-nikraria- — Delirium

— A fragment recovered from the sea wall, written in charcoal and salt water. The author was not found.

She looked at me.

On the second night, I woke to find my left hand writing in a language I did not know. The letters were spirals. Snail-shell sentences. It wrote: “The spine is a ladder. The blood is a staircase. Climb down.” I burned the page. My hand wrote it again on the wall in ash. Delirium -Nikraria-

That was Day One of Delirium. By Day Three, the walls of Nikraria began to breathe. Not metaphorically. I pressed my palm to the plaster, and I felt a slow, wet inhalation. The city, I realized, was a single organism. The canals were its veins. The bell towers were its teeth. The people? We were just fleas dancing on a hot skillet. — A fragment recovered from the sea wall,

I am writing this from a room at the end of a pier in the city of Nikraria, where the sea smells of rust and old prayers. Three days ago, I was a cartographer. Now, I am a cartographer of the inside of my own skull. On the second night, I woke to find

She is not hunting you.

She is remembering you.