The city was alive in the way only a wounded thing could be.
Voices tangled in the air—the haggling of merchants, the clatter of wagon wheels, the sharp bark of soldiers drilling in the distance. Smoke curled from food stalls, mixing the scent of spiced broth with the bitter tang of burned iron from the forges near the wall.
It all looked ordinary, but it wasn't.
War hung over the city like a stormcloud. Einz could see it in the way mothers pulled their children closer when troops passed. He could hear it in the temple bell that tolled every morning, not for worship but for roll call.
And he could feel it in the streets.
Soldiers poured in and out of the gates, young and sharp-eyed, boots stamping in rhythm. A different stream limped back through—men and women carried on stretchers, armor dented, faces pale. The city wasn't a place of rest anymore. It was a doorway. A funnel. People went in, and fewer came back out.
Einz slipped through that rhythm as he always had—careful, quiet. Not because anyone was watching him, but because survival had never been about being noticed.
A child learns fast when he has to.
So Einz had learned to pretend.
Pretend he wasn't hungry when his stomach growled loud enough to echo. Pretend he had somewhere to be when his feet wandered aimlessly. Pretend he was smaller than he was, easier to miss.
It worked often enough.
—
In the market square, Einz slowed. Not enough to draw eyes—just enough to watch without watching.
Children played at the fountain. Their laughter rang too bright, too sharp. They clashed sticks together like swords, their shouts echoing the drills they saw every day.
"For all mankind!" one cried.
Another staggered back, clutching his side in mock death, then fell to the cobblestones with a groan. The others laughed.
The sound twisted in Einz's chest.
Because not far from them, real troops marched past. Helmets glinted, spears angled, boots slapping stone in perfect rhythm. The children hushed, eyes wide, the game forgotten for a breath.
The soldiers didn't look down. Their faces were hard, shadows carved into them by things the children didn't know yet.
The city pretended, the same way Einz did.
He drifted on, weaving through stalls piled high with roots and dried meat. His stomach ached at the smell, but hunger was just another sound now, one he carried with him everywhere.
Einz thought it would be another ordinary day. A day of watching, pretending, enduring.
Then the hum came.
At first he thought it was inside his head—the low ring that came after going a long time without food. But it didn't fade. It deepened, steady, as if the ground itself had started breathing.
The cobblestones quivered under his boots. A spoon clattered from a vendor's hand. The noise of the market faltered.
Then stopped.
Not in pieces. All at once.
The children's laughter cut off mid-shout. A merchant's voice froze in his throat. Even the bell from the temple tower hung in the air, its toll suspended.
The silence was so complete it felt wrong, like Einz's ears had been stuffed with wool.
And then—
It began with absence.
A widening ring where something had been. The fountain. The children. The stalls. Gone. Not broken, not destroyed. Just… missing.
The circle spread, smooth and perfect, blacker than any shadow. A hole in the world itself.
The pull came a moment later.
The carts groaned first, dragged toward it as if their weight had been stolen. Stalls tore loose, wood snapping like twigs. People screamed, but the sound barely made it to Einz's ears before the dark swallowed it too.
Then the sky itself streamed downward. Clouds twisted in the sky, narrowing into a funnel that bent toward the circle. Birds shrieked as they were pulled from flight.
Einz stumbled back. His shoulder hit stone. His fingers clawed at the wall behind him, scraping until his nails split.
"Move—move—"
His voice cracked, then vanished into the hum.
A soldier lost his footing ahead, boots skidding against stone, then he was gone. Another clung to the edge of a stall before it tore loose and carried him with it.
Einz's chest locked. His ribs rattled with every breath.
The pull found him next.
The cobblestones tilted under his boots. His arm wrenched, shoulder screaming as he clung harder. His feet left the ground, the world stretching thin.
"No—!"
The word tore out of him, but the hole swallowed it too.
His grip broke.
The city blurred into streaks of gray and black. His body lifted, weightless, every sound and shape ripped away.
The last thing Einz saw was the marketplace frozen in fragments—a scarf twisting in the air, a sword-stick tumbling from a child's fingers, a man's hand reaching for someone already gone.
Then the darkness swallowed him whole.