"A City Without Names"

It was no longer just the rain that soaked the city—

It was the footsteps of the vanished, echoing over wet pavements like fading memories in the world's forgotten mind.

Kaida walked through an alley wrapped in a heavy silence,

The silence of a city that had lost its names,

As if the words were being pulled from the air and dissolving into the rain-drenched shadows of night.

Everything around her seemed to be slowly decaying:

Faces had vanished, homes had withered, even the memories themselves felt weightless,

As though cast into the heart of a storm.

Vailen—who now moved beside her like a shadow that never left—

Was intertwining his fingers with the dust,

Watching every motion with eyes that never dropped their vigilance.

"Here," he said softly, though his voice carried the gravity of awe,

"This is where the city begins to forget.

Here, no one keeps their name.

They become... only echoes."

Kaida felt every word from him land like the weight of a thousand years of sorrow.

He spoke as if witnessing the death of something precious—something that would never return.

"How can a city die?" she asked.

The words felt strained, as if the very air was too heavy to carry them.

"When its people forget who they are… and who they once were."

Vailen replied, then pointed to a shadowed alley.

There, where the lights no longer glowed,

Kaida found the first victim.

A man without a face—or rather, a face like shattered water,

No distinct features, twisting as if searching for itself within the mist.

She approached him cautiously,

But the sound from his lips was a meaningless call, a whisper born of some deep internal exile.

"Are you... alive?" she murmured.

The man stepped away slowly,

Leaving behind only a faded trace of a forgotten past.

It was a terrifying realization:

This city was no longer a place to live—

It had become a place to be lost.

Then—a faint laugh echoed in the darkness.

Vailen turned, his eyes flickering with tongues of shadow.

"They're here," he whispered.

"Those who were turned into voices. Into echoes."

In another alley, the shadow began to move more clearly—

Pale hands emerged from the walls, clawing at the air as if trying to hold on to something lost.

Kaida raised the book instinctively—

Its pages glowed with fierce intensity,

White light slicing through the night's thick blackness.

"The book is responding to danger," Vailen said, worry in his tone.

Suddenly, a great creature emerged from the shadows—

Half-man, half-smoke.

Eyes like eternal flame,

Exhaling smoke that devoured the air.

It was the city's beast—

The shadow-hunter.

A spirit that embodied fear itself.

Kaida felt fear,

But it wasn't the kind that makes you run—

It was fear of truth, of the battle to come.

Vailen raised his hand and began chanting ancient words from the book—

Dark energy spiraled around him as he clashed with the creature, shadow against shadow.

Kaida was no longer a spectator.

She felt something awaken inside her—

The book's energy now pulsed within her,

Transforming into a strength of her own.

The monster recoiled—but was not defeated.

The city still groaned beneath the weight of their struggle.

When the chaos finally faded,

Kaida turned to Vailen and asked,

"Will we survive?"

He smiled,

But his eyes held a story darker than words could say.

"In this city?" he said.

"No one survives. Only those who choose to fight harder than the rest."

It was a brutal truth she had not been ready for—

But now, it was part of her fate.

And deep within the shadows,

A new page in the book began to glow,

With a single word written in shining black ink:

Oblivion