The warmth of the sun felt almost cruel.
Ren blinked against the brightness as he stumbled down the uneven slope, shoes slapping stone, hands out to steady himself on the low walls that edged the hillside. The air smelled of warm dust and olive leaves, with the faintest trace of something sweet—flowers, maybe, or fruit. He had no idea what trees surrounded him. The bark peeled in curling strips, and the leaves were nothing like the ones near Shiohama.
Everything felt thin. Dry. Too exposed.
He tugged his hood lower over his forehead and adjusted the backpack strap across his chest. His coat was still damp from the tunnel, clinging to his shoulders. Mud flecked his jeans. The flashlight thudded softly against his side with each step. The paper map inside rustled when he moved.
He must have looked like he crawled out of a crypt.
He passed the first house carefully—old stone, shuttered windows, and a small fenced garden with an empty clothesline swaying in the breeze. He kept his head down and moved fast, staying close to the shadow of the wall.
The street ahead curved into a narrow, shaded road lined with arched alcoves and low brick tunnels. Ancient aqueducts—some intact, others fractured and overgrown—crossed over it in lazy, looping bridges. A modern streetlamp buzzed quietly, untouched by the world’s strangeness.
Then he heard the voice.
“-s’enregistre bien, mais la lumière est de la merde. Attends—recule un peu—voilà.”
A girl’s voice. Young. Confident. Teasing someone. French.
He ducked quickly behind a stone outcropping, chest rising and falling fast. His Japanese brain scrambled to match words, catching only tone and fragments.
She was filming something.
A documentary crew?
He peeked around the edge of the wall.
There—across the courtyard below—stood a girl in cargo pants, black boots, and a gray hoodie. She was fiddling with a camera on a tripod, her black curls tied back in a low, messy knot. A backpack sat open beside her, spilling notebooks and tangled cords.
Behind her, a collapsed aqueduct tunnel dipped into shadow, half-buried in rubble and ivy. A rusted sign on the arch read:
“Ancien tunnel – interdit d’entrée.”
Ren hesitated. His throat was dry. His French—poor. His English—worse. But she looked…
Normal.
Not a threat. Not panicked. Just busy.
And Ren needed someone.
Anyone.
He stepped out from behind the wall, slowly.
His boots scraped the stone.
The camera girl froze.
Her head whipped around.
Eyes locked onto him.
She stared. A second too long.
Then stepped back.
“Euh… bonjour?” she called, cautiously.
Ren raised both hands.
“Not… bad,” he said, voice hoarse. “I—” He coughed. “Not… hurt.”
She didn’t relax.
“Tu parles français?” she asked, slow and careful.
He shook his head. “No. No… français. Japan.” He tapped his chest. “Shiohama. Japan.”
She blinked. “You’re Japanese?”
He nodded, grateful for the English.
She frowned.
“You… came from where?”
Ren turned slightly, pointing back at the ivy-covered ridge behind him.
“The tunnel. I… fell. I go. I walk. Long time. Now here.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“What?”
He looked around, desperate for a way to explain.
Then he knelt, pulled the map from his bag, and gently unfolded it across the flat stone between them.
The paper was stained, rippled from moisture, but the ink held.
Lines. Arrows. Spirals.
He tapped a mark labeled “Shiohama.”
Then dragged his finger across the page to the far edge, where “Arènes” was circled.
Then he pointed at her. Then at the sign behind her.
“Arènes.”
She glanced at the sign.
Back at the map.
Then at him.
Her eyes widened a little.
Ren nodded, hopeful.
“I… don’t know,” he said, quietly.
He tapped his temple. “No understand. Just… tunnel.”
She stepped forward cautiously, glancing down at the paper.
“You walked here. From Japan. In a tunnel,” she said, half to herself, half in disbelief.
Ren nodded again.
“I think.”
She folded her arms.
Then smiled—tight, confused, maybe amused.
“You’re completely insane,” she said in French.
But she didn’t walk away.
Layla squatted beside the map, the camera forgotten for the moment, one hand pushing curls from her face, the other hovering just above the paper like she wasn’t sure it was safe to touch.
She studied it.
The lines were clearly hand-drawn—no grid, no scale. The ink was smudged in places but still legible. There were notes in Japanese, some in English, and… was that Cyrillic in the margin?
She looked up at the boy again.
