Morning came heavy and strange.
It sat on Elias's chest like a weight he couldn't shake off. An invisible gravity, pinning him to the mattress, daring him to move.
Outside his windows, the city floated in mist. The towers of glass and steel—so sharp, so proud by daylight—blurred into half-forgotten ghosts against the bruised autumn sky.
The skyline was a smear of gray and gold, the morning sun too weak to burn through. Steam drifted up from manholes and subway grates like restless spirits. Somewhere, a distant siren wailed and was swallowed by the fog.
Autumn had crept in fully now, leaving amber stains along the sidewalks, scattering burnt orange leaves across the marble entranceways of skyscrapers, sending a restless, knife-sharp wind whispering through the alleys and concrete canyons.
It was the kind of season that made you aware of endings. Of everything fragile, everything temporary. The kind of season that made you ache without knowing why.
Elias barely slept.
When he did, he dreamed in broken shards.
Mirrors cracking into a thousand bleeding reflections. Chandeliers shattering from golden ceilings, raining glass and ruin. Familiar voices calling his name from the mist—sharp, desperate—only to slip away the closer he reached for them.
He woke twisted in cold, tangled sheets, heart pounding against his ribs like a thing trying to escape.
The penthouse around him stood too still.
Too clean. Too perfect.
A museum of a life that looked beautiful from a distance but turned hollow the closer you got. A mausoleum, he thought grimly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
Not of death.
Of forgetting.
Of everything he'd once wanted and no longer knew how to find.
He sat there for a long moment. Just breathing. Staring at the ghost-light filtering through the massive windows. Somewhere, deep under the marble and steel, the city was waking up.
A horn honked. A subway rumbled unseen. Footsteps echoed far below on rain-damp sidewalks.
Life moving without him. As it always had.
For the first time in years, there was no meeting waiting for him.
No conference call demanding his loyalty. No room full of wolves in thousand-dollar suits to outmaneuver before noon. No mask to fix onto his face.
Only a torn scrap of paper curling on his nightstand. One name, scrawled in slanted, imperfect handwriting.
Mira.
He stared at it like it might catch fire. Like it might disappear if he blinked.
He could stay. It would be easy.
He could pull the covers back over his head and pretend none of last night had happened.
Pretend the feeling gnawing at his ribs wasn't hunger for something he didn't have a name for yet. Pretend Mira was just another broken dream he could afford to forget.
Easier to stay.
Easier to stay in the silence. In the glass prison he had built brick by unfeeling brick. Easier to polish the armor, strap it tight, walk back into the world that didn't care if he bled inside.
But he didn't want easy anymore. He wanted something else.
Something dangerous. Something real.
Even if it left him wrecked. Maybe especially if it left him wrecked.
He rose slowly, muscles stiff with exhaustion and something sharper.
Fear.
At the closet, his hand skimmed past the rows of handmade suits without thinking.
The charcoal Tom Ford. The navy Armani. The black Brioni, still carrying the faint scent of gala perfume.
Ghosts of a different kind.
He grabbed a pair of worn dark jeans instead. A black T-shirt that didn't scream legacy. A battered jacket heavy enough for the coming wind. Old sneakers, scuffed and real.
Simple. Forgettable. Free.
He caught his reflection in the hall mirror.
Paused.
Still tall. Still lean and sharp in a way that spoke of old money and colder expectations.
But something in his eyes was different.
Not broken yet. Not healed either.
Cracked open. Breathing. Alive enough to hurt.
He wondered, fingertips brushing the glass.
If Mira would recognize him today. If she would see the difference. If he would.
The thought made him move.
No breakfast. No phone check. No messages returned.
The digital world could burn down for all he cared.
He shoved his phone deep into his pocket without looking at it. The cold metal felt foreign against his thigh. A chain he wasn't ready to cut, but one he wasn't willing to bow to either.
The doorman, who had known him as a boy and watched him grow into this man, gave him a startled once-over as he passed. Elias barely noticed.
He just stepped out into the bruised gray morning and let the cold slap against his skin. Let it wake him the way no alarm ever had. He moved with purpose, feeling the weight of the city's autumn air settle into his lungs.
