Silence is wrong.
Not quiet — wrong.
Rain hangs in the air like glass beads pinned to invisible thread. Every drop is a tiny globe, perfect, still, reflecting the warped street back at itself. The sirens don't wail. They don't exist as sound anymore — only as a stretched, trembling line that presses against Ivante's ears until his skull aches.
The Gorger is a statue of violence.
Jaws frozen wide. Claws curved mid-swipe. Drool caught in mid-drip like strands of frozen resin. Its massive body leans forward, impossible weight arrested in a single breath.
And on Ivante's chest —
The moth.
Pale. Almost translucent. Wings etched with thin, glowing lines that tick like the second hand of a broken clock. It rests directly over his heart, light as nothing, heavy as a verdict.
Ivante stares down at it.
His chest doesn't move.
He tries to breathe.
Nothing.
His lungs don't work.
His ribs don't rise.
His heart —
Thump.
Not inside his body.
Under the moth.
A slow, distant beat that doesn't belong to him.
Ivante lifts his eyes.
The street has shifted.
Not physically. Not exactly.
The world looks… thinner.
Edges blur. Colors leach toward gray. The gold candle circle behind him glows dull and weak, as if someone smeared smoke across the light.
Mario stands frozen mid-step — one boot lifted, rain hovering inches above it. His face is twisted in a snarl that will never finish forming.
Little Benny is a small, still shape behind the gold line, mouth open in a silent scream that will never arrive.
Sister Lena's hands hover over the candles, fingers spread, veins standing out — a statue of concentration carved from living flesh.
Ivante feels the street tilt.
Not left or right.
Downward.
He looks at his feet.
The asphalt is gone.
Beneath him is a hole of pale light — a circle of glowing lines like the face of an enormous clock laid flat under the world. Numbers flicker faintly around its rim, ghosted, half-erased, impossible to read.
A minute.
Open.
Ivante's stomach lurches.
He steps back — but the ground doesn't exist behind him anymore. His heel finds nothing but air, and he stumbles, catching himself on sheer instinct.
The moth shifts.
Wings tremble.
The ticking lines across its body pulse brighter.
A voice comes from nowhere and everywhere at once.
Not spoken.
Pressed.
You stand where time breaks.
Ivante's breath hitches, even though his lungs still won't move.
"Who—" His voice is raw, scraped, unreal in this frozen world. "Who the hell are you?"
The moth lifts.
It doesn't flap.
It simply rises, drifting upward an inch, then another, until it hovers at eye level.
Its wings spread.
Inside them, Ivante sees shapes — memories, maybe — flickering like reflections in shattered glass.
Teeth closing around him.
Mario's arm bending the wrong way.
Benny's body flipping through rain.
His own blood on the street.
The images flicker faster.
Then they stop.
The moth tilts its body toward the open minute beneath his feet.
The voice presses again.
You asked to be taken.
Ivante laughs — a broken, bitter sound that scrapes his throat.
"Yeah?" he whispers. "Fine. Take me. Just— just let them live."
The moth's wings ripple.
The glowing circle beneath him brightens.
Numbers begin to move, sliding along the rim like predators circling prey. The air grows colder, sharper, like winter packed into a single breath.
Ivante feels it then —
A pull.
Not on his body.
On his heart.
A slow, patient drag downward, as if something beneath the minute is reaching up and wrapping invisible fingers around his chest.
Pain blooms.
Not physical.
Deeper.
Like something inside him is being peeled apart in layers he didn't know he had.
His vision narrows to a tunnel of pale light.
The frozen Gorger looms in that tunnel, jaws still open, teeth inches from his face.
Ivante staggers forward.
His foot crosses the glowing edge of the minute.
The world shudders.
Cracks spiderweb across the frozen rain.
The siren-line trembles.
The moth drops back onto his chest.
Cold.
Heavy.
Absolute.
Ivante gasps — and this time, air moves.
But it isn't air from this street.
It tastes old.
Dusty.
Clockwork and iron.
His heartbeat slams in his ears.
Thump.
Thump.
The open minute beneath him yawns wider.
Ivante looks down.
And sees not asphalt —
But a deep shaft of light plunging into darkness where enormous, slow gears turn like planets.
At the bottom, something watches.
Two glowing points.
Patient.
Hungry.
The moth's ticking lines blaze white-hot.
The voice presses one last time, softer now, almost intimate.
If your heart crosses this line — your second ends.
The Gorger's frozen teeth hang inches from his face.
Ivante sways on the edge of the glowing circle, chest burning, mind screaming, rain shivering in midair around him.
He takes a step —
—and the darkness below reaches up.