---
Farro wandered.
Feet bruised. Eyes unfocused. The world around him buzzed with noise and color, yet none of it made sense. He was in the midst of humanity, but felt like a ghost moving through its fabric.
He didn't eat.
Didn't speak.
Didn't sleep.
Yet something kept him going—an echo.
A whisper left over from the place of origin.
> "You are not nothing… yet."
He didn't know what it meant.
---
The first time he saw the man, it was as if time paused.
He stood at the edge of the street, smoking, wearing a long black coat that somehow absorbed the light around it. His presence didn't feel human.
Farro stopped. The man smiled, but not kindly.
> "Lost, aren't you?"
Farro didn't answer. He didn't know how.
The man took a slow drag from his pipe.
> "You're not from here. Not from anywhere."
He flicked the ash into the wind.
> "They'll find you, soon. Because things like you… they don't belong."
> "And everything that doesn't belong… gets erased."
---
Farro opened his mouth to speak—but suddenly, the man was gone. No trace, no sound, as if the world had edited him out.
Farro stood frozen. That was the first time he felt it:
A low vibration in his chest. Not physical—but realer than anything around him.
A pressure.
A hum.
A… presence.
As if something inside him had been watching from behind a glass wall—and now, it tapped.
---
That night, while curled beneath a bridge, Farro dreamt of nothing.
Not blackness. Not silence.
Just… the feeling of being unobserved. Forgotten.
Unwritten.
And in the center of that dream, he saw a shape.
It looked like him, but without features. A faceless version, made of drifting shadow.
It said nothing.
But it understood him completely.
And that terrified Farro more than anything else.