Behind the mirror of the city, among nameless shadows—they gathered.
The room was dim, its walls made not of stone or metal, but of decaying ideas. Light seeped through the cracks of illusion, illuminating faces whose forms could not be clearly seen.
In the center of the circle, a man in an old gray suit sat. His voice was calm, like a professor lecturing on theories of ruin.
"He's still alive," he said. "That little mutt from the law office. We thought he was buried along with the illusions of law and justice... but it seems he's more stubborn than we anticipated."
"I never liked creatures like that," another figure replied, voice scraping like steel against steel.
"Those who believe in goodness... they're like insects who think the world has mercy."
---
"Law is a joke," said another, a woman with eyes like shattered mirrors.
"And him... he's just one of its clowns. But now? Now he's not even a clown anymore. Just... ruins mumbling to themselves in dreams."
A faint snort came from the corner of the room. Someone shrugged. "Alive, but not necessarily sane."
"The curse is working," rasped the oldest among them, a voice like a breath from a long-forgotten book.
"The déjà vu he experiences... it will gnaw away at the remnants of his consciousness. Sooner or later, he'll become a shadow of a shadow."
"Like the others," murmured another. "Anything that believes in meaning—will crumble. We don't even need to touch him anymore."
"Let him get lost."
"Let him rot within his own cycles."
"An insect that's lost its way... will destroy itself."
---
The room was swallowed in pale violet light—not from lamps, but from invisible symbols carved into the air.
The walls weren't fully real, like an illusion forced to hold its shape. They sat around a large, broken-circle table.
No official names, no leader. But every voice there carried a weight capable of killing with a mere whisper.
"Next agenda," said a deep-voiced man, his body half-shadow. "Expansion."
"There are still small towns where the people haven't fully cracked yet," added a two-headed woman—one head laughed while the other wept.
"Let's show them reality. Shatter the narrative. Burn the illusion of 'normal life.'"
"And replace it with what?" asked the one sitting farthest back, his hands full of wounds that kept forming strange patterns whenever he stood still.
"Chaos?"
"No," answered the oldest, a man whose face was as fragile as scorched paper.
"Replace it with honesty. The world is rotten. We're just pulling back the cover."
"And the law?"
"The law dies along with the idealists. Like Knnight."
Soft laughter echoed. "Ah, that insect again. A minor nuisance. Soon to fall to the curse."
"He once believed goodness could change something," said another, voice like an echo from an empty corridor.
"We let him believe... until his faith rotted inside his own mind."
"Now he's just a fragment. A shadow speaking to its own shadow."
"We don't need to dirty our hands finishing him off."
"He's not a threat. He's merely... a forgotten footnote in a far greater story."
They fell silent. Then the light on the ceiling began to change shape.
A symbol burned faintly—formed from fractures of light and pitch-black darkness.
"New target?" one voice whispered. The oldest merely stared at the symbol, his eyes narrowing.
"Yes. But... somehow, even though they're starting to crack, they're still standing."
"An escaped target?"
"No. But if they keep unraveling like this, we won't need to waste time or effort."
And with that, the meeting dissolved.
The broken table faded, as if it had never existed.
The members of Noctis melted back into their separate darknesses—leaving behind a single, unspoken message hanging in the air:
This world is no place for those who still believe.
---
Morning came. Sunlight pierced the bedroom curtains, too bright, too normal for what Lily had just gone through the night before.
She sat at the dining table, face blank, hand trembling as it held a spoon.
"Lily, where were you last night?" her mother asked, voice half-panicked, half-relieved. "You didn't come home, your phone was dead, your father almost called the police."
Lily stared at her bowl of porridge as if it were an object from another dimension.
"I... got lost."
Her mother frowned. "Lost? Where?"
"An old building. There was... wind. And... a person."
"A person?"
Lily nodded slowly. Stopped. Nodded again.
"He was... strange. But not evil. More like... if a shaman were reciting poetry while possessed during a storm."
Her mother approached and touched her forehead. "You're feverish? You're rambling."
"Maybe." Lily took a deep breath.
"But weirdly, I don't regret it."
"Regret what?"
"Meeting him."
Her parents exchanged a worried look.
"Maybe I'm just tired," Lily added quickly. "You know... hormones, stress, the world's getting crazier."
Her father squinted at her. "You're not joining some cult, are you?"
Lily rolled her eyes. "OH MY GOD, DAD."
Silence. Then her mother sighed and said, "Anyway, today we're going to see a psychiatrist, okay?"
Lily nodded faintly.
But inside, she knew one thing for certain: the world she knew was no longer the same.
And somehow, she knew she'd meet Knnight again... even if logic said otherwise.
The morning sky was a washed-out blue, as if painted by an exhausted hand.
Lily put on her school uniform with mechanical movements. A gray skirt, a white shirt, a faded school jacket whose letters were slowly peeling off.
Her mother watched from the table, teacup trembling slightly in her hands. Her father had already left earlier, leaving behind an empty chair still faintly swinging—like a trace of presence quickly fading.
"Are you sure you're strong enough for school?" her mother asked, voice full of doubt.
Lily nodded wordlessly.
---
On the school bus, the murmurs of other students blended into a soft hum.
Conversations about math quizzes, friend dramas, weekend plans.
The normal world.
A world that already felt cracked in her eyes.
Lily sat by the window, staring outside.
Everyone walking down the sidewalks seemed... slightly wrong.
As if everything was moving a fraction too late.
As if the world was just a simulation run by a machine starting to break down.
When the bus passed an intersection, Lily caught a glimpse of a figure standing under the red light—a faded gray suit, a blurred face.
Her heart stopped for a second.
But when she blinked, the figure was gone.
I'm just... tired.
The bus rolled on.
The streets returned to normal.
Or pretended to be normal.
---
The school gates loomed ahead.
Hundreds of students in uniform flooded the courtyard, laughter and shouting mixing like a fog.
As Lily stepped inside, the world shifted slightly.
For a moment, she saw the school floor crack into strange patterns—symbols that reminded her of that night.
But when she looked directly, the floor was plain. Clean. Nothing.
You're just tired, Lily.
The voice in her head sounded like someone else's.
---
In class, the teacher spoke about Newton's laws, about force and acceleration.
But all Lily heard was empty echoes.
The writing on the board distorted in her eyes—the letters swapping places, as if fleeing from meaning.
She stared at her hands. They looked real.
But the world... did not.
The teacher's voice grew distant. Like being pulled underwater.
Lily blinked hard, trying to focus on the numbers in her notebook. But the letters kept swirling, forming strange, foreign words she didn't understand.
Her hands trembled. Her breath grew heavy.
"Lily?" her seatmate, Aina, called out, her voice echoing as if from the end of a long tunnel.
"I..." Lily whispered. But even her own voice sounded broken.
Suddenly, the whole classroom spun.
The walls stretched, the whiteboard curled toward the ceiling, her classmates' faces melted like wet paintings.
Lily tried to stand to ask permission to leave.
But her feet couldn't find the ground.
---
In an instant, the world went dark.
She collapsed.
---
"Lily!"
Someone shook her shoulder hard.
The normal world surged back in—the bright classroom lights, the sound of panicked footsteps, the faces of her teacher and classmates.
Lily opened her eyes, finding herself sprawled on the cold floor.
"I..." her voice was hoarse. "I... Why."
People crowded around her to help.
"You fainted, Lily," said the class president.
But deep down inside, Lily knew:
The incident at the old building had changed her world forever.
She had just tasted the beginning.
---