Downtown Manhattan smelled of smoke and wet concrete, something that gripped to the air until it scraped her throat and dragged out a cough. It was Sunday, and Katriana had never learned how to love Sundays.
And no, it wasn't because Monday's classes lurked at the edge of the night—though that was reason enough, it was simply because of the suffocating calm that would always greeted her when she opened her eyes in the narrow dorm room… a silence that settled heavy on her chest. No messages waiting on her phone. No cheerful good mornings. No comforting smell of pancakes or coffee drifting from a kitchen she had only ever imagined. Sundays didn't remind her of what she… perhaps had lost, but of what had never existed for her at all. And that emptiness was harder to swallow than the smoke in her lungs.
She was eighteen, an art major at NYU, a scholarship kid with an overworked brain and an empty wallet. Her professors said she had talent, raw and jagged like unpolished stone, but talent did not pay rent. It did not keep her from living on stale crackers or the free cafeteria apples she slipped into her bag. Some people were lucky enough to turn talent into a living, but Katriana had never been one of them.
Sometimes, late at night, she wondered what identity even meant… and she never really found a solid answer to it.
She was just another student in a city full of millions, walking through the subway tunnels with her headphones on, trying not to think about the heaviness settled on her chest. A name on a class roster, a number on a transcript. She had been born without much, raised without much, and if she vanished one day, maybe no one would even notice.
It was that thought that followed her as she walked downtown that Sunday afternoon. The streets were quieter than usual, as if the city itself was feeling the same way as she did. She wandered without direction, the way she always did when she needed to escape the four walls of her dorm. Her sneakers scuffed against uneven pavement, and the drizzle of morning rain still lingered to the air.
That was when she saw it.
A small gallery tucked between two brick buildings, so easy to miss you might pass it by with a single blink. The glass front reflected her face back at her, pale under the fluorescent streetlight, with her hair tied in a messy bun and her hoodie zipped up against the cold air. Something about the entrance unsettled her. The wood of the doorframe looked too old, too worn, as though it had stood there for centuries while the rest of Manhattan grew up around it.
She almost walked past. Almost.
But then the tug came, subtle yet insistent, like invisible fingers pulling her inside.
The moment she stepped over the threshold, the air shifted. The noise of the city muted into silence, leaving only the subtle trace of her footsteps against marble flooring. The gallery stretched wide, lit by pale lanterns instead of modern bulbs. Her heart thudded louder. It smelled of ash and oil paint, but also of something that was rather rusty, like an old, sharp metal, like blood on rusted iron. And weirdly enough, of something familiar.
The walls were lined with canvases, some depicting ruined castles, others strange faces that seemed to follow her as she moved. She hugged her arms around herself and walked slowly, her kicks squeaking softly. There were no other visitors, no receptionist at the desk, no sound except for her own breathing.
And then she noticed it.
The painting.
The odd, eerie painting.
Displayed at the very center of the gallery.
A man knelt in the wasteland. His sword was driven deep into the soil, both hands clinging to it as if it were the last thread binding him to a collapsing world. His torso was bare, the muscles cut like stone but marred with wounds and scars that refused to fade. Strands of raven-black hair veiled his face, yet his eyes showed through, hollow and emptied of hope.
Behind him, a black dragon rose like a living shadow. Fire bled from its throat, spilling across the sky as it tore through a city of spires and domes, reducing beauty to screams and ruin.
The earth lay drowned in ash. Smoke curled upward in endless spirals, as though heaven itself was choking on the end of all things.
She stopped breathing. Something in her twisted so violently she had to grip her hoodie just to steady herself.
"Regret."
The word rang in her ears, low and solemn.
Katriana spun around. A man stood behind her, tall and lean, with platinum-silver hair that gleamed in the low light. His features were sharp and ageless, the sort you might expect to see carved into stone statues. His eyes held too much knowledge, as though he had lived a thousand lives and grown weary of them all.
"The painting's called Regret," he added, his voice deep, almost echoing in the empty room.
She swallowed hard. "Sounds poetic."
"It is."
There was a pause, before her gaze flicked between him and the painting. "You're the artist?"
