Echo found himself at the bottom of an old, empty well. The air was damp, the stone walls cold against his back. Above him, the only way out was sealed off by a wooden cover that blocked out the light completely.
"It's too dark in here..."
He reached for the rope hanging from the side and began to climb, hand over hand, each movement straining his aching muscles. The well was narrow, and the silence pressed in like a weight.When he reached the top, he braced himself against the wall and pushed up with his free hand — but the wooden cover didn't budge.
"Damn it..."
With no other choice, he lowered his head and slammed it against the wood. Once. Twice. On the third try, the old boards cracked with a sharp snap, and daylight spilled through the opening.
He hauled himself out, breathing hard, and collapsed onto solid ground. The world around him was new — open, strange, and eerily quiet.
Echo staggered to his feet, the ground beneath him uneven and damp with early morning mist. A sharp pain pulsed in his skull, and when he pressed a hand to his temple, it came away sticky with blood. The throbbing behind his eyes blurred his vision, and for a moment, he thought he might collapse again.
Rolling hills stretched in every direction, dotted with bare trees and stone fences. In the distance, smoke curled gently from chimney tops, and a spire pierced the gray sky — signs of a nothingness not far off.
Somewhere behind him, the steady click of hooves grew louder, echoing against the dirt road that wound through the quiet countryside. A carriage passed by slowly, its lanterns glowing dimly in the fog, the driver barely glancing his way.
Echo winced, pressing his hand harder to the wound on his head. The pain burned hot, tangled with the pounding rhythm of a growing headache.
"Ah, the pain is killing me.... seriously..."
He looked ahead, but the fog gave nothing back. No town. No signs. Only a narrow path that vanished into the unknown.He began down the path, unsteady but determined, one hand pressed tightly to his bleeding temple. The pain throbbed like a second heartbeat, sharp and relentless. Every step felt heavier than the last, but he kept moving — because standing still felt worse.
And there it was...
The city unfolded before him like the pages of an old novel—iron railings, cobbled streets, and towering brick buildings wrapped in ivy and smoke. Lamps burned softly behind tall windows, and silhouettes moved like shadows within the golden glow. It looked like something pulled from a time long gone, untouched by the modern world.
Echo squinted, the pain in his head blurring the edges of everything beautiful. But despite the ache, despite the blood still trailing down his temple, he found himself smiling.
One step at a time, he walked toward the city.
As Echo walked.... the world around him shifted without warning....The air grew heavy.... The light vanished....
In an instant, the path beneath his feet turned deep red — like dried blood — and the gentle fog became a thick, suffocating veil... The trees twisted into grotesque shapes, and from every shadowed corner... eyes watched, Dozens of them.... Unblinking, Cold... Alive with something ancient and cruel.He froze, the silence roared....
But just as quickly as it came, it was gone.
The color drained from the path. The mist lightened. The eyes vanished like ghosts at sunrise. He stumbled, blinking as if trying to reset the world.
"I must be hallusinating..."
uncertain, but he kept walking.One foot in front of the other, deeper into a place that felt real... and yet not quite.
He finally reached the city gates.
An aged wooden sign hung just above the archway, its letters carved in a graceful hand: We Welcome You to Calandria. The paint was fading, but the message still stood like a whisper of tradition.
At the edge of the entrance, carriages waited in idle lines — some departing, some just arriving. A few travelers passed by, dust on their coats, while others gathered near a small roadside eatery where warm smells drifted out into the cold air. Echo stepped past them, unnoticed, such as a ghost stumbling into someone else's story.
The deeper he walked into the city, the more it bloomed.
The quiet gave way to motion — shopkeepers calling out to passersby, coins clinking, the rustle of fabric, the shuffle of boots. Stalls lined the street like patchwork, selling bread, books, trinkets, and tea. Laughter echoed between narrow alleys where strangers bartered and children ran. Every step further in peeled back another layer of the city, and it felt less like a place, and more like a living thing.
Calandria was breathing...
And yet, this was only the beginning.
Echo paused, staring up at the skyline where spires pierced the clouds and clock towers marked time he no longer understood.Then he looked up.
There were... airships.
