Some roads remember who walked them.
— ✦ —
Rain slipped down Elian Ward's helmet visor in tired streaks, smearing the city's lights into ribbons of red and white. Erevale never slept, but tonight it felt half-dead — a slow heartbeat of neon flickers and distant sirens pulsing through the veins of the streets. The air smelled of ozone and exhaust, like a storm trapped between skyscrapers that refused to breathe.
He coasted his delivery bike through the narrow arteries of Old Spine, the oldest district of the city. Cracked asphalt. Brick facades sweating rain. A thousand windows staring down like unblinking eyes. His navigation app buzzed, froze, and redrew the map again — third time tonight.
"C'mon," he muttered, tapping the phone screen. The blue route line twisted, split, and recombined into something else entirely. Streets he'd known for years bent at wrong angles.
[System Notification: Route recalculating…][Error_404: Location Not Found]
Elian blinked. "What the hell?" The screen blinked back to normal, the map settling on a road named Keller Street. He frowned. There was no Keller Street in Old Spine. He'd lived in Erevale all his life. He'd delivered to every district that still had power. He would've remembered.
Still, he followed the route. That was his job — follow the map, drop the food, get paid. Don't think too much. Don't look too long.
— ✦ —
The street led downhill, narrowing into a corridor of half-demolished apartments and flickering signs. A red glow seeped through the fog, faint as a pulse under skin. Elian slowed. The sound of his engine seemed to vanish into cotton.
The world felt… delayed. Like the rain was falling half a second late.
He stopped outside a building with peeling signage: Trellis Apartments. A hollow, ghostly copy of dozens of others across Erevale. Except — this one shouldn't be here. He was certain of that. He'd passed this block a hundred times. It had been an empty lot last week.
The app pinged again.
[Delivery #4421]
Recipient: Null Entry
Address: Trellis Apartments – Room 3A
Estimated Tip: —
He stared. "Null Entry?" he said aloud. "That's not—"
His words fogged against the visor. A faint vibration rippled through the bike's handles, like something beneath the asphalt had exhaled.
He should've turned back then. Instead, he killed the engine and walked toward the building.
— ✦ —
Inside, the air hung thick with the metallic scent of damp concrete and mold. The hallway light stuttered in epileptic rhythm — light, dark, light, dark — as if the building couldn't decide whether to exist. Water dripped from the ceiling into a warped bucket.
"Room 3A," Elian whispered, climbing the stairs.
Every footstep echoed too long, stretching into silence like the walls were chewing on the sound. By the time he reached the third floor, the door numbers no longer matched. 2B. 7C. 1A.Then — 3A.
He stopped. The door was slightly ajar. A thread of red light leaked from within, the color of a dying signal.
"Delivery," he said, voice low.
No answer. He nudged the door open.
The apartment was empty. No furniture. No people. Only the delivery bag reflected in a cracked mirror across the room — two Elian's staring back at each other, one slightly delayed. His reflection's head tilted a second too late.
His pulse hammered.
"Okay," he muttered, stepping back. "Nope. This is—"
[System Notification: Delivery Confirmed.]
[Reward Pending...]
"What reward?" he hissed, but the screen only showed static.
[Updating Profile...]
[New Tag Assigned: SURVIVOR.]
He dropped the bag. The sound it made was wrong — too heavy, too deep. When he glanced down, grease had leaked from the paper box and pooled across the floor. Except it wasn't grease. It was black, pulsing. Almost alive.
Elian backed away.
A faint vibration passed through the walls again. Then came the sound — a slow inhale, deep and wet, like the entire building had taken a breath.
And then — silence.
— ✦ —
He stumbled out of the hallway and back to the street. The world outside looked… slightly different. The rain had stopped. The buildings opposite Trellis Apartments had shifted somehow — taller, wrong geometry, lights blinking in unfamiliar windows. His bike sat where he'd left it, but the street nameplate read something else now: Harrow Road.
