Reis stepped out of the café, holding a tall black cup of coffee, gripping it firmly as he crossed the threshold into the wet street.
Holding that cup was the only act keeping his steps steady in a gray day dissolving under endless rain. He walked on while cars drifted past and people moved in silence.
All he could think was that this world was no longer the one he had once known.
He kept himself busy with movement so that no one would find a chance to ask him questions. He passed between the rows of modern cars that floated a few centimeters above the ground and glided in a heavy silence.
Driverless vehicles, their glass reflecting streetlights and the faces of passersby. Then he stopped under the shelter of a taxi stand, raising his cup to his lips.
He drank. Warm vapor escaped his mouth into the cold air, a fleeting trace of warmth that vanished too fast. He lifted his head to the sky, his black eyes saying nothing, like voids that swallowed the light.
A quick glance scanned the faces around him, then all returned to his inner silence. He was fifteen years old, but his features did not match his age.
Reis wore a puffed jacket with a modern cut, its hood pulled over a black cap to cover his head and hide his face. A slim bag hung across his chest on a black strap wrapping behind his back. Tight athletic pants, black shoes lined with white. His hands were pale from the cold, his black hair falling over his eyes, the sides of his head shaved with sharp precision.
When he lifted the cup and drank again, the motion gave not just a passing detail, but a fleeting glimpse of his face. A narrow mouth, an unremarkable nose, pale cheeks. His eyes dropped quickly, as if afraid of being seen while carrying a pain he could not name.
A floating taxi stopped beside him. Its door opened quietly, and he stepped into the cabin. Four seats, dim light, and a wheel with no driver.
A soft electronic voice read the destination from his phone.
Reis sat in the back seat, leaning his head against the rest, watching the rain trail down the window in broken lines.
He realized he had woken up here about a week ago. Or so his mind told him, though it was never certain of itself. His old room remained the same, a simple bed, a small kitchen, a narrow bathroom.
But the world outside had shifted into an entirely new painting. He had searched the network, dug through archives, and found what he never expected.
Centuries ago, a massive event shook the earth. A strange black mass descended from the sky and struck the heart of the Mediterranean Sea. The impact triggered earthquakes that reshaped the continents and redrew the maps. At the crash site, a colossal black column rose, reaching skyward without end.
At first, the black mass quickly swallowed the sea. Then, over the years, the Mediterranean dried, and the world's map was reshaped around that shadow.
Scientists took samples of its substance, analyzed them, and merged them with artificial intelligence.
The result was more than technology. It was passage. A system that allowed humans to enter that black tower, into vast floors, each one a gateway to a world filled with new races, strange beings, resources, and treasures beyond imagination.
Everyone who entered became Awakened, and those whose powers awakened found the laws of their lives rewritten.
The time and date flashing on his phone caught Reis's attention.
Nine in the morning. January 13th. Year 315.
Three hundred years had passed since the beginning of a new age, known as the New Earth Era. That cold fact pressed his heart deeper behind its curtain of silence.
But what surrounded him with immeasurable dread was not history or the rules of a new age.
It was a personal discovery, terrible and his alone. The floors inside that black tower at least some of them he already knew. Those worlds that people now spoke of as scientific secrets or merchant trails were to him memories from novels, movies, and games he had once read, watched, or played.
Beings and streets and scenes and characters that unfolded before his eyes like books he had already finished. But when he searched for authors' names, for titles, for film directors or game developers, he found nothing. Names erased, works unrecorded, pages torn clean from the notebook of collective memory.
Reis sat in the back seat, watching the rain slide down the glass. He held the last sip of coffee in his mouth, trying to make it a small barrier against the whirlpool of memory. Fear did not show on his face not because he was fearless, but because his features had learned not to reveal anything. His black eyes remained hollow, like a locked door no one could cross.
A mechanical voice from the front of the car spoke. "Arrival at the designated point in one kilometer."
Reis slowly raised his head. From his lips came something that was not a threat and not a plea, but a decision.
"It doesn't matter. Everything will become clear. The first step will decide the rest."
He said it quietly, carrying the weight of trials already behind him. The words were a small signal of what he intended to do next. He placed his hand on the bag hanging across his chest, touching it as if it were the only fixed thing he had. Then he leaned his head back again, watching the rain draw fleeting shapes on the glass a short chapter of a day unlike any other he had lived.
In that silence, as the car glided toward its final stop, Reis knew he was no longer just a boy hiding behind his dark features.
He had become part of an equation no one yet understood. His memory stood both against him and with him.
And only one choice remained to enter the tower.
Only there will it become clear whether those worlds that dwell within him are a path to truth, or merely a chain and an illusion created by the Tower to devour him along with the others.