Massive, drifting vessels floated silently through the sky, their hulls gleaming in the muted light, sails catching wind like the wings of some forgotten beast. Pipes and propellers adorned their sides, belching soft trails of steam as they hovered above the city like watchful giants.
"Airships? Wait.... since when are there-"
"Nevermind..."
It was too early to question everything. His head still throbbed, and the world was already strange enough without trying to sort out how Victorian architecture coexisted with something out of science.
He kept walking, the sky buzzing quietly above him.After a few more pained steps, a building caught his eye—a tall structure with arched windows and a faded symbol carved into stone above the door. A hospital.
"Finally... a hospital... wait, i don't have any money.... screw that, i don't even know what the currency in this world... Hopefully they'll let me rack up a little debt, because this headache and the wound might actually kill me before anything else does."
The inside of the hospital was strangely quiet...
The air smelled faintly of antiseptic and something floral — lavender, maybe, or something close. The floors were polished wood, not tile. Along the walls, brass pipes ran like veins, occasionally hissing softly with steam. Strange contraptions buzzed gently behind glass doors, their purpose unclear. No fluorescent lights, just tall oil lamps and gentle gas fixtures casting long shadows.
Echo approached the front desk, clutching his head. A woman in a crisp, dark uniform looked up, her hair neatly pinned beneath a laced cap.
"Can I help you, sir?"
she asked, her accent polished but unfamiliar.
"I hit my head.My wound is... It's bleeding, and i've got a bad headache.I don't have any money... right now, I'll pay back..."
The nurse blinked, her eyes scanning him — not just his face, but his clothes, his posture, maybe even his soul. Then she gave a small nod.
"That won't be necessary. First-time entries are registered and treated under general intake."
"Entries?"
But she was already turning away.
"This way, please."
He followed her down a hall lined with ticking clocks and humming devices. Some rooms glowed faintly with soft blue light. Others were filled with books and brass instruments. It felt like a place caught between the past and the impossible.
A curtain was drawn aside. A reclining chair waited—half dentist, half dream machine.
"What kind of hospital is this…?"
The nurse led him into a softly lit room, where a reclining chair sat beneath an arch of brass tubing and coiled wires. Glass globes pulsed faintly above it, filled with swirling mist that shifted colors with each breath of steam from the walls.
Echo hesitated at the threshold.
"Is this… a hospital bed?"
The nurse only gestured, calm and silent. Her eyes looked kind, but the longer he stared, the more they seemed... too still. Too focused.
With a grunt, he eased into the chair. It hissed as it adjusted to his weight, the metal warm beneath the leather padding. The nurse slipped a cuff around his wrist — black silk, not rubber — and began adjusting dials on a nearby device that clicked and blinked with eerie rhythm.
Then came the pain...
A spike of pressure bloomed in his skull — his headache flaring into something primal, electric...
The room darkened — not from the lights, but from the edges of his vision pulling inward like a shutter. The nurse was still speaking, but her voice stretched, warbled, slowed.
"You're not from here."
Echo's head snapped up. Her eyes were pitch black.
He blinked. No — they weren't..... But then again, they were...
He turned. The doctor in the corner now loomed like a shadow, his face obscured, fingers too long. The ticking clocks on the walls spun backward. The fog he'd left behind outside began seeping in through the floorboards.
Every eye in the portraits stared...
Every breath he took felt stolen...
He felt a preasure in his chest. His headache pounding.
"No.... wait..."
He tore the cuff off, stumbled out of the chair, and slammed through the curtain.
Footsteps echoed behind him, or maybe just inside his ears. He burst into the lobby, dodging patients who flickered like broken projections. The nurse called after him — but her voice was layered now, doubled, like two people speaking through one mouth.
He ran...
Through the heavy doors...
Into the cold...
Out into the fog-choked street....
He didn't stop until his lungs burned and his legs buckled beneath him. A bench — finally, a bench — sat near a rusted lamp.
He collapsed onto it, still clutching his head. The fog wrapped around him like a blanket, too thick to see the city anymore. His heartbeat echoed in his ears, louder than it should've been.
And finally, with the last of his strength spent, Echo passed out beneath the gaslight glow — he gasped for air, eyes closed.
The city whispered around him...
And watched...