I speak the words, watching them form on my lips before vanishing into the air. The sound is physical—a vibration in the vocal cords, air rushing out through pursed teeth and parted lips. It hits the walls of the room and bounces back with a faint reverb that dies quickly against the dry paint. There are no echoes that linger like ghosts; there is only the immediate decay of the sound wave into silence.

The echo fades, leaving me alone with the sentence again: *”In every city, someone has died.”*

It doesn’t feel ominous anymore. Not in the way it did when I read it last night, suspended in a violet void where time was a suggestion and death could be a reversible state. Here, the statement feels like an accounting record. A ledger entry. Someone in Karamanor, or perhaps someone right outside my window, has ceased to function as a biological organism. Their heart stopped beating at a specific moment. The air around them changed temperature for a split second before equalizing with the rest of the room. Their body will eventually become part of this apartment, decomposing into dust and soil that joins the pile already gathering in the corners where the light doesn’t reach.

I look down at my hands resting on the table. They are pale in the dim light, the veins blue and fragile under the skin. I flex my fingers, feeling the tendons pull tight against the knuckles. There is no magic here that can resurrect what is lost or reverse the flow of time to bring them back. The finality of it hits me, heavy and absolute, but it also brings a strange sense of relief. Because it’s over. It’s done.

I close the book. The cover settles onto the wood with a soft thud that seems louder than usual in the quiet apartment. I lean back in the chair, letting out a long breath that fogs slightly on my own face before dissipating into the cooler air of the room.

It’s strange how much weight ordinary things carry when you’ve spent so long dreaming of escape. The fact that this sentence is printed here, right now, on paper I can touch and turn… it feels like a miracle in its own way. Not because it defies physics, but because it respects them enough to let the story end where the author intended, not where my fear would dictate.

I stand up slowly, feeling the stiffness in my lower back settle into a dull ache. My muscles remind me that I have been sitting for an hour, that gravity has been pulling me down this whole time without exception. The pain is a good sign. It means I am here.

I walk over to the kitchen window and pull back the curtain just enough to see the street below. The city is alive in ways that don’t require suspension or transformation. Cars are parked along the curb, their headlights off now as they wait for owners to return them. A cat walks across the roof of a neighboring building, moving with deliberate, ground-bound steps from shadow to shadow. Its fur ripples in the breeze; its tail twitches as it scans the alleyway for movement.

Nothing is floating. Nothing is shimmering. Everything is exactly where it should be, doing exactly what it does, bound by laws that feel rigid but offer a kind of comfort I haven’t known since waking up. The world doesn’t owe me anything magical here. It offers only this: the certainty of presence.

I turn back to the table and pick up my bag again, feeling the strap dig into my shoulder. Tomorrow, there will be more walking, more coffee that tastes bitter but real, more stories read one linear word at a time until they are finished or forgotten. And when someone in Karamanor dies tomorrow—or yesterday—their death will be as final here as it ever was back then. Just without the possibility of fixing it afterward.

That’s enough for now. I’ll sleep tonight knowing that nothing will un-happen, and that feeling is somehow better than dreaming of things that might have been different if only I knew how to change the rules.