Crouching on the Tower of Dreams was a person who had no identifiable features. He was shapeless, and yet, he had a shape.

He looked like a bat, his wings flowing like a cape against the night wind. He looked like an incarnation of death, a specter watching over the city with silent judgment.

But everyone in the city square knew otherwise.

He was their city's hero, after all.

Tonight was special. It was the one night of the year when he always appeared at the Tower of Dreams. He would crouch at its peak, motionless, watching, waiting. And for what? No one knew.

The people had their theories.

Some believed it was his way of announcing his protection, a silent oath that they were safe under his watch. Others thought it was a warning to criminals, a reminder that no misdeed would go unnoticed. There were even those who whispered that he had once been human, but had outlived the very city he now guarded.

And because they knew nothing, they speculated.

After all, what did humans love more than inventing stories?

‘Ah, what a bunch of idiots, this is getting old.’

He didn’t come here to protect them.

He didn’t care about their theories, their myths, or their endless need to turn ignorance into belief.

He didn’t even want to be here.

But he had no choice.

The phenomenon had returned.

Just as it had every year, at this exact time.

—

Back then, he had still been searching.

When the Flicker had first cast him into this world, he had been alone, stranded in a land that was not his own. He had spent years—decades—trying to understand it. He had scoured ancient texts, sought out those who knew of things that should not be spoken of, hoping to find an answer.

And then, one day, he had found others.

They were like him.

They had stepped into the Flicker and had been cast out, thrown into another realm against their will. But unlike him, they had not survived unchanged.

There had been only three of them.

Three people, out of the countless others who had been lost to the Flicker.

And none of them had come from the same place.

The first had been a warrior—scarred, hardened, bearing armor unlike anything he had ever seen. He had spoken of a great war, of a battlefield that had stretched for miles, of stepping forward into a breach in reality only to never return.

The second had been a scholar—his clothes tattered, his voice filled with the weight of knowledge. He had spoken of an empire that had risen and fallen long before the city they now stood in had even existed. He had not stepped into the Flicker willingly. It had taken him.

And the third had been a woman—silent, watchful, eyes filled with something far beyond madness. She had refused to speak of her past.

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But she had known things.

She had recognized him before he had even spoken.

She had told him that he was searching for answers in the wrong places.

And then, she had vanished.

The Flicker did not appear randomly.

He had once believed it did—believed that it was some incomprehensible force without pattern or reason. But after two centuries of watching, after two centuries of recording the exact moments of its arrival, he had realized the truth.

It always appeared on this night.

At this exact hour.

The first time, he had assumed it was coincidence.

The second time, he had stayed to observe.

The third time, he had tried to stop it.

And that was when he learned that he could.

He could reverse the Flicker.

He could force it to retract, to close upon itself before it could fully form. It was not an easy thing—it demanded his full strength, his complete focus. But it was possible.

And he had done it every year since.

For two hundred years, he had kept the Flicker from consuming this place.

But he still did not know why it returned.

And every year, a single thought remained buried in the back of his mind.

What if one day, he failed?

What if this time, it did not close?

And what if, after all these years, it was no longer appearing for him—but for something else?

The thought remained unspoken. But it lingered nonetheless.

Below him, the city continued its ignorant celebration.

They thought he was their hero.

They thought he was here for them.

But tonight was not for them.

Tonight was the night the Flicker would come. People thought this day was special of other reasons, but only very few knew about the Flicker.

The sky above was clear, city lights stretching far into the distance, casting a golden glow over the streets below. Laughter and celebration filled the air as people carried on, blissfully unaware of the cycle that had repeated for centuries. They did not know. They never did.

Atop the Tower of Dreams, he had his eyes fixed on the space above the city square. He had done this too many times to feel anything anymore. The Flicker would appear, it would begin to form, and he would reverse it.

His fingers tensed slightly as he felt it, a familiar shift in the air, a disturbance that most would never perceive. A ripple, faint and fleeting, like a whisper from reality itself. Even the most powerful Ruptured in the city wouldn’t notice unless they knew exactly what to look for.

But he had learned to see it.

And then, just as expected, the first crack appeared.

A jagged tear split the night sky above the city square, blacker than black, a void that was not a void. It wasn’t lightless, nor was it empty—it was something else entirely, something that should not be seen, and yet, here it was again.

No one below reacted.

They never could.

Only he could perceive it.

The crack widened, expanding at an agonizing pace, as though something on the other side was pressing against the very fabric of reality, trying to force its way through. Shards of the world around it curled and peeled back like torn paper, revealing an impossible space beyond.

He rose from his crouch, standing tall atop the tower.

It was time.

For two centuries, he had done this. He knew the exact moment when the Flicker was vulnerable, the precise instant his power could collapse it inward, forcing it to retreat before it could fully take form.

It was nothing new.

His hands moved, preparing the reversal—

And then, everything stopped.

No, it wasn’t the flicker that stopped. The crack did not distort and spiral into nothingness. It did not flicker and destabilize like a shattered illusion.

Instead, the edges of the tear… smoothed.

They straightened.

And in front of him, hanging in the sky above the city, what had once been a chaotic rupture became something else entirely.

A perfect rectangle.

A door.

He froze.

This had never happened before. After all, why would a door appear?

The Flicker had always been wild, unstable. It had never been structured. Never precise.

Yet now, before him, stood a gateway carved into the very air itself.

A doorway leading beyond.

His pulse remained steady—fear had long since abandoned him—but something else crept into his mind. Something unfamiliar.

Confusion.

The door stood there, silent. Still.

And then, something moved on the other side.

A figure had appeared.

He stepped forward, emerging from the impossible space beyond the gateway, his robes shifting like fabric caught in a nonexistent wind.

They were gray—except they weren’t. Not truly.

They were the idea of gray.

A color that wasn’t a color at all, shifting subtly, impossible to define. Looking at them felt like seeing a thousand shades at once yet grasping none of them.

The man walked with purpose, his movements steady, certain.

His face was unreadable. His presence carried no weight, no pressure—yet there was something there.

Something that had always been there.

The hero did not move.

He watched as the man stopped just before stepping through the threshold, tilting his head slightly, studying him.

And then, finally, the man in the robes spoke.

"Ah."

His voice was smooth, effortless, as though he had foreseen this moment long before it had even happened. He even smiled gently.

"So you were sent here this time."