There was no Grayharbor behind the salt-frosted wall.
The instant Mia passed through, the dock vanished from her senses.
The horns, the voices, even the vibration of the core furnace ceased together.
Her next step found empty air.
She dropped, catching a raised metal edge with both hands before the darkness could take her.
There was no floor below.
Blue lines crossed and recrossed through the void, extending farther than she could see.
Upside-down houses, streetlamps, and human silhouettes hung between them.
Some had been cut in half.
Others repeated the same motion forever, scenery broken down after a performance and thrown carelessly into storage.
Mia looked up.
Xinyi hung from the edge of a transparent platform six feet away, kicking at nothing.
The camera-eye floated loyally above her.
Its colored messages had dissolved into white static.
“Tutorial lady.” Xinyi forced a smile.
“Little help?” Mia held the metal edge with one hand and felt along her belt with the other.
The quarantine cases were there.
So were the ledger and the wrench.
Only the copper bell that recalled Descenders gave no response.
“Stop struggling,” Mia said.
“There is a handhold three inches above your right hand.” “I can’t see it!” Xinyi shouted.
“You can now,” Mia said.
Mia threw the wrench.
It struck the transparent platform with a bright metallic note, outlining its edge for an instant.
Xinyi caught the handhold, hauled herself up, and rolled onto her back.
“Thanks.” Xinyi lay there breathing hard.
“They went all out on this hidden map.” “This location is not registered as part of Grayharbor,” Mia replied.
“Then it’s the backend,” Xinyi said.
“What is a backend?” Mia asked.
Xinyi turned her head, studying Mia as though trying to decide whether the question belonged to a new dialogue tree.
Mia did not wait for the answer.
She worked sideways along the metal edge.
When she came within reach, she caught Xinyi’s outstretched hand and pulled herself onto the platform.
The transparent surface beneath them was barely wide enough for three people to stand shoulder to shoulder.
Screens floated ahead, one behind another.
Some used the common script Mia knew.
Others were crowded with symbols she had never seen.
Her name appeared on the largest screen.
[Starfall Epoch Version 2.0: STARFIRE EXPEDITION] [SCENE-CLEANUP LIST] [Region: Grayharbor] [Reasons for Removal: Excessive onboarding time; low scene utilization; obsolete art assets; concentrated negative player feedback.] [Removal Method: Destroy during the new opening star-beast event.
Reuse ruins as part of the expedition front.] Mia stared at the word destroy.
Grayharbor’s outer wall was old.
The Seventh Dock leaked during the rainy season, and a steam line in the southern ward burst once a month.
Descenders complained that the city was gray, the streets were confusing, and the shops sold nothing useful.
But Grayharbor leaked.
It rusted.
On winter nights, people warmed their hands against its pipes.
No piece of equipment knew how to be alive in all those ways.
“Can you see this?” Mia asked.
Xinyi was already on her feet, waving a hand through the screen.
“Nothing but garbage text.
Stream’s scrambled too.” She turned toward her camera.
“Can anyone hear me?
Type one if—never mind.
I can’t see a thing.” She could not see it.
Mia read on.
The environmental cleanup was followed by character handling.
[Tutorial Guide MIA GREYLIGHT: DELETE] [Narrative Function: Protect Descender during star-beast invasion.
Deliver high-emotional-value death.
Reinforce player hostility toward new-version antagonist.] There was even a completed storyboard beside the entry.
Fire stained Grayharbor red.
Mia knelt beside the collapsed tutorial sign with a star-beast’s black bone spur driven through her chest.
A faceless Descender held her.
She raised one bloody hand as if to touch them, only for it to fall before it reached their face.
Her assigned last words appeared beneath the image.
[I’m sorry.
I won’t be able to guide you through the road ahead.] Mia looked at the line for a long time.
“Hey.” Xinyi came closer.
“You can see something, can’t you?” Mia did not answer.
She found Tasha Rivet on the list.
[Purification Works Supervisor: Remove with scene.
Mechanical prosthetic may be retained as ruin loot to trigger an Old City memory.] Amon did not have a name.
He had only a category.
[Low-value ambient NPCs: Batch delete.] The dockworkers.
The patrol officers.
The old woman who brought Mia the first loaf from every morning’s bake.
The one-eyed dog that slept behind the tutorial sign.
All of them fit inside two words.
Batch delete.
Mia reached for the screen and tried to scroll.
