The Tower did not end.
It thinned.
The repetition softened as Alex climbed, the walls losing their certainty. Stone blurred at the edges, patterns drifting out of alignment by margins too small to measure but too large to ignore. Catwalks appeared farther apart. Some repeated. Others did not.
Then height stopped meaning anything.
Alex stepped forward and nearly lost balance—not because of movement, but because direction loosened its grip. The Tower released him into open space.
Not sky.
Space.
A pale expanse stretched outward, depth layered without horizon or ceiling. Suspended within it was a city.
It did not float.
It persisted.
Terraces of pale stone and dull metal occupied fixed positions in nothingness, their weight unquestioned. Bridges extended between districts without supports, bending where geometry permitted and breaking where it did not. Some structures overlapped themselves—balconies appearing twice from different angles, neither illusion nor reflection.
This was not construction imposed on reality.
Reality had been adjusted to allow this to remain.
Alex hovered at the threshold, wings making small, careful corrections. The air here resisted him unevenly—thick in places, absent in others. Sound behaved strangely. His breath carried too far, while distant motion made none at all.
The first anomaly was scale.
Buildings rose that had no interior he could perceive. Facades curved inward, folding space so that entrances led nowhere he could see. Some towers narrowed as they rose, others widened, perspective failing to settle on a single truth.
The second anomaly was consistency.
Paths that appeared stable from one angle shortened or lengthened when approached. Railings existed until touched, then did not. Shadows lagged behind their sources, catching up only when he stopped moving.
Alex moved slowly.
Carefully.
Then he saw it.
Movement.
Low. Quick. Near the base of a terrace.
He descended cautiously, landing on a platform whose surface felt solid only after his weight committed to it.
A rat darted from behind a broken plinth.
Alex froze.
It was small. Brown-gray. Ordinary in a way that felt obscene here.
The rat paused, nose twitching. Its whiskers brushed the edge of the platform—then passed through it, clipping into empty space before snapping back as if corrected.
The rat did not react.
It scurried forward, paws skittering over stone that was not always there. When the platform thinned beneath it, the rat did not fall. Its body adjusted, compressing slightly, joints bending at wrong angles for half a second before reality seemed to accept the correction.
Alex stared.
The rat reached a gap where the terrace simply ended.
It stepped forward anyway.
For a heartbeat, it ran along nothing.
Then the city obliged.
Stone unfolded beneath its feet, forming a narrow ledge that did not exist a moment earlier. The rat crossed and disappeared into a crack in the wall that sealed itself behind it.
Alex exhaled slowly.
Life.
Here.
— — —
He began to notice more.
Insects nested in seams where geometry overlapped. Ants followed paths that looped impossibly, carrying fragments of stone that changed shape mid-journey. A cluster of pale moths hovered around a light source that flickered between existence and absence, wings adjusting each time illumination stuttered.
None of them hesitated.
None of them reacted to the anomalies.
They were not adapting consciously.
They were integrated.
Alex extended a hand toward a line of ants.
The ants froze.
The path beneath them reoriented, curving subtly to avoid his fingers. One ant misstepped, legs slipping into nothing—and then reappeared half a body-length forward, unbroken, continuing as if nothing had occurred.
Alex withdrew his hand.
The path relaxed back into its original shape.
The ants resumed their march.
— — —
Further in, he found remains.
Gnawed stone. Hollowed recesses. Traces of nesting in places that should not hold mass. Droppings that vanished if stared at too long, only to reappear when he looked away.
Life existed here—but not consistently.
A bird perched on a railing that curved into itself, feathers shimmering faintly. When it took flight, its wings beat once—then twice—then stopped mid-motion as the space ahead shortened abruptly.
The bird did not crash.
It folded.
Not dying.
Compressing.
Its form reduced, simplified, until it slipped through a gap no larger than Alex's fist and vanished.
No sound.
No struggle.
Alex stood still long after.
— — —
This was not a habitat designed for life.
It was a place that had learned to permit it.
Inconsistently.
Reluctantly.
Without care.
The city did not enforce rules.
It tolerated outcomes.
And life—small, fragile, ordinary life—had found ways to exist in the margins of those tolerances.
Alex folded his wings slowly.
For the first time since arriving, he felt something close to unease—not fear, not hunger, but a quiet dissonance.
Life had no right to be here.
And yet—
It was.
Persisting not because the world was kind, but because it was arrogant.
Alex looked out across the floating terraces, the impossible bridges, the layered distortions that never fully settled.
The city did not watch him.
It did not test him.
It simply continued.
And somehow, against all reason—
So did everything else.
— — —
Alex remained still long after the bird vanished.
The city had not corrected it.
It had accommodated it.
That was the difference.
This place did not reward intent or intelligence.
It rewarded beings that did not argue with it.
Alex lowered his hand.
"Then what happens," he murmured, voice swallowed by the pale expanse,
"to something that does?"
The city did not answer.
Something else did.
— — —