The dawn came slow, like a sickly candle struggling to burn. I woke with the taste of coal in my mouth and mud under my fingernails. Three jobs today. Three jobs yesterday. Three jobs tomorrow. Somehow, my body still obeyed. My mind… that was another matter.
Sometimes, in the quietest moments, I remembered flashes of another life. Not memories, exactly — more like déjà vu stitched into the bones. The knowledge of tools, techniques, little tricks that could make a life slightly easier, slightly safer. Today, it helped. I remembered how to patch a leaking water barrel faster, how to balance a cart over uneven cobblestones, and even which alleys avoided the city guards who liked to harass poor boys. Small advantages, but in a city like Darnsworth, small advantages were survival.
Lira waited by the doorway, a thin blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Her hair was damp from the morning fog, and yet her eyes… those eyes were sharper than most adults'.
"You're early," she said, smirking. "Did the world finally give up?"
I snorted, "Or maybe it's just resting before it gets back to crushing me."
She laughed, tiny and brittle, but it warmed something in me. I wasn't sure if it was hope, love, or stubborn pride that refused to break. Probably all three.
The first job was delivering letters across the East district. Carriages rattled past, and the cobblestones glistened with last night's rain. As I passed the market, I saw old men muttering at torn parchments, whispering numbers and dates I didn't understand. One muttered something about the "Stillday approaching" and stared at the sky with fear in his eyes. I didn't ask. Some things were better left mysterious. But a piece of me remembered: the world was built on patterns — cycles I didn't yet understand.
Job two was stacking crates in a warehouse. Damp air, the scent of rotting wood, the occasional rat. My hands bled a little, but I didn't notice. My mind drifted again. Flashes — this time, numbers, formulas, strange diagrams I didn't understand consciously, but my hands moved like they did. Past life knowledge… a gift and a curse. I didn't know why I remembered or how it helped me, but every small step was survival.
By the third job, my body screamed, but Lira's small smile at breakfast kept me moving. I saw it again today — the faint pulse of something… her eyes flickered with light no child should have. Not sunlight, not candlelight, but something beneath, beneath everything. The kind of presence that hums quietly, like the world itself is breathing.
Returning home, I glanced at a tattered, half-burned calendar someone had left behind in the alley. Numbers and symbols I couldn't read at first, strange moons and lines connecting them. One word caught my eye: "Stillday". Somewhere deep in me, I recognized the importance — not fully, but enough to send a shiver down my spine.
I sat with Lira again, sharing scraps of bread and soup. "One day," I muttered, "we'll get out of this. We'll be more than… whatever this place is trying to chew us into."
Her tiny hand squeezed mine. "I know," she said. "I'll help."
I looked at her, really looked. She didn't yet know how. She didn't yet know what she was capable of. But I could feel it. The resonance of her existence… faint, fragile, and frightening.
The day ended quietly. Rain fell again, cold and relentless. And beneath the patter of water, the whispering returned — faint, subtle, but unmistakable. The sound beneath silence, threading through the city, through the people, through Lira and me. The void itself was alive. Watching. Waiting.
And I had no idea how deep the void went.