STEP BROTHER DEAREST
Chapter 130
The city pulsed with perfect rhythm. Every reflection bent as intended, every shadow obeyed, every sound cue followed the patterns we dictated. The ghost—once untouchable, once the master of hesitation—now bent alongside us, its centuries of work feeding into the pulse we had shaped.
Yet perfection is never permanent.
It came first as a ripple, faint enough to feel like a flaw in perception. A shadow stretched too far across a conduit, a reflection that bent a fraction slower than expected, an echo that lingered one beat longer than it should have.