Chapter 42 — Echoes in the Glass

The laugh came again—tire, empty, but unmistakable.

Yusuf stood stock still in the broken street, breath locked in his chest. His father's laughter. He hadn't heard it in years—not in recollection, not in dream, not even in the tortured whorls of the Codex. And yet here it was, pursuing him through glass towers that curved like water.

The faceless boy pulled at his sleeve. "Don't chase after it."

Yusuf's jaw clenched. "I must."

The boy's head was cocked to one side, expressionless. "No one who listens to voices in this city ever comes back the same."

Yusuf was already moving, his boots scraping against mirror-stone, each step creating shallow waves as if he stepped on ice. The city towers curved inward, funneling him into one alley of light.

The laugh, again. Closer this time. Almost mocking.

He rounded a corner and stopped.

There—at the far end of the corridor—stood his father. Younger than Yusuf recalled him, straight-backed, hair black, hugging a stack of notebooks against his arm. Alive. Real.

"Baba…," Yusuf drew breath.

The man looked at him, and for an instant, in his eyes, there was recognition.

But then the corridor shifted. The walls disintegrated, and the figure splintered into shards of a thousand moments, each one carrying a different: his father lecturing in a hall, his father writing at his desk, his father slamming a book shut in anger, his father turning away.

The shards whirled about Yusuf in a storm.

"Stop!" Yusuf shouted out, reaching out. "Stop doing this to me!

The Codex pulsed furiously in his hip. Leaves ripped apart in the book, ink seeping into the air. Letters formed into trembling admonitions: "Illusion. Trap. Echo."

The barefaced child stepped into the storm, his vacant mask canted back. "The city remembers him too," he breathed. "But not the way you do. They're using your pain to keep you here."

Yusuf balled his fists. The fragments cut shallow curves into his skin, glassy cold and memory stuffed sharp.

"Then why does it feel so real?" Yusuf grated.

The boy didn't answer. Instead, he put a hand on the Codex. The ink bled across the pages, pulling out one word Yusuf struggled to read through the storm:

"Below.".

The fragments spun faster, cutting into walls, into Yusuf's arms, into the hooded body of the child. And beneath the sound of glass, Yusuf heard something else—something deeper than dream, a hum beneath the city itself.

A whisper. A root. A path down.

"Do you hear it too?" Yusuf asked.

The child nodded once. "If you continue chasing specters, you will get lost. If you go below, you might find the truth.".

Shards slammed shut, blocking the corridor, erasing his father's face. Yusuf held the Codex tightly.

And then he made up his mind.

A swipe of the book's edge, and he cut a line across the storm—dead straight down into the glass beneath his feet. It shattered, shuddered, and then fell in.

Yusuf fell.

The faceless child leaped after him, landing in the same collapse.

The laughter reverberated again, warped now, trailing into static.

And then there was merely the fall.