The city was different today.
Rawer. Hungrier.
Steam curled from storm drains like breath from a wounded animal. Cracked sidewalks caught the littered leaves like forgotten dreams. The wind carried the smell of wet asphalt, fried food, and something faintly sweet — maybe roasting chestnuts from a vendor setting up early. The towers of glass receded behind him, swallowed by the mist.
And for the first time in as long as he could remember.
Elias Albrecht didn't know exactly where he was going.
He only knew he was following something that felt a hell of a lot like hope. And maybe, if he was lucky, he wouldn't be too late.
****
Outside, the city's autumn heart was beating — raw and unpolished.
The morning air bit at Elias's skin as he walked, crisp and full of that restless tension that only fall carried — like the world itself was holding its breath, balancing between beauty and decay.
The scent of rain on pavement mixed with the sharpness of burning leaves, something old and smoky curling into his lungs.
Scarlet and gold leaves skittered across the cracked sidewalks like tiny scraps of fire, chased by the wild fingers of the wind. They piled in corners, caught in rusted fences, plastered wet against battered brick walls.
Steam curled up from manholes and subway grates, wisping like ghosts into the mist-heavy air.
It was beautiful in a broken, careless way.
Not clean. Not curated. Not for show.
And it made Elias feel more awake — more alive — than any marble conference table or boardroom ever had.
He tucked his hands deeper into his jacket pockets as he walked, feeling the city breathe around him. Feeling the stubborn pulse of life in the places no one ever bothered to polish for the tourists.
The address Mira had given him pulled him farther from the glass towers of his old world. Deeper into the forgotten veins of the city.
Past shuttered Laundromats where the neon signs still flickered hopefully against boarded-up windows. Past parks with sagging swing sets that creaked like tired bones, stubborn against the growing cold. Past shop fronts covered in layers of graffiti that screamed color and rage into the grayness.
He passed people hunched against the autumn chill — wrapped in mismatched jackets, dragging carts filled with the detritus of lives no one ever noticed. Their faces were lined with maps of places he had never dared to imagine.
Before last night, he might not have seen them at all. Before Mira, he would've walked past, head down, eyes blind.
But now, he saw them. And the weight of that seeing wrapped tighter around his ribs with every step.
He reached the old train station just as the mist began to thin into a dull silver morning.
The station sagged under its own history. Stone cracked like dried riverbeds, rust bleeding from the iron gates, tattered posters clinging in layers like dead skin.
It should have been abandoned and forgotten.
Instead, it stood there.
Weathered. Wounded. Unbroken.
Still trying.
Just like her.
And then he saw her. Sitting on a low wall near the entrance, feet swinging idly, sipping from a crumpled paper coffee cup like she had all the time in the world.
Mira.
No makeup. No pretense.
Her green jacket looked too big for her small frame, sleeves covering her hands almost to the knuckles. A fraying scarf was wrapped haphazardly around her neck, its ends fluttering slightly in the restless wind.
She looked up and spotted him, her face lighting not with surprise, but with certainty.
Like she knew he would come.
And somehow, impossibly, he realized she had.
The smile she gave him wasn't bright or polished or baited.
It was small. Soft. Real.
And it hit him harder than anything had in years. It made his chest ache in a way he couldn't explain. It made him realize how long it had been since someone had been genuinely glad just to see him.
"You came," she said, hopping lightly off the wall, coffee cup dangling from her fingers.
Elias shrugged, trying for nonchalance he didn't feel.
"Yeah," he said, his voice a little rougher than intended.
"Against my better judgment."
Mira's grin sharpened, flashing, and she brushed past him with a light bump of her shoulder.
"Good," she said breezily.
"Your better judgment's been lying to you for years."
And just like that, they were moving. Side by side, feet crunching over damp leaves, shoulders brushing occasionally in the narrow sidewalk without either of them making a big deal out of it.
They didn't talk much at first. They didn't need to.
The silence between them wasn't heavy. It wasn't awkward.
It was something else entirely:
A beginning.