He turned. The building was gone. Where it had stood, there was only a gap — a narrow alley oozing mist.
His throat dried. He opened his phone. The app had crashed. The map spun endlessly.
[Rebooting System Interface...]
[Error_12: Location Mismatch Detected]
[Would you like to report an anomaly? Y/N]
He laughed — a dry, nervous sound that echoed strangely down the alley. "Yeah. Sure. Report this."
But the screen froze again. Then:
[Acknowledged.]
[Your report has been received.]
[The City thanks you for your contribution.]
He blinked. "What—"
A flash of light. A high-pitched ringing in his ears. Then darkness.
— ✦ —
When Elian woke, it was morning.
He lay on the side of the road, helmet cracked, jacket soaked. Cars drove past like nothing had happened. The air smelled normal again — wet asphalt, cheap coffee, burnt dust from the street vendors opening up shop.
His phone buzzed.6:47 AM.
For a moment, he thought it had been a dream. The alley was gone — replaced by a tidy stretch of storefronts. No gap. No Trellis Apartments. Just a blank concrete wall painted with fresh advertisements.
He stared at it for a long time. His reflection stared back from a puddle near his boots — except this one blinked faster than he did.
He stepped back sharply.
"Get a grip," he muttered. "Long night. Glitching GPS. No sleep."
He climbed onto his bike. The engine stuttered but roared alive. The city looked the same as always — crowded, gray, alive with exhaustion. He drove.
But as he passed the intersection, something moved across the digital billboard above him — static tearing through an advertisement for coffee pods. The pixels formed words.
[Welcome Back, Elian Ward.]
[The City has acknowledged your Existence.]
[Await further instructions.]
He froze at the red light, staring upward as the message flickered out and returned to a smiling model holding a cup.
Cars honked behind him. He accelerated through the intersection, the message burning behind his eyes.
— ✦ —
He parked outside his apartment block in South Verge and climbed the narrow stairwell, dripping rain and adrenaline. His room was a box — half kitchenette, half graveyard of empty instant-noodle cups and delivery slips. The hum of the refrigerator blended with distant city noise, creating that same endless low thrum Erevale was built on.
He peeled off his helmet and dropped it on the counter. A hairline crack split the visor across the middle — a crooked scar running through his reflection.
He stared at it for a while. Then reached for his phone. The delivery app had been deleted.
In its place, a new icon blinked faintly on the home screen — black square, no label, pulsing in sync with his heartbeat.
He tapped it.
The screen turned white.
[System Initializing…]
[Analyzing Behavioral Pattern.]
[Fear Residue Detected.]
[Designation: FEEDER.]
Elian's hands went cold. He tried to power off the phone. It didn't respond.
[Welcome to Erevale.]
[Your survival is now symbiotic.]
[FEED or BE FED.]
Then, just as quickly, the screen went black again. A faint reflection stared back — his face, pale and hollow-eyed.
Except for one detail: beneath the skin of his wrist, faint light pulsed — thin lines forming a pattern, geometric, digital. A mark, glowing like circuitry.
He pressed his palm over it, heartbeat syncing to the flicker.
"Fear residue," he whispered. "What does that even mean?"
Outside, the city's hum deepened. Somewhere in the distance, a siren warped into a low, metallic moan — as though the city itself was breathing again, listening.
The light beneath his skin brightened once, then faded.
Elian sat in silence. The rain had started again, tapping against the window in a pattern that didn't quite match the rhythm of the drops.
It almost sounded like words.
He leaned closer to the glass.
In the reflection of the opposite building — just for a moment — he saw it: A vast shape moving behind the skyline, slow and deliberate, as if the city itself had turned to look back.
— ✦ —
[System Update: Synchronization Complete.]
[Directive_01: Observe. Record. Feed.]
[Welcome, Feeder.]
Elian's phone screen lit the room faintly red. The city outside pulsed once — every streetlight flickering in unison.
He didn't notice that his reflection in the cracked visor smiled a second too late.
— ✦ —
End of Chapter 1