Neno’s pulse hammered against his ribs. The staircase yawned before him, its steps descending into a darkness so thick it seemed to drink the light. The ink on the page in his hands shifted again, forming the same words.

"It is not lost. It is waiting to be found."

A choice. That’s what this was. The city had funneled him here, erased the street behind him, left him with only one path.

But he wouldn’t take it.

His jaw clenched.

"Not this time."

The city wanted him to go down. And if the city wanted something, that meant he still had the power to deny it.

He turned.

The street behind him was gone, just as he had feared. But the walls—the buildings that had pressed closer and closer—were still there. Close enough to touch.

The space between them was too narrow to be a proper alley, barely a shoulder’s width. But it was a way out.

Or at least, it was not the stairs.

He moved.

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The alley squeezed around him, stone scraping against his coat as he pushed forward. It should have been nothing—just a gap between two forgotten buildings—but the walls shifted as he passed, their bricks stretching and groaning like something pulling itself awake.

A whisper curled through the air, not a voice but an exhalation.

The city was watching.

It did not like this.

A pressure began to build, the air thickening as if unseen hands were closing in. The whisper became a murmur, rising, folding in on itself, until it became words that did not come from any single direction.

"This is not the way."

Neno pushed forward.

The walls squeezed tighter, closing inch by inch. The air was suffocating, pressing against his ribs, forcing his breath into shallow gasps. It wasn’t just that the space was narrow—the city itself was resisting him.

"Turn back."

No.

A crack split open in the bricks ahead—a thin sliver of space. A glimpse of open air. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. He braced his hands against the walls and forced himself through.

The moment his body cleared the gap, the alley behind him vanished.

Not collapsed. Not shifted. Vanished.

He turned, breath still uneven. The narrow passage he had just crawled through was now just another building wall. Smooth. Seamless. As if no space had ever existed there at all.

Neno staggered forward, the air feeling too light now, too hollow. The street ahead of him was unfamiliar—twisting, uneven, the buildings bent like they had been sculpted by unseen hands. But it was still a street. A different path.

He had resisted. He had chosen.

But deep in his bones, he could feel the city thinking.

It would not make this mistake again.

Somewhere far beneath him, below the stones and shifting corridors, something sighed.

"You do not deny the city. You delay it."

Neno clenched his fists, exhaling through his teeth.

"Then I’ll keep delaying it."

But even as he said it, he knew:

Saranja had given him this victory.

Next time, it would not offer him a choice at all.