He tilted his head, a faint smirk curling his lips. "Guessing games is a dangerous play, Miss."
"It was a question."
"Was it?" His smirk grew sharper.
There was a weight to his presence, as if the gallery bent around him. She felt suddenly small, standing under his gaze, yet she refused to look away.
He studied her for a moment longer before asking, "Say, do you believe in third chances?"
Katriana let out a sharp scoff at that. "One shouldn't fuck it up at their second chances, Mister."
He let out another smirk, then his expression shifted into a smile. It was slow, almost tender, but it never reached his eyes. From inside his coat, he drew something out. A book. Thick and bound in leather so worn it looked ready to crack, its edges frayed as though it had passed through a thousand hands.
He extended it to her.
"What is this?" She asked.
But instead of answering, he simply placed it in her hands. His fingers were cold against hers, colder than the gallery air.
She opened her mouth to ask again, but he was already stepping back, his form blurring in the flickering light.
"Happy Birthday, Katriana…" he murmured, with a voice that was low enough to sound like it had risen from the cracks in the earth.
Her eyes widened in response.
She had not told him her name. She had never whispered it to a soul in this city.
She never even knew the exact day of her birthday.
She was an orphan, left to face the world with no one beside her.
She was alone.
Always alone.
Alone from the very beginning.
Katriana.
The name belonged to no one but her. It was her legal name, stripped of a family surname because there had never been one to claim.
The air thickened, and for a second at that moment… she thought the walls themselves were listening. A chill swept across her skin.
She gasped, reaching for him, but the space where he stood was already empty. He had vanished as though he had never been there at all, leaving only silence, and her name still echoing in her ears.
The gallery stood silent.
She gripped the edges of the book, her chest hammering and fingers trembling.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Back in her dorm, the book rested heavily in her lap as rain rattled against the window. The leather carried a whisper of smoke and ink. She paused before opening it, a gnawing pressure twisting in her stomach.
It was a novel.
The title scrawled in gilded letters across the first page made her laugh out loud, though the sound was rather bitter in the empty room. A cheap romance novel. The heroine was (in a very exaggerating description) a beautiful girl adopted by (also in a very exaggerating description) a handsome and powerful duke. He had taken her in not because of her worth, but because her mother had once been his fiancée, a woman he never loved yet had been bound to out of duty.
The story began with sickly sweetness. The girl grew up in silk gowns and glittering halls, eventually winning the duke's heart with her warmth and kindness. He came to love her as his own daughter. She met the Crown Prince. They fell in love. Happily ever after.
Katriana snapped the book shut with a laugh that cracked into something hollow. "...That was it?"
She rolled her eyes, shoved the book onto her desk, and rubbed her forehead before she sighed out loud. But even as she tried to sleep, the words lingered, the weight of the painting tightened her chest.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
The next Sunday, she returned to the gallery with the book in her hands.
She needed to see him again, the man with the silver hair. She needed him to answer the whys, because too many questions were already crowding her mind. But when she reached the street, her stomach dropped. The building was there, but not the gallery. Just an old, abandoned husk of cracked windows and boarded doors. Dust choked the air. A vendor selling roasted chestnuts nearby gave her a puzzled look when she asked.
"Gallery? Here? Miss, this place has been empty for decades."
Her throat went dry.
The security guard down the street confirmed the same.
No gallery. Never had been.
Her chest tightened, panic clawing up her throat. She turned around too quickly, her vision blurring with fear and disbelief.
That was when the headlights blinded her.
A screech of tires. A heavy impact. A hit and run.
Pain tore through her body like fire. Her legs buckled, her arms flailed, her skull cracked against asphalt. For a moment she saw nothing but white. Then red. Then black. Then her lungs collapsed… each breath a shuddering gasp. The world tilted sideways. People shouted somewhere far away. Her own blood pooled warm beneath her cheek.
She wanted to scream, but no sound came.
Her vision narrowed.
She thought of nothing. No family. No one who would cry for her.
The last thing she saw before the darkness swallowed her was the novel, still clutched in her hands, its old leather stained with her blood.
And then there was nothing.