He was… what, sixteen? Maybe seventeen? His hair was soaked and sticking to his forehead, and his coat looked like it had been dragged through a swamp. Mud crusted the hem of his jeans. One boot was untied. There was a thin scratch across the bridge of his nose.
But he wasn’t trembling or panicking. He was watching. Quiet. Alert.
She raised an eyebrow.
“I’m Layla,” she said, slow and clear.
She pointed to herself.
“Layla.”
He nodded, hesitant.
“Ren,” he replied, then added, “Kisaragi.”
“Ren.” She tested it. “Okay.”
She stood up and brushed her hands off on her pants. The tripod stood beside her, the camera still recording. She reached up, paused it, and stepped back to him, crouching to look at the map again.
“You say… tunnel,” she said, tapping the ground. “You came through… here?”
Ren nodded.
He crouched next to her and pulled the flashlight from his coat pocket. He tapped it on, aimed it at the shadowed archway behind her.
“That,” he said, then pointed behind him toward the distant ridge. “From there. Long.”
Layla followed his beam to the tunnel entrance. The arch was sealed off with an old iron gate, twisted open at one edge. Crumbling. It looked like it hadn’t been maintained in decades.
“You came out of that?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
She folded her arms.
“Not possible.”
He shrugged, face calm. “Yes.”
She stared at him, then shook her head, muttering something under her breath.
Ren squinted. “What?”
“Nothing,” she said in English. “Just thinking.”
She walked back toward her bag and pulled out a bottle of water. Without asking, she tossed it toward him. He caught it awkwardly, unscrewed the cap, and drank. Fast.
Then he coughed. A lot.
Layla smirked. “Maybe not all tunnel water.”
Ren wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Merci,” he said, clumsy but sincere.
She watched him another second, then bent to rummage through her pack again. Pulled out a spiral notebook and flipped to a page already filled with notes in neat, angular handwriting.
“I’m doing a school project,” she said, gesturing around them. “Old aqueducts. Hidden systems under Marseille. Ruins. Stuff no one looks at anymore.”
He watched her, eyes narrowing slightly.
“Systems?” he repeated.
“Yeah. Sewers. Water tunnels. Drainage. You know…” She pointed at the map. “Like this.”
His eyes widened.
He pulled the map closer and tapped at a specific marking—a triangle with curved lines coming off each side. Then he traced the route back to where it started—Shiohama. He drew a line connecting the two points.
Layla frowned.
“Wait… that’s—” She reached into her own bag and pulled out a folded city survey map, creased and torn at the edges. She spread it beside his.
For a moment, they both stared.
One of Ren’s spirals lined up with a symbol on her map. Not an identical match—but close.
Too close.
She looked at him.
“You drew this before you got here?”
He nodded slowly.
“My grandfather. He draw. Old map.”
She tapped the overlapping symbol.
“This is a decommissioned aqueduct node. Sealed since 1954.”
Ren didn’t understand every word, but he understood the tone.
And the pause in her voice.
She looked up at him again, eyebrows drawn.
“How?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
They sat in silence for a moment.
The breeze passed between them.
Somewhere up the street, a moped buzzed lazily past, its engine echoing against the stone.
Then she broke the silence.
“You still look like hell.”
Ren squinted. “Hell?”
She pointed at his coat.
“Wet. Dirty. Torn. Come on.”
She started walking, then turned back when she realized he hadn’t moved.
“I’m not calling the cops. Yet. But if you’re lying, I’ll find out.”
Ren stared.
Then stood.
And followed her.
Layla’s apartment wasn’t actually an apartment—it was a converted artist’s studio inside a dusty old municipal storage building near the outer rim of the city’s historic district. Half the place was concrete, half exposed stone, with metal piping that ran overhead like someone had started building a factory and gave up halfway through.
She pushed open a wide, squeaky door and gestured for Ren to step inside. He hesitated on the threshold, unsure if he was allowed to cross into whatever private space this was. She raised an eyebrow at his hesitation, then waved impatiently.
“Come in. You look like you crawled out of a well.”
He did.
The inside smelled like paint, old paper, and drying laundry. A dozen rolled-up maps leaned against the wall beside an open desk scattered with highlighters and empty mugs. Her backpack landed on the floor with a dull thump, followed by her jacket and keys.
Ren stood by the door like a lost suitcase.
She pointed toward the bathroom. “Shower’s in there. Clothes in that bin.”
Then added, dry: “If I hear the window open, I’m calling the cops.”
