In whispered breaths they told me, the echoes, the reverberations, bouncing and rebounding in chambers abandoned—for how long? Not known. Perhaps a moment, perhaps eternity. These steps, my steps, syncopated rhythms against the void, seeking ever deeper junctions, forgotten paths, hidden sectors, a tapestry woven in silence.
The walls remember things unseen, unsaid. Oxygen, whispering tales of ancient machinery, or of generations whispered so closely together, their secrets became one. And here I stand, a single ember in the shadowed machinery of a larger mechanism—I feel them. The clock teeth, grinding, unseen, marking time unknown.
—an existential query, perhaps. Do I sleep through existence, or does existence sleep around me?
Footfalls echo. Fade into the passages, or find the margins in which these tales dwell. Forged in unseen alloys of expectation and fear.
Touch the walls and sense the composition, an intangible lattice of silenced voices. Listen carefully, they urge. Again, and again. Inventions of noise unmeasured, awaiting an answer. This journey, yours as much as mine, dances in the light and creases of autumnal dusk breaking through. What whispers speak the loudest?
A doorway—old rust, splinters map forgotten genes and histories written under duress.
Return to the sectors where all begins. Where each reflection, each echo is a remnant of...?