He died quietly.
No prophecy split the sky.
No final words echoed with meaning.
No god waited on the other side.
The last thing he remembered was the dull hum of fluorescent lights and the weight of exhaustion pressing behind his eyes. He had been sitting—no, slumped—at his desk. Fingers numb. Screen blurred. Coffee gone cold hours ago.
He had meant to stand.
He never did.
There was no pain. No sudden impact. Just a brief, hollow sensation—as if something essential had slipped loose—and then nothing.
Darkness followed.
Not the comforting kind.
Not sleep.
Not rest.
It was the absence of sensation itself, a blank interval where time failed to move.
Then—
Cold.
Sharp, biting cold slammed into him all at once.
His lungs seized.
Air tore into his chest like glass as he sucked in a breath that wasn't meant to be taken. His body convulsed, muscles screaming in protest, nerves lighting up with delayed agony.
He gasped again.
And again.
Sound flooded in next.
Chains rattling.
Boots scraping stone.
Low chanting, rhythmic and indifferent.
His eyelids fluttered open.
Gray sky.
No—stone ceiling.
Carved arches loomed overhead, etched with symbols that hurt to look at for too long. The air smelled of dust, old blood, and something metallic that clung to the back of his throat.
He was on his knees.
His hands were bound behind his back with cold iron restraints engraved in the same twisting script as the walls. His clothes—no, these weren't his clothes—hung loose on his body, rough-spun fabric stiff with grime.
Panic surged.
This wasn't a dream. He knew it instinctively. Dreams didn't have weight like this. They didn't hurt this much.
"—another nameless," someone muttered nearby.
A hand shoved his shoulder, forcing him upright.
He blinked, eyes struggling to focus.
There were dozens of people kneeling in rows, heads bowed, wrists bound. Men. Women. Some barely more than children. All wearing the same dull gray rags.
At the far end of the chamber stood a raised dais.
Upon it hovered a construct of light and gears—an impossible structure suspended in the air, composed of concentric rings, shifting sigils, and slow-turning mechanisms that defied gravity.
It was beautiful.
And terrifying.
The chanting grew louder.
A robed figure raised their staff.
"Commencing fate allocation," the figure intoned, voice echoing unnaturally. "By decree of the Loom."
The construct pulsed.
Light spilled outward in waves, passing through the kneeling prisoners one by one.
As the light touched each person, symbols burned briefly into their skin—marks that glowed, then sank beneath the flesh.
Some screamed.
Some wept.
Some smiled in relief.
When the light reached him—
Nothing happened.
He felt it wash over him, cold and probing, like fingers rifling through his insides.
Then—
Silence.
The chanting faltered.
The construct stuttered mid-rotation.
A sharp, discordant sound rang out, like metal grinding against itself.
Symbols flared violently across the rings.
Text—no, not text, but meaning—pressed itself directly into his mind.
> [ERROR: ORIGIN CONFLICT]
[FATE RECORD INCOMPLETE]
His vision blurred as pain lanced through his skull.
The light recoiled.
The construct shuddered, its mechanisms spasming before snapping back into place. The glow dimmed, stabilizing as if nothing had happened.
The chanting resumed—hesitant, confused.
The robed figure froze.
"…Skip," they said after a pause, voice tight. "Proceed to the next."
Hands grabbed him.
He was dragged backward, hauled away from the line and shoved toward a side passage.
No mark burned into his skin.
No Pathway settled into his bones.
The Loom had moved on.
And no one explained why.
---
CHAPTER 1 – A MAN WITHOUT A RECORD
He woke to hunger.
The kind that gnawed at the gut and hollowed out thought, leaving behind only a sharp, animal urgency.
Stone pressed against his cheek. Cold. Damp.
He opened his eyes slowly, careful not to move too fast.
A narrow alley stretched out before him, choked with debris and shadows. Cracked walls leaned inward, blocking out most of the gray sky above. Somewhere in the distance, a bell tolled—slow, irregular.