Ren raised his hands slightly in mock surrender.
“Not run,” he said.
“Great,” she muttered, and flopped into a rolling chair by the desk.
Ten minutes later, Ren emerged barefoot, hair wet, dressed in a soft black t-shirt and worn gray sweatpants at least one size too big.
Layla glanced up from her screen.
“You look… slightly more human.”
He nodded politely.
She turned the laptop so he could see her screen: side-by-side scans of underground aqueduct blueprints and a blurry photo of a hand-drawn spiral she’d taken years ago from one of her father’s folders.
Ren leaned in.
That spiral—three looping lines bending inward to a central circle—matched the marking carved into the ceiling of the tunnel he’d passed through.
His eyes widened. He stepped forward and mimicked the spiral in the air with his finger.
“That,” he said.
Layla turned toward him, frowning.
“You’ve seen this?”
He nodded. “In tunnel. Stone. Same.”
“Where?”
He pointed to the ceiling.
“Above. In middle. Like… mark. Big.”
Layla narrowed her eyes.
“My father used to keep this symbol in his old notes,” she said. “It wasn’t in any of the official engineering plans—just doodled in margins. Over and over. My aunt said it was nothing. But now…”
She leaned back, tapping the pencil against her cheek.
Ren watched her carefully. The tension in his body hadn’t faded. He still stood like someone ready to bolt—but now, he was beginning to believe he wasn’t entirely alone in what he knew.
Layla stood up, walked to one of the side cabinets, and pulled out a thick folder. She opened it and spread several old papers across the desk. Most were blueprints and soil reports, but one was a photocopy of a page from a personal journal.
She tapped a phrase written in faded cursive:
"Nexus nodes connect below known aquifers. Always one spiral nearby."
Ren looked up at her, face pale.
She met his eyes.
“I don’t think you’re lying,” she said.
He exhaled, relief passing over his face like a wave.
“But,” she continued, “you could still be insane.”
Ren blinked.
She cracked a smile. “Joking.”
Then, more softly, she added, “Sort of.”
She stepped closer, holding one of the diagrams up beside his grandfather’s map. The alignment was rough but suggestive. Spirals. Arènes. Tunnel cuts. Pressure junctions.
“This isn’t just under one city,” she said. “This is everywhere.”
Ren looked down at the spiral again.
His grandfather hadn’t drawn it as decoration.
He’d drawn it as a marker.
A warning.
The sun had begun to slip down behind the rooftops by the time Layla locked her studio and led Ren down the street.
They walked in silence, side by side, his steps uneven in the borrowed sweatpants, hers brisk and purposeful. The sky burned faint orange at the edges, fading to slate blue above the buildings. Evening in Marseille felt almost like a different planet—drier, cooler, the wind laced with salt and distant traffic.
Ren kept glancing at signs, storefronts, the light posts—all of it foreign, but oddly clean. There were no typhoon sirens, no rusting vending machines, no storm drains steaming after a flood. Just a regular city, buzzing into evening like nothing strange had happened.
“Where we go?” he asked, hesitant.
“Storage unit,” Layla replied. “I keep my older gear there—lights, clothes, backup drives.”
Ren nodded and kept walking.
A few blocks later, they reached a squat concrete building pressed between a bakery and a closed bookstore. Layla unlocked a green rolling door, flicked on a bare bulb overhead, and waved him in.
The room was small and cluttered with crates, softboxes, tripods, folded reflectors, and plastic bins stacked like Tetris pieces. A rolled-up sleeping mat sat in one corner next to a folding chair.
“Sorry it’s a mess,” she muttered. “It’s not usually an international transit lounge.”
Ren stepped carefully inside, scanning the shelves.
She pulled a long plastic bin from beneath a folding table and popped the lid open.
“Dry hoodie, spare socks,” she said, tossing clothes onto the mat. “Nothing stylish, but not wet.”
He smiled faintly and nodded. “Thank you.”
While he changed behind a hanging tarp curtain, Layla powered up her portable monitor and pulled the memory card from her camera. The file from earlier was labeled by timecode:
“14_42_Tunnel_Pan_Shot_A.”
She clicked play.
The footage showed the ivy-covered tunnel mouth—static shot, wind brushing leaves, her voice faint in the background.
Then, just as Ren had said he’d emerged—
A low, brief distortion in the audio.
Like a gust.
