The year glows on the kitchen wall like an accusation.
3068.
Desto Sinfall stares at it while the kettle screams and the whole apartment smells like bleach that never leaves. The kind of clean that's supposed to mean safe. The kind that really means someone scrubbed too hard.
His mother's voice hits the hallway. "Desto. Shoes. The outside ones. Don't make me say it twice."
"I know." He drags the word out, but he's already switching pairs, already tying laces tight enough to hurt.
Across the room, his little sister sits on the couch with her knees up, eating cereal slow like she's counting each bite. She watches him like she's trying to memorize him. That pisses him off a little. Not at her. At the feeling.
"You gonna be a merc for real?" she asks, mouth full.
He grabs his bag. Checks the zipper. Checks it again. A stupid habit. His chest feels too tight for how early it is.
"I'm gonna go to school," he says.
"That's not what I asked."
His mother appears in the doorway wearing a scrub jacket that used to be white and now looks tired. Hair wrapped. Eyes sharp. Hands already cracked. She looks at him the same way she looks at the burn bin when she's deciding what gets to come home and what gets to die.
"Don't talk like that," she tells his sister. "He's going to intake. He's coming back."
Desto hates the way she says it. Like it's a rule she can enforce just by believing it hard enough.
He lowers his voice. "Stop saying stuff like that."
She lifts her chin. "Like what?"
"You know what."
Her jaw flexes once. "Eat before you go."
"I'm not hungry."
"That's a lie."
He almost argues. Almost. Then he sees the tremor in her fingers when she reaches for the sink. Not fear. Not weakness. Just… tired.
He grabs a stale bread roll anyway and shoves it into his pocket like a bribe to shut her up.
His sister squints at him. "You look like you're about to throw up."
"Shut up."
She grins like she won something.
His mother points at his head. "You remember what today is?"
He rubs the short hair at his scalp. Not shaved yet. Soon.
"Yeah," he says. "They're gonna scalp us."
"They're gonna make you clean," she corrects. "They're gonna make you the same as everybody else until you earn being different."
Desto doesn't answer.
Because he knows what she really means.
Inside the Wall, nobody gets to be too different.
Not for long.
—
Link's Block smells like cheap incense, fried dough, and disinfectant.
It shouldn't work together. It does.
Desto steps outside and the air hits him cold, even though the sun's up. The block is alive already—people hauling crates, kids yelling, a delivery bike rattling past with a basket full of filters like they're groceries instead of survival.
There's a street sign at the corner that used to say something official. Nobody remembers what.
Now it says, in sloppy painted letters:
LINK'S BLOCK
The paint is fresh enough to shine.
Illegal as hell. Everybody knows it. Nobody touches it.
Desto spots Tristo before Tristo spots him. Because Tristo's always loud. Even when he isn't talking, his body is.
Lightskin kid, broad grin, two steps too confident for a world that eats people. Hoodie half-zipped, bag swinging, eyes scanning like he's already bored of the street he's lived on his whole life.
"Desto!" Tristo throws both arms up like they're at a concert instead of walking to a place that's going to shave their heads and teach them how to die politely.
Desto doesn't wave back. He just closes the distance.
"You eat?" Tristo asks.
Desto pats his pocket. "Barely."
Tristo snorts. "That's all you ever do. 'Barely.' Barely eat, barely sleep, barely smile. Man, you're gonna get wrinkles at sixteen."
"I already got 'em."
"You don't. That's the Veil making you feel old." Tristo says it like it's a joke, but his eyes flick up to the year display mounted on the corner store. 3068. Still.
Everybody checks it. Everybody pretends they don't.
They start walking.
The church sits halfway down the block like it grew there. Brick, stained glass, steps worn by too many feet. The door is open and a loud voice is already spilling out.
"—I'm telling you, if the city cared about legality, they'd fix the damn pothole first!"
Link Blackdown stands on the church steps in a long coat like he thinks it's funny to dress dramatic in a place where drama gets people killed. White hair braided back, bright against the dark of his clothes. His eyes are the kind of wrong you can't stare at too long without wanting to look away. White pupils shaped like an X. The rest of the eye black like someone poured ink in there and it never dried.
He's holding a cross in one hand.
Not some delicate church thing. This one looks like it's been through hell and came back pissed. Metal and old wear, edges nicked, grip wrapped.
He's talking to an older man sitting on a folding chair at the top of the steps. The man's trying to eat a pastry. Link keeps leaning in like he's about to steal it.
"And don't look at me like that," Link says, pointing the cross like it's a finger. "You sat on my steps. That's rent."
The man sighs. "It's a church."
"It's my church," Link says. "Different."
Desto and Tristo slow down automatically, not because they're scared. Because Link always finds a way to make you part of whatever he's doing.
Link's head snaps toward them.
His grin lands first. Big. Mean. Happy.
"Ohhh," he says, loud enough for half the block. "Look at that. Fresh meat."
Tristo groans. "Morning, Father."
"Don't 'Father' me like I'm old," Link says. "I'm in my prime."
"You got gray in your beard," Tristo fires back.
"That's seasoning."
Link hops down a step, then another, then he's on the sidewalk like he teleported by being annoying. He looks Desto up and down, the way a man checks if a knife is sharp.
"You ready to lose that hair?" Link asks.
Desto shrugs. "It'll grow back."
Link laughs hard. Like the idea of hair growing back is the funniest thing in the world.
"Look at you," Link says. "Talking like you've got time."
Desto doesn't like that. It isn't a threat. It isn't advice. It's just… a line that hits the wrong place.