He lay still, taking inventory.
Arms: free.
Legs: sore, but intact.
Head: pounding, but functional.
The memories came next.
Not his.
A flood of fragmented impressions surged up unbidden—hunger, fear, cold nights, running footsteps, the taste of rotten bread. They didn't belong to him, yet they clung with stubborn insistence.
He swallowed hard.
Transmigration.
The word surfaced unbidden, a relic from his old life. Webnovels. Stories. Escapism.
He almost laughed.
Except this wasn't a story.
He pushed himself upright, wincing as his muscles protested. His body was thin, malnourished. When he looked down at his hands, they were calloused, scarred, unfamiliar.
He searched for a name.
Nothing came.
The body he now inhabited had none.
No identity rose to the surface. No face. No voice calling out in memory.
Just emptiness.
A shiver ran down his spine.
He stood and staggered toward the alley's mouth.
The city beyond was… wrong.
Buildings crowded together in impossible geometries, their upper stories jutting out at odd angles, casting tangled shadows across narrow streets. Stone and rusted metal dominated the architecture, layered with pipes, cables, and ancient-looking mechanisms fused directly into the walls.
People moved through the streets in clusters, heads down, eyes wary.
Some bore faintly glowing marks on their skin—forearms, necks, temples—each mark unique, each radiating a subtle pressure that made his skin prickle when they passed.
Others bore none.
The unmarked looked hollow. Tired. Invisible.
A sign hung crookedly above a nearby street, its letters worn smooth by time.
THE CITY WITHOUT NAMES
Understanding slid into place.
This was a city for the discarded.
For those who had sold their names—their fate—for power, protection, or survival.
In this world, names mattered.
Names anchored you to the Loom.
Lose your name, and the Loom stopped watching.
He swallowed.
That explained the gnawing unease he felt.
He drifted through the streets for hours, scavenging what he could. A cracked bottle here. A scrap of cloth there. He learned quickly where to look—collapsed buildings, refuse piles, the aftermath of street skirmishes.
Once, he found a corpse.
The man lay slumped against a wall, eyes glassy, a faint sigil burned into his chest. The mark pulsed weakly, fading with each passing second.
He hesitated.
Then he reached out.
The moment his fingers brushed the man's skin, something twisted inside him.
A pressure built—then released.
The sigil flickered once… and vanished.
The corpse crumbled into ash.
He stumbled back, heart racing.
What the hell was that?
He didn't know.
But he knew one thing.
No one had noticed.
Not the passersby. Not the hovering constructs drifting overhead, their faceless forms scanning the streets with cold precision.
They ignored him completely.
---
CHAPTER 2 – THE CITY DOES NOT SEE YOU
It took him a day to realize the truth.
People could feel each other.
Pathway bearers, especially, carried a presence—an invisible weight that pressed against the senses. When two crossed paths, there was always a moment of recognition. A subtle acknowledgment.
With him?
Nothing.
Eyes slid past him. Conversations faltered when he spoke, as if his words failed to register fully.
Worse—when he walked away, people forgot.
He tested it.
Spoke to a merchant. Asked for water. Received a nod, a cup.
Returned five minutes later.
The merchant stared through him, confused, then suspicious.
"Move along," the man snapped. "I don't sell to ghosts."
Animals reacted even worse.
Dogs whimpered and fled. Birds took flight the moment he drew near.
And the constructs—the floating enforcers of the city—passed him by as if he didn't exist at all.
He wasn't invisible.
He was unrecorded.
At night, as he huddled beneath a broken archway, the implications pressed in.
If fate could not record him…
Then what would happen if he died again?
The question lingered, unanswered.
Far above, unseen by him, the Loom adjusted its parameters.
And somewhere deep within its endless calculations, a faint anomaly registered—then vanished.
> [LOG: DATA INCONSISTENCY – DISMISSED]
The City Without Names slept.
And the error slept with it.