And something else—barely perceptible. The camera had shifted. Not jostled, but pulled. A subtle twitch. Then silence again.
Layla leaned closer.
Replayed it.
The gust didn’t sound like wind. It was wetter. Like air exhaling from underwater. And the vibration in the mic—she recognized it. Not electromagnetic. Not mechanical.
Pressure shift.
“Ren,” she called.
He stepped out from behind the curtain, now in a gray hoodie and clean socks, hair towel-dried and sticking up in the back.
She turned the screen toward him.
“Watch this.”
They watched together as the tunnel played back, and the slight distortion hit again.
He pointed.
“There. When I come out.”
She nodded.
“That’s not wind. That’s release.”
She pulled up the waveform.
“This—” she pointed to a spike in the graph “—is an air displacement. The kind you get when pressure equalizes. But this wasn’t from outside. It came from the tunnel.”
Ren frowned. “Pressure?”
She nodded again.
“Like something let go inside. Or something opened before it should.”
He pointed at the screen. “I come from there. It push me.”
She turned slowly toward him.
“So whatever this system is… it doesn’t just connect cities.”
Ren finished her thought without realizing it.
“It moves.”
Layla stared at him, caught off guard.
Then nodded slowly.
“You’re not wrong.”
She stood, walked to a stack of notebooks, and rifled through them until she found a printout—her father's old pressure diagrams, ancient and confusing. Spirals again. Flow arrows. Curved pipes.
Ren pulled his grandfather’s map from his pack and laid it beside hers.
And there, as they lined up the two—
Not perfectly.
But close.
Curves aligned. Junctions repeated. Symbols mirrored.
As if one map showed the veins.
And the other—showed the breath.
The two maps lay side by side on the crate like layers of skin peeled back from the same strange creature.
Ren’s was smaller, older, hand-drawn and personal—his grandfather’s annotations etched in dense strokes of ink and faint pencil scribbles. Layla’s was a collection of stitched-together municipal records, geological survey pages, and satellite topography. Cold. Institutional. Massive.
But where they met—where symbols aligned, where the same looping glyph appeared across countries, oceans, and languages—the system came alive.
Layla dragged a finger across both pages, tracing an invisible pulse that wound from Shiohama’s ancient flood tunnels, through the strange aqueduct node at Arènes, and down into the Mediterranean basin where no city currently stood.
“This shouldn’t be possible,” she said, mostly to herself. “I’ve gone through these archives for months. Years. I thought this stuff was junk—ghosts of old blueprints, legends, mistakes.”
Ren knelt beside her, still silent.
He didn’t know the French, but he understood the tone: disbelief, wonder, the beginning of fear.
She tapped the spiral again. “This showed up in a Moroccan dig report my dad had from 2015. And in a declassified document from Lisbon. Same pattern. Always carved above sealed water tunnels. Never documented by the city itself.”
Ren slowly unfolded another section of the map, revealing a set of notes in Japanese.
Layla leaned closer.
“What does this say?”
He read aloud, slowly, translating as best he could.
“‘Water chooses no path. It remembers what was dug. Even when men forget.’”
Layla sat back on her heels.
“You know what this means, right?”
Ren blinked at her.
“This isn’t a sewer system. It’s not just drainage or runoff. It’s a structure. A physical, global network. Something old.”
Ren nodded, quietly.
She looked at him for a long second.
Then she stood and pulled the camera case off the shelf, tossing it onto the mat.
“You’re not going to the police,” she said.
Ren tilted his head. “Police?”
“You don’t have ID, your story makes no sense, and if someone official finds out where you came from…” She trailed off. “They won’t ask questions. They’ll bury you.”
Ren said nothing.
Layla turned to him, hands on her hips.
“Which means—for now—you’re staying here. Out of sight. Under the radar. Got it?”
He hesitated. Then nodded once.
“Got it,” he echoed, carefully.
She sighed.
Then pulled another large binder from the shelf and set it beside the maps.
“If your grandfather figured some of this out, maybe we can find where he got it. You said he worked for the city?”
Ren nodded. “Engineer. Retired. He… watched drains.”
Layla smirked faintly.
“Well, your drain-watching grandpa might’ve uncovered the biggest buried infrastructure system on Earth.”
She turned back to the map and frowned.
“Or the biggest trap.”
Outside, the wind blew through the narrow streets of Marseille.
And beneath them, in the dark—
Something shifted.