When you open your eyes, you’ve no idea how much time has passed, but it’s morning in the desert and the day is threatening to become a scorching furnace. You stretch, surprisingly refreshed, and take a few steps. Instead of another landscape, it’s a bright white room, with a single circle in the center that begs to be stepped on. So you do. And the circle becomes a column that carries you upwards. You force yourself to look up, as you’re lifted away. The first thing that greets you is the clop of hooves, and the stench of horses.

It’s medieval Europe, but not the medieval Europe you might imagine. Other than the stench of unwashed animals, the air is clean and the sun smiles through the clouds. People bustle with crops and flocks of sheep between the narrow, thatched-roofed buildings. They smile and wave at you from their windows, and you almost expect them to burst into song.

You wander through the streets and find a square, where bakers hawk their goods, and a butcher hands you a piece of fried chicken for free. You accept it, but when your hand brushes hers, you notice that she’s oddly cold — as if her skin isn’t real. Either way, the chicken is, and you gnaw on it eagerly, relishing the juiciness of the flesh and the aroma of herbs that it’s been rolled in. Drops of fat dribble down your chin as you make your way through the crowds.

There isn’t a castle in the square, but a town hall opposite a church, surrounded by guild’s quarters. The town hall seems to cower, overshadowed by a towering campanile — a tower that’s visible from the whole town. It seems to stretch to the sky, but on closer inspection, it doesn’t quite. Somewhere halfway up, it seems to plunge into the ceiling — above that, all you see is a clever projection.

It must be the way up.

You scramble towards the tower, and slip inside, stumbling up the spiral staircase until you’re dizzy and have to stop to rest. There’s a door at the side, and you open it to find a Greek agora, complete with the heady scent of fish. You close it, and continue up.

The next door is a Roman forum, where you catch a snatch of philosophers arguing. Then the tiled roofs of China’s Forbidden Palace, a battlefield in Japan, and the heat of the summer along the Nile in Egypt. Thoroughly disoriented, you reach the top of the tower, where the staircase ends and there’s only one door.

You open it.

It’s dark.

Not velvety dark, but the dark of a deserted alleyway. The kind of dark in which light may exist, but not illuminate. It’s a dirty, squalid darkness that even the sun of midday can’t brighten. Soot coats every surface, making even what might have once been gleaming bronze ornaments dusty, dark relics. You smell things burning — coal, rubber, cotton. The soot and humidity press against your face like you’re breathing through cloth. It chokes you until your head spins and your eyes burn with tears. You stumble back into the stairwell, shutting the door and gulping in the clean air. The violence of your coughing and retching shakes the space, and you can almost hear the stones rumble. You try not to stare down the spiral and make yourself dizzy.

Back to the soot and ash and smog it is.

Thinking that now that you’ve committed sacrilege, you may as well see your sins through, you take the pocketknife and tear off another strip of the lab coat, tying it around your nose and mouth to form a mask. It’s only afterward that you realize there was an N95 mask and air proof goggles inside the lab coat. You swap masks, don the goggles, take a slightly strangulated breath, and open the screeching metal doors.

Ash falls thick like snow from a squalid sky. You tighten your goggles to keep them from fogging and peer through the dust and murk. The metal doors squeal, and slam shut behind you. You’re hemmed in on both sides by black brick walls, which narrow so that you have to turn sideways and hold your breath to exit the alleyway. Stumbling into a cramped square, you see a few flickering gas lamps casting pools of cold yellow, and some signs squeaking as they swing in an imperceptible breeze. Not-quite-human shadows flit behind oilskin windows.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

You clap your hands, listening to the sound echo down the alleyways. Something urges you to keep your mouth shut, though you’re not sure why. You feel alone -- small among the cramped shacks and crooked walls, without the comfort of three others by your side. You stare at the sky and search for a way up, some way to find Jack, wherever he may be.

The quieter you are, the more you notice the sounds of not-quite-life that pierce the silence. There isn’t the clop of hooves on cobblestones that you imagined, but the screech of a sign blown by an imaginary breeze. There isn’t the sound of laughter, but the clack of oiled gears that connect to nothing, and do nothing. There isn’t the stamp of footsteps, but the pounding of a hammer on your left — dropped over and over, regular as a metronome, and without anyone holding the handle.

No rats, no birds, no people. It’s a city of ghosts.

“Hello?” you call, “Is anyone there?”

The mechanical life continues. The echoes of your voice bound back to you, mocking. You spin until you’re dizzy. Then you jump.

Something crashes on your right, and the sound of rusted metal chains straining makes you jump. Without a soul to be seen, the gates on the right side of the square slide upwards, driven by a demented winch. You feel your heart hide itself behind your stomach. Drawing the five-sizes-too-big lab coat around yourself, and letting the weight of everything inside anchor you, you stumble through the gate.

At first glance, the other side is only more of the same. Spots of light oozing through the smog. Oily clouds suffocating the sun. Ash draped over buildings like velvet.

But there’s a lived-in feel to this side, like someone’s been here before you. There are the gentlest scuffs on the ground, revealing a glimmer of cobblestones beneath the ash: footsteps. Not just yours, but someone else’s.

Then you realize that the cloak of dirt on the buildings has been touched too. By a finger. Drawn, or rather written in.

Help me.

Save me.

Find me.

They’re everywhere. They fill every surface like graffiti in a public bathroom, written in a dozen scripts and another dozen languages. You feel a chill run down your spine, and imagine that there’s someone’s breath on the back of your neck, the rustle of their clothes against your pants, the chill of their hand in yours.

Something cold and metallic grabs your fingers.

You wrench your hand away and spin, to see a little girl scramble backwards. Her right hand is a frail nest of metal strips and hand etched gears, and her left leg whirs when she moves it. She’s dressed in a tattered brown coat and leather glovelets, and a rip in her shirt reveals a crystal orb where her heart should have been. Though her face is caked with grime, her wide copper eyes gleam.

“Please,” she whispers, shivering. “Help me.”

You glance over your shoulder, worried that it’s a trap. But there’s still no one there, except whoever wrote the words. You kneel until you can look her in the eye. and retake her hand.

“I’m sorry. How can I help you?”

“Save me.”

“Excuse me?”

“Find me.”

You shudder and drop her hand. Whirring and clacking, she disappears into the darkness.

“Whoever you are,” you say, shaking your fist at the unyielding sky, “this is not funny. Not at all.”

You hear a man’s laughter from above you, a deep rumble that becomes the growl of an engine. “Oh I know, little one. It isn’t funny at all. They all scream after I’m done with them.”

You catch a glimpse of a silhouette on the rooftop — top hat, bat-like cloak, high boots — before the figure jumps down with the agility of a cat, and you can hear the whip of his coat behind you.

You spin, curling your hands into fists. “Don’t. Touch. Me.” Then you freeze.

There is no man in a top hat and cloak. Just a rather battered boy in a bomber jacket and rather grimy glasses, who’s confused by your aggressive stance. Jack calls your name, and the sound of his voice is like warm honey.

“Jack?” You ask.

“Yeah. It’s me. I promise.”