The Step After

Prologue

Elias Wren's apartment was the kind of place that vanished from memory the moment you turned away—an ephemeral stage set for a play no one ever intended to write. The walls were thin, as if apologizing for being there at all, and the ceiling seemed to hover out of sheer habit. Everything about the apartment whispered, Temporary.

It was late, as it often was in his apartment, when the world allows itself to breathe, letting its edge fray just a little. Elias was descending the stairs when it happened.

His foot met the absence of a step. The sensation was akin to walking into a glass door, the world tilting out of alignment. For a moment, Elias's consciousness unraveled like a loose thread pulled from the fabric of a sweater. He found himself floating, observing his own body suspended in a breathless void. For that moment, Elias was a god.

He wasn't falling, nor was he standing still. It was something altogether different—a space where timepieces curled into themselves, and the ground became a vague suggestion. In that brief, electrifying instant, Elias questioned whether he was truly himself or merely the idea of Elias.

Then, with a jarring thud, his foot found the step. The world reassembled itself with the precision of a puzzle piece snapping into place, and Elias continued down the stairs, his mind striving to convince itself that nothing unusual had happened. But something had happened, hadn't it? The fleeting moment lingered, half-forgotten, like a melody that couldn't quite be placed.

He chuckled to himself—a reflex, not a comfort. The echo of his laugh followed him back to his apartment, where it ricocheted off walls that seemed a little too thin.

Sleep came in fragments, dreams splintered into odd shapes and hues that refused to align, yet felt inexplicably perfect—constructed from mismatched puzzle pieces in a way that made no sense and all the sense in the world.