Her palm passed through it.
More data opened behind the list.
[Scheduled Deployment: 72:00:00] The number changed.
[71:59:59] [71:59:58] Xinyi still saw nothing.
She had crouched beside one of the blue lines and was probing it with a finger.
Her fingertip passed through the light.
Far away, an inverted house flickered.
“Definitely a scene cache,” Xinyi said, delighted.
“Is this where NPCs go when we’re not looking?
Can you take me to the equipment repository?” Mia turned to her.
“Do you know how to leave this place?” Mia asked.
“Clip back out the way we came,” Xinyi replied.
“And if the wall has stabilized?” Mia asked.
“Kill myself and respawn,” Xinyi answered.
The answer came without hesitation.
Xinyi drew one of her narrow blades and reversed it with practiced ease.
Mia caught her wrist.
“Please do not harm yourself in front of me,” Mia said.
“I’ll respawn,” Xinyi replied.
Mia did not release her.
“That does not oblige me to stand here and let you do it.” Xinyi raised an eyebrow.
Static swarmed madly beside the camera-eye.
“You have a lot more dialogue today,” Xinyi said.
“This is supplemental guidance for safety question thirteen.” Mia let go.
“Please look for another exit.” She needed to get the Descender out first.
The cleanup list claimed Mia would die for a Descender.
At present, a line of text did not own her strongly enough to make that true.
Xinyi’s wall-clip had shown her this place, and Mia needed to know whether the same sequence would work again.
More urgently, she could not test what the screens allowed while Xinyi stood beside her.
They followed the transparent platform.
At its far end, an unstable doorway shivered in the air.
The dock’s noise came faintly through it.
On the way, Xinyi found a row of suspended character silhouettes.
She passed through them one by one, trying to trigger an interaction.
There were elders, children, and soldiers in city-defense uniforms.
A dim blue thread ran from each figure’s feet.
Mia recognized the old woman from the bakery.
The silhouette had no face.
A string of numbers had been stamped across its chest.
Its blue thread joined the point of light labeled GRAYHARBOR.
Grayharbor, in turn, connected to REGIONAL BATCH OBJECT.
“Can you see these people?” Mia asked.
“What people?” Xinyi put a hand through the baker’s shoulder.
“There’s nothing here but empty models.” Mia knocked her hand aside.
“Please don’t touch them again,” Mia said.
“Will that trigger something?” Xinyi asked.
“I don’t know,” Mia answered.
“Then why are you nervous?” Xinyi pressed.
Mia looked at the blue thread binding the woman to the city.
“Not knowing is not permission.” Xinyi shrugged, but she withdrew her hand.
As they passed the last group of models, the blue line brightened.
An old record opened in the air.
During Grayharbor’s fifth year, the baker had received a fixed morning routine.
Her first loaf of every day had been designated to increase the district’s sense of habitation.
If the character were lost, a generic elderly model could replace her.
A sense of habitation.
Mia remembered how the woman saved cracked loaves for the one-eyed dog.
On cold days, she gave homeless children an extra ladle of soup.
None of that appeared in the record.
The screen recognized only her function: she made the street look lived in.
Mia memorized the number on the silhouette.
If a list could reduce a person to decoration, Mia would have to find a way to make a name point back to the person who owned it.
Xinyi reached toward the doorway.
Her hand passed through.
“Found it,” Xinyi said.
She was about to step out when Mia called her back and removed the quarantine case from her belt.
“Your overloaded starcore,” Mia said.
Xinyi accepted it.
“You’re really giving it back?” “It helped you discover an error.
It remains dangerous.
Before you leave Grayharbor, take it to Ms.
Rivet for disposal,” Mia said.
“And if I don’t?” Xinyi asked.
Mia’s voice stayed pleasant.
“I will confiscate it again.” Xinyi laughed and crawled through the doorway.
Just before the camera-eye vanished, she looked back.
“See you soon, Forty-Seven.
I’m clipping in again.
Count on it,” Xinyi said.
The doorway narrowed rapidly behind her.
Mia stood alone above a warehouse of discarded worlds.
The countdown continued.
[71:47:21] She returned to the largest screen and read every line again, until she was certain she had misunderstood nothing.
Please report for your death in three days.
It was the last tutorial objective someone else had written for her.
Mia raised one hand.
For the first time, she gave a clear instruction an answer of her own.
“Declined.”