We walked until the streets bent back on themselves. No matter how many turns we took, the city folded us in tighter, like a hand closing around its prey.
I lifted my eyes, searching for a break — for stars, or even the faintest hint of sky.
There was none.
Above us stretched a ceiling of black, endless and heavy. At first I thought it was smoke, or night pressed low against rooftops. But it didn't shift, didn't thin, didn't change. It was solid.
And it was cracked.
Pale light seeped through those fissures, pulsing faintly as though something lived on the other side. The glow crawled down the sides of buildings, into the streets, until the whole city seemed threaded with veins.
The boy's voice trembled. "It's alive, isn't it?"
I wanted to lie. To tell him no, that this was only stone and shadow. But the longer I looked, the harder it became to breathe.
The woman scowled up at the ceiling. Her hand flexed on her weapon, but she didn't swing. "Alive or dead," she muttered, "doesn't matter. We keep moving."
But her eyes didn't leave the cracks.
Neither did mine.
Because the more I stared, the more I felt it — a pull in my chest, deep and insistent, as if my heartbeat wanted to match the rhythm of that pale, glowing pulse above.
A subtle tremor ran through the street. A single stone shifted beneath my boot. I froze. Another cracked sound echoed above — faint, almost like breathing. The city wasn't just watching. It was listening.
I tore my gaze down, clutching the boy's hand so tightly he winced. "Don't look up," I whispered. "Not again."
He nodded quickly, though I could tell the damage was done. His breaths came fast and shallow, as though he'd already seen too much.
We pressed on, the streets bending and narrowing, the silence broken only by our footsteps. Shadows stretched in impossible directions, twisting toward the cracks in the ceiling, as if drawn to the pulse above.
But I knew the truth now.
This place had no sky.
And whatever waited above us wasn't light.