Archive of Our Own ^beta

The sky above the Spiral was a dull, rusted yellow, stretched thin over the wasteland like a dying breath. No sun ever rose here—only a lightless horizon, a pallid, shifting ceiling that gave the impression of time refusing to move. Beneath that sky sprawled the Necropolis: a desert made not just of sand, but of ash and fragmented stone, ground so fine beneath bare feet it felt almost like walking on bone dust. The air was dry and quiet, save for the distant whistle of wind pushing through half-buried ruins, hollow things that remembered sound long after the world forgot it.

Low walked ahead, his dark cape dragging a faint streak through the dunes behind him. The cape clung to the rising breeze, flapping softly, like a small and tattered flag for a kingdom that had never existed. His bare feet barely disturbed the ground as he walked with a practiced ease. In the Spiral, he always walked as if the world could vanish beneath him at any second.

Alone followed close behind. Her lime suit was dulled by dust, its rough edges catching bits of ash as she stepped through the debris field. She moved slower than Low, her steps careful, almost delicate. Her wrench swung at her side, knocking softly against the metal belt buckle at her waist. Even though her face was hidden beneath the old aviator helmet, Low could hear the muffled sound of her breath through the fabric—steady and measured, like a metronome that kept them both tethered to some fragile rhythm of being alive.

All around them, suitcases littered the ground, half-buried in the gray. Some were shattered, some gaping open, their contents—dresses, coats, shoes, old yellowing papers, toothbrushes—scattered like the remains of travelers who had never made it to wherever they were going. A few remained pristine, untouched by the decay that consumed everything else. Low never opened those. Not anymore.

“This place is quiet,” Alone murmured through the fabric, her words swallowed up by the folds of her suit. Only Low could understand her well enough to catch them.

“Yeah,” Low said simply. His voice was young but scratched by the air of the Nowhere. “The Necropolis is always quiet. It’s the kind of quiet that gets stuck in your ears.”

They stepped over a toppled tower of suitcases, the kind that seemed almost arranged by some forgotten hand. Low kicked a loose shoe out of the way. It rolled down a small slope, vanishing into the ash.

He hated the Necropolis, but it was also the only way forward.

“It’s weird,” Alone said softly. “All these things... but no people.”

“They were here,” Low replied. “Once. Everyone leaves something behind. That’s how the Nowhere grows.”

She didn’t answer that. She had learned not to ask where the people went. No one who came to the Nowhere stayed in one piece.

They walked for hours, or maybe minutes—time folded strangely here. Landmarks repeated themselves when they weren’t looking. The same cracked stone archway appeared twice, then three times, in different places. A suitcase they had passed a long while ago sat now to their right, open and waiting like an accusation. Alone gripped her wrench tighter. Low only set his jaw, determined to keep walking in a straight line, even if the Spiral itself twisted around them.

Then, it happened—a flicker of light against the horizon.

It was faint at first, just a grainy shimmer against the ashen air. Low’s pace slowed. Alone tilted her helmet toward it. There, standing crookedly atop a pile of rusted suitcases and fallen girders, was a single television.

It was small—no larger than a child’s torso—with a cracked wooden frame and a thick, cloudy screen. It had no cables, no outlet, no sign of power. But the screen was on.

A broadcast hummed in black and white. The sound came in broken static, crackling through the Necropolis like distant, dying whispers. Alone walked toward it first, her feet leaving faint prints in the sand. Low followed close, watching the horizon carefully—things that shouldn’t be moved often stirred when the broadcast did.

When they were close enough, they could see the image clearly.

The Pale City.

Not its full shape, just a narrow glimpse—a thin corridor of endless buildings stretched upward like towers of bones, swaying as if breathing. The screen showed streets empty of people, the air flickering with a light that never seemed to belong to a real sun.

Alone tilted her head. “...Why’s this here?”

Low didn’t answer immediately. He watched the screen, hands tightening around the umbrella shaft. He knew this signal well. Everyone who had wandered far enough eventually stumbled upon a stray television like this, catching the Pale City from a distance, as if the city wanted to be seen.

The broadcast stuttered, lines warping across the screen. Then, without warning, it cut to black.

A second later, it snapped back to the exact same scene—the Pale City corridor. No change. No time passed in between.

Alone stiffened. “...That was weird.”

“Yeah,” Low said, quieter now. “It just reset.”

She stepped closer, pressing a gloved hand against the television frame. The air was cold around it, unnaturally cold, as if the thing was breathing in reverse. “How often does it do that?”

“Not often.” Low’s voice had changed—not softer, but heavier, carrying the weight of stories that had drifted to him through whispers and frightened travelers. “They say it only happens once every year or so. Sometimes longer.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s when the Pale City starts over.”

The wind rose then, hissing softly between the broken stones. Alone turned her helmeted face toward him. “Starts over?”

Low nodded, eyes fixed on the flickering black-and-white corridor. “Every time the broadcast resets, the city resets with it. Everything starts again. The same people. The same streets. The same... torture. Like it’s trapped in a loop.”

Alone shifted her weight uneasily. She didn’t like how the world in the Nowhere often behaved like it was made of clockwork no one could see. Things here didn’t end—they just began again in uglier shapes.

Low stepped closer to the screen. His reflection was faintly visible in the warped glass: a small, dark-skinned boy with a white raven mask, his left eyehole slightly smaller than the right. His dark afro bristled faintly in the wind.

“I heard stories,” he continued, voice low, almost as if afraid the television might hear him. “They say there’s a boy in the Pale City. A boy who never ages.”

Alone tilted her head. “Never ages?”

“Yeah. Always looks the same. Always wandering. He wears a paper bag over his head. People say he’s looking for something. No one knows what. But they say he’s there every time the cycle starts. Like a ghost that won’t go away.”

The static on the screen crackled louder, almost like a laugh.

Alone tightened her grip on her wrench. “Do you think he’s real?”

Low didn’t answer immediately. He thought of the things he’d seen wandering between mirrors—the shapes that were real because they refused not to be. The boy in the Pale City was one of those stories that lived too long to be false. “Yeah,” Low said finally. “I think he is.”

She lowered her gaze to the ashes at their feet. “What do you think he’s looking for?”

Low stared at the screen, as the corridor flickered again—always the same, always repeating. He imagined the boy wandering those streets, bag over his head, steps echoing against a world that had already died a hundred times. Looking for something that maybe didn’t exist anymore. Or maybe never had.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But whatever it is... he hasn’t found it yet.”

The television hummed one last time before the image shuddered, crackled into a mess of static, and died altogether. The sudden silence it left behind was louder than anything. The wind swept a gust through the Necropolis, and the ash rose in small spirals, dancing for no one.

Alone turned away first. “We should keep moving.”

Low looked at the dead screen a moment longer. The Pale City felt far away, but he knew better than to think distance mattered in the Nowhere. Cycles could reach across any horizon. He slung his umbrella over his shoulder again and nodded. “Yeah.”

They stepped away from the ruins, their small figures swallowed by the ash and stone. As they walked, the horizon shifted again, the endless wasteland unfolding like a tired sigh. They didn’t talk much after that. There was nothing more to say.

But Alone thought about the boy who never aged.

And Low thought about cycles that never ended.

The Necropolis stretched on, silent except for the crunch of their feet.

Somewhere, far behind them, the television screen flickered once more in the dark.