Aiden's mind felt lighter, almost too light. It was as if the memory the serpent had taken was an anchor, and now that it was gone, something about the world around him seemed subtly wrong. He tried to grasp at what had been lost, but the more he thought about it, the more it slipped away, like trying to remember a dream upon waking.
But there was no turning back now. The serpent's price had been paid, and the path ahead was open.
The cliffs gave way to a wide, barren expanse, a wasteland of jagged rocks and swirling winds. In the distance, Aiden could make out faint shapes on the horizon—structures, though they were almost invisible, flickering in and out of view as if they didn't belong to this world.
He pressed on, following the faint shimmer of the Unseen City that seemed to call to him. As he walked, the wind grew stronger, howling through the empty plains like a chorus of distant voices. Shadows flitted just beyond his sight, creatures that moved too quickly to be fully seen.
The air felt thicker, charged with a strange energy. Aiden gripped the straps of his bag tightly, feeling the weight of the ancient book he had taken from the glass tower. He hadn't dared to open it again since his escape, but he knew it held answers—if only he could understand its cryptic text.
As he approached the city, the ground beneath his feet began to shift, turning from rock to something softer, more unstable. The buildings ahead shimmered like mirages, their forms constantly changing. It was as though the city itself was alive, bending and twisting in response to his presence.
The closer Aiden got, the more difficult it became to keep his bearings. Streets appeared and vanished before his eyes, twisting and looping back on themselves in impossible ways. He tried to focus, to push through the disorientation, but it was like walking through a dream—nothing stayed the same for long.
At the center of the city, Aiden found what he had been searching for: a towering structure, taller than anything else in the Unseen City. It was a strange, spiraling tower, its surface smooth and featureless, as if it had been carved from a single block of stone. But like everything else in the city, it flickered in and out of existence, sometimes solid, other times barely there.
Aiden stood before the tower, unsure of what to do next. The wind howled around him, and the shadows at the edge of his vision seemed to grow bolder, creeping closer. But something about the tower drew him in, a magnetic pull that he couldn't resist.
He stepped forward, and the world around him seemed to shift again. The ground beneath him disappeared, and he found himself falling—not down, but inward, as if he had stepped into the very fabric of the city itself.