Tristo tries to save it. "He's got time. We're gonna come back with years. Add a whole—"
Link cuts him off with a sharp look. Not angry. Just sudden. "Don't say stuff like that out loud."
Tristo blinks. "What, 'years'?"
"No," Link says. "The other part."
Tristo's grin twitches. "Oh. Right. The promise-shaped part."
Link points at him like a teacher catching a kid cheating. "Exactly. Promise-shaped. You wanna be poetic, write it in a notebook and burn the notebook."
The older man on the chair mutters, "You're scaring them."
Link kicks the chair. Not hard enough to flip it, just enough to make the man yelp and clutch his pastry.
"Get off my seat," Link says. "That's my seat."
"That's a folding chair."
"Still mine."
Tristo laughs. Desto doesn't. He watches Link's feet. Heavy boots. The way Link stands like he's balanced even when he's being stupid.
A kid runs past chasing a ball. The ball bounces toward the church steps, toward the open door.
The kid slows down.
Stops.
Like he just remembered he isn't supposed to go near that doorway when it's open.
Link's smile stays. His eyes don't.
For half a second, the air at the church threshold feels colder than the rest of the block. Like the door is exhaling.
Link looks down at the kid. Voice softer, but still Link.
"Don't," he says.
The kid nods fast, snatches the ball with a stick instead of his hands, and bolts.
Link turns back to Desto and Tristo like nothing happened.
"Anyway," Link says, loud again. "Merc school. They're gonna shave you, they're gonna yell at you, and they're gonna teach you rules you already should've learned for free."
Tristo leans in. "Like what?"
Link lifts the cross a little, casual. "Like don't bring trash home."
Tristo rolls his eyes. "We know."
Link tilts his head. "Do you?"
Desto feels his mother's scrub hands in his mind. The burn bin. The smell that never leaves.
"Yeah," Desto says. "We know."
Link's grin returns, but it's thinner now. "Good. Then go."
Tristo starts walking again, but he calls back over his shoulder, "Fix the sign before the city catches you!"
Link cups his hands. "Let 'em catch me! I'll kick their ass and rename the whole district!"
The block laughs. Even Desto hears it.
And then Link's laugh drops out like someone cut the power.
Desto turns without meaning to.
Link is still on the sidewalk, cross in hand, staring at the open church door like it offended him personally.
He lifts the cross slightly, not planting it, not making a show. Just… holding it in a way that makes the space feel smaller.
Then he blinks and he's loud again.
"MOVE," Link shouts at no one. "Y'all got school! Go be brave somewhere else!"
Desto forces his legs to keep going.
He tells himself he didn't hear anything from inside the church.
A wet cloth sound.
A slow hum.
He tells himself the door didn't open wider by itself.
—
Merc school sits in the Academy Belt, surrounded by fences and cameras and big clean signs that pretend words can stop monsters.
Desto sees heads. Lots of heads. Kids his age, older, some younger-looking, all holding bags like they're going somewhere they chose.
Some are laughing too hard. Some are dead quiet.
A boy on the far bench sits with his head down, shoulders hunched like he's trying to make himself smaller than his own skin. Long black hair hangs forward enough to cover his eyes. Except… it's not long. Not really. Just messy. Like he keeps it that way on purpose.
He mutters something under his breath.
"Shut the fuck up."
To himself. Not to anyone else.
Tristo notices Desto looking and nudges him. "That's Draco."
Desto keeps his face neutral. "How you know?"
"Everybody knows," Tristo says. "He's weird."
Draco lifts his head a fraction and Desto catches a glimpse of his eyes. Dark. Too dark. Not scary like Link's. More like… empty on purpose.
Draco sees them looking and immediately looks away. He stands up too fast, like he's guilty, and walks toward the intake line with his hands jammed in his pockets like he's hiding something.
He bumps shoulders with a bigger kid. The bigger kid shoves him.
Draco flinches hard. Apologizes too fast. "My bad. Sorry. Sorry."
The bigger kid laughs and moves on.
Tristo watches Draco's back with a half-frown. "He's acting."
Desto keeps walking. "Or he's just scared."
Tristo's smile turns sideways. "Everybody's scared. Some people just got… styles."
They reach the intake building. Inside, the air smells like antiseptic and metal. The walls are covered in rules printed large enough to read from a distance.
NO REAL NAMES OUTSIDE.
NO PROMISES OUTSIDE.
IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE LOCK, DON'T IMPROVISE.
HOMEKEY IS NOT A MIRACLE.
SILENCE ORDERS ARE LAW.
A medic with gloves points them toward a row of chairs.
"Sit," she says. "Bags under your feet."
Desto sits. Tristo sits next to him, bouncing one knee like he's trying to shake the fear out through his leg.
A man with clippers walks the line like he enjoys this.
"Eyes forward," he says. "No flinching. If you flinch, I shave you ugly on purpose."
Tristo whispers, "He's bluffing."
Desto whispers back, "He's not."
Tristo laughs once, but it dies fast.
On the far wall, a big digital display shows the year again.
3068.
Desto stares at it like it's staring back.
The clippers buzz. Hair falls. A kid two chairs down starts crying without sound.
Desto feels the first cold touch on his scalp and his stomach flips, not because of the hair, but because of what it means. Clean. Same. Starting over.
Then the display glitches.
Just a flicker.
The room's lights dim for a heartbeat like the building blinked.
And the year flashes—
3067.
A single number. A single step closer.
Everyone freezes.
Nobody talks.
Even the clippers pause mid-buzz, teeth resting on skin.
Desto's throat goes dry.
Because inside the Wall, the year isn't supposed to move like that.
And it sure as hell isn't supposed to move while they're watching.