ran along the wall beside him. Not the wind, not random enough. Elias stopped, fingers brushing the hilt of the knife beneath his coat. He tilted his head and called softly, "Who's there?"
Silence.
Then, a laugh. Childlike, brittle, running down the stones until it died in static.
Elias swore under his breath and kept moving. He knew better than to chase voices.
He cut across a street where iron lamp posts bent like broken reeds. Their bulbs had burst decades ago, yet one flickered faintly as he passed, buzzing, spitting out a short burst of light. He stopped and touched the cold metal. For a moment, the light flared, revealing a shadow stretched across the ground that was not his own. The shape stood still, too tall, face blurred. Elias spun sharply. Nothing behind him.
The scarf itched at his throat. He tightened it.
Berlin was never empty. It wore emptiness like a mask, but there were always actors behind it.
He turned into an alley where the scent shifted. Less ash, more iron, sharp and tangy on the tongue. A wall bore a crude circle marked with three jagged lines, a false sigil. Not real, not branded into flesh, but a prayer painted in haste. The hand that drew it had wanted protection.
The sight pulled a memory from him before he could resist: a man pressing a glowing brand into skin, a scream cut short, the silence that followed. Elias blinked hard until the image faded. The Archivists had taken too many hours from him, but some fragments still broke through.
He moved on.
Past the alley, the street opened into a square littered with debris, the remains of a market. Stalls slumped into each other, bones of wood gnawed by time. A brass bell dangled from a hook. Its clapper was gone, yet when Elias brushed by, the air trembled with a faint metallic ring. Not a sound exactly, more like a memory echoing where it once lived.
Elias stopped. "Not funny," he said quietly.
The ring faded, replaced by the hum pressing closer under his skin.
At the edge of the square stood a woman. She wore gray rags, a scarf hiding her hair, and cradled something to her chest. Elias tensed. The thing might have been a child or a doll.
She lifted her face. A pale scar traced her jaw, patterned and deliberate, the residue of a sigil once burned into her. Her eyes locked with his, empty for a moment, then clear as glass.
"Silence," she said.
The word wasn't spoken; it was placed into the air like an object. The moment it landed, the square seemed to pause. No wind. No hum. Only absence.
Elias didn't answer. He tugged his scarf higher, avoiding her gaze, and walked past. He caught her scent briefly: lavender under ash. Behind her, the child-shaped bundle shifted, and a pair of hands clapped twice, hollow, mechanical.
He didn't look back.
The streets narrowed again, twisting through towers of rubble. Elias could feel the city pulling him toward the Hall of Rail. That was the rumor, the prize. A fragment hidden there, enough to buy him time with the Archivists, enough to keep breathing.
The hum deepened as he drew closer, vibrating in the soles of his boots. Once, he thought he heard words in it, a chorus too quiet to make sense:
Applaud. Enter. Play.
He lit another cigarette to steady his hands and whispered into the smoke, "This is a mistake."
But he kept walking.
The Hall of Rail loomed like a carcass of iron and glass. Its gate rose crooked, ribs of steel bent inward, the name once carved above peeled away in flakes. Elias stood before it, cigarette burning low between his fingers, listening to the hum vibrating against the bones of the station. It felt less like a sound and more like a command: enter.
He crushed the cigarette under his heel and shoved the gate. The hinges groaned, a drawn-out wail, and the echo swelled inside the cavernous hall.
Light cut through the broken roof in pale shafts, dust floating like suspended ash. Tracks stretched across the floor, eaten by rust, while rows of wooden benches leaned at odd angles. A faint draft slipped between them, carrying the scent of oil and old blood.
Elias moved slowly, knife ready in his pocket. The sound of his boots carried farther than it should have, bouncing against the walls. The mannequins appeared first, a dozen seated on benches, torsos stiff, faces painted with faded lipstick or charcoal eyes. Some had no features at all, just smooth plaster where a mouth should be.
He passed between them, feeling the weight of an audience. His chest tightened.
"Not my stage," he muttered low, as if the hall might hear.
The mannequins didn't move. Yet he thought one tilted its head a fraction as he turned away.
A noise came from the far platform, metallic clinking like coins shuffled in a hand. Elias advanced slowly, each step measured.
A man crouched near the rails. Thin, pale, wrapped in a long coat once military green. His hands sifted through broken glass, turning each piece as though inspecting it for value. When he looked up, his eyes glistened too brightly, pupils wide, irises dulled to gray.
"You're late," the man said. His voice cracked, thin as paper.
Elias frowned. "I wasn't invited."
The man laughed softly, like paper tearing. He raised one wrist, scarred with neat horizontal lines. Between them, a blackened mark burned deep into flesh. A sigil. Old, pitted, incomplete, but still alive.
"Everything here is invitation," the man said. "We're all chosen, whether we accept or not."
Elias felt the hum rise at those words, pressing harder against his ears. "I don't play."
"Everyone plays." The man waved his shard of glass toward a notice pinned to the far wall. A scrap of yellow paper curled at the edges, ink faded but legible:
AUDITIONS TONIGHT. BRING SCRIPT. NO EXCEPTIONS.
Beneath it, in darker handwriting, another line had been added: Bring truth.
Elias clenched his jaw. "What's the fragment?"
The man smiled, showing teeth too sharp. "Fragments don't belong to men like you. They belong to the Stage."
Before Elias could reply, something shifted above. Footsteps moved softly along the balcony. He lifted his eyes and saw a silhouette glide across the upper gallery, long-limbed, posture upright, fingers drumming against the railing. The figure paused and leaned forward. Elias couldn't see a face, only a mask of shadow, but he felt the pressure of being seen, as if a spotlight had fallen on him alone.
The crouching man chuckled. "The audience is here."
Elias swore under his breath and turned away, scanning for exits. The mannequins behind him had changed. A moment ago still, now their hands rested together, fingers bent as if ready to clap.
"Stop it," Elias said sharply, though he wasn't sure to whom.
Silence answered.
Then, one by one, the mannequins began to clap. Slow, hollow, their palms striking in eerie unison. The sound filled the hall like thunder rolling over stone.
The crouching man rose, spreading his arms as though soaking in applause. His coat opened, revealing ribs jutting against skin too pale, as if his body had forgotten how to hold flesh.
"See?" he said. "You're already part of it."
Elias pulled his knife free. The blade caught the dim light, a brief flash of steel. He didn't advance. He knew better than to lunge without purpose. The Stage rewarded spectacle, not survival.
Above, the silhouette on the gallery leaned farther, hands gripping the railing. The hum intensified, rattling through Elias's skull. The clapping grew faster, then faster still, until it was no longer clapping but a roar, a storm of hollow palms.
Elias steadied his breath. "I came for one thing," he whispered. "Then I'm gone."
The man with the sigil grinned, glass shard glinting in his hand. "You don't take from here. You give. The Stage feeds, and it always eats first."
The mannequins' clapping stopped. The silence afterward was suffocating. Elias raised his knife, every muscle tight.
The spotlight sensation pressed down harder. For the first time, Elias felt a pull behind his eyes, as if something else were flipping through his thoughts like a script, searching for the right line.
The Stage wanted him to speak.