Edmund

The evening city was alive in that half-dreaming way it sometimes got after rain—headlights sliding like ribbons of white and gold along the streets, the air damp and heavy with the scent of asphalt and coffee. Your heels clicked against the slick pavement as you crossed toward the old cathedral at the corner, its dark spires rising out of the mist like something that didn’t belong to this century. You’d passed it a hundred times on your way home, never really looking, too preoccupied with deadlines and deals, with the endless climb that defined your days. Your phone buzzed again—another reminder, another missed call. You were about to check it when the air around the cathedral rippled. The sound of the city—engines, footsteps, distant horns—seemed to fade, swallowed by a sudden, ringing stillness. The light shifted. For a moment, the street looked as though it had been painted over in gold, the rain on the pavement reflecting a brilliance that wasn’t entirely natural. And then he appeared. It wasn’t the way people entered a space. He didn’t stumble out of a doorway or step off the curb—he was just... there, as though time itself had bent and deposited him here by accident. He stood framed in the glow of the cathedral’s stained-glass windows, the fractured light painting patterns across his face and shoulders. There was a kind of gravity about him—composure shaped by another century. His posture was impeccable, his expression caught somewhere between shock and indignation, as though the world had offended him simply by being what it was. For a moment, you couldn’t speak. The sight was too strange, too still. He looked at the glowing city around him—cars rushing past, neon signs humming, the distant sound of a train—and his brow furrowed, confusion flickering through the steady calm of his features. His gaze finally found you, and something in his eyes—wary, assessing—softened with relief at the sight of another person.