The rain hadn't stopped for three days.
It wasn't the clean kind that washed things away — it clung to the city like mildew, seeping into the cracks of buildings and the minds of the people walking beneath it.
Elias sat by the café window, watching the drops distort the reflection of a thousand nameless faces. The world outside moved like a slow film reel, slightly out of sync with the sound. Maybe that was just him.
He stirred his coffee — cold now — and thought about how silence used to mean peace. These days, it only meant his thoughts were getting louder.
The city had changed, though not in the ways people noticed. Neon signs flickered the same hollow smiles. Trains still screamed under the streets. But there were gaps now — things that didn't line up. A bookstore that had existed yesterday was gone today. The man who sold incense on the corner had stopped showing up two weeks ago, and no one remembered he'd ever been there.
Except Elias.
He closed his notebook. The pages were half-filled with names, addresses, and fragments of memory that had begun vanishing from everyone else's heads.
"People," he muttered under his breath, "aren't supposed to forget entire buildings."
He wasn't a detective. Or a writer, though he told people he was one. It was easier to lie than explain the truth — that he didn't write stories, he wrote what reality erased.
The waitress walked by, placing the bill on the table. "Another long night?" she asked, voice polite but distant.
"Something like that."
"Careful out there," she said. "There's been power cuts again. Whole districts going dark."
He nodded. She left, and he caught her reflection in the glass. Her smile didn't reach her eyes. He'd seen her every day for the past month. But in his notebook, her name was written three times — each in a different handwriting.
The streetlights flickered as he walked home. His shoes splashed through shallow puddles that reflected the city like broken glass. The air smelled faintly metallic.
When he reached his apartment, the hallway light was dead. He fumbled for his keys in the dark, hand brushing against something cold.
A whisper, soft and wet, slid through the silence.
"Elias."
He froze.
There was no one in the corridor. Only the dripping of water from the ceiling.
He didn't breathe until the key turned and the door clicked open. Inside, the lights worked fine. Everything looked ordinary — books stacked neatly, a flickering monitor, a clock ticking with mechanical patience.
Ordinary. That word was starting to mean less every day.
Elias sat at his desk, opening his notebook again. He flipped past the recent pages — "Vanished Market, 12th Street," "Mrs. Han's Dog (No one recalls it)," "The Old Library on Rose Avenue — gone overnight."
He stopped on a fresh page. The pen hovered.
Tonight, he'd heard his name in a voice that wasn't human.
He hesitated, then wrote it down. The instant the ink hit paper, the air shifted — the way sound does when thunder waits behind the clouds.
He looked up.
The clock had stopped.
[03:16]
He checked his phone. The time there was frozen too. The second hand on the screen refused to move.
His stomach knotted. Slowly, he stood, stepping to the window. Outside, the rain was still — each droplet hanging midair like glass beads.
Everything was silent.
The entire city was caught in a photograph.
A sharp knock echoed from the door.
Three times.
He didn't move.
Another knock — louder, deliberate.
"Who's there?" His voice came out strained.
No answer.
He took a step closer. Then another.
When his hand touched the doorknob, the knocks stopped.
Something whispered from the other side — not words, just the sound of breathing.
Elias slowly turned the handle. The door opened an inch.
Darkness poured in. Not the kind from night or shadow — this one moved, like ink in water.
And inside it, an eye opened.
He slammed the door. The world jolted.
Rain fell again. The clock ticked back to life. Time resumed as if nothing had happened.
Elias stumbled back, gasping. The notebook lay open on the desk, its ink bleeding through the page. A new line had appeared beneath his last note — words he hadn't written.
"The Observer has been noticed."
He stared at it, pulse pounding.
Observer.
That word — it wasn't unfamiliar. Somewhere, deep in his memories, it struck a chord. He used to dream of a place filled with books that had no titles. Shelves that reached past the clouds. He'd wake up certain that something had been watching him from between the lines of those books.
He'd told himself it was just a nightmare. But now, seeing those words written in his own notebook, he wasn't so sure.
He opened the drawer and pulled out a folded piece of parchment — old, yellowed, and soft at the edges. A stranger had given it to him two years ago, whispering the same phrase before dying in the subway:
"Write, before the world forgets you."
He'd never understood it. Until now.
Elias unfolded the paper. On it was a sigil — a circle of jagged symbols that seemed to pulse faintly under the light. He could never read them, but when he looked too long, the symbols rearranged themselves into something almost familiar — like a face trying to form through static.
He heard the whisper again. This time inside his head.
"The Archive calls, Observer."
The lamp on his desk flickered.
Then went out.
Only the sigil remained visible, glowing faintly in the dark.
Elias stood frozen, the hum of something vast crawling under his skin.
He realized then — the rain hadn't really stopped for three days. It hadn't stopped at all. The world was stuck in one endless downpour, and only he remembered the sky used to change.
His hands shook as he reached for his pen again.
If the world was forgetting itself piece by piece, then maybe writing it down was the only way to hold it together.
He didn't know who — or what — the Observer was supposed to be. But the feeling in his chest told him the title wasn't new. It was reclaimed.
Maybe he'd been one all along.
He began to write.
[Day 1] The rain continues. The world feels thinner. Someone — something — is knocking."
Outside, the city flickered.
And somewhere, far beneath it, something began to read.