Delirium -nikraria- -

And if you see a woman made of mirrors walking backward on the water—

Instead, I walked to the Spire of Unwound Clocks. At the top, I found a room with no door. I had to break through a wall that tasted of gingerbread and grief. Inside sat an old man weaving rope from his own beard. He did not look up.

I saw the —the thing for which the city is named, though no one speaks its name aloud. It was not a monster in the common sense. No claws, no fangs. It was a woman made entirely of broken mirrors, walking backward down the main canal. Where her feet touched the water, the water turned to cold fire. She was singing a lullaby about the birth of the moon.

It started with the fog. Nikraria’s famous white breath, rolling in from the Sunken Quarter. The locals wear cloth masks dipped in vinegar and rosemary. “Keeps the memory worms out,” the innkeeper’s wife said, laughing. I did not laugh. I was here to map the old catacombs beneath the Cathedral of Unfinished Saints. A simple commission. Dry work. Delirium -Nikraria-

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

Wave.

She is remembering you.

They call it the Grey Shakes.

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.

My watch still ticks, but I no longer believe in hours. My hand is writing this, but I am not telling it what to say. Somewhere below, the child in the yellow coat is laughing. The mushroom is still in my pocket—or rather, my pocket is now a mushroom. The distinction no longer matters. And if you see a woman made of

The true delirium arrived at midnight, riding the fourth chime of the Drowned Bell.

She looked at me.

If you come to Nikraria, do not look for the catacombs. Do not ask for the map. When the white fog rolls in, do not breathe. Inside sat an old man weaving rope from his own beard

I refused the salt bath.