Delirium -nikraria- [FHD - 2K]

When a mirror looks at you, you do not see yourself. You see every self you have ever failed to become.

I looked out the window. The canal was a spine. The cathedral was a skull. The fog was the exhalation of a sleeping god.

By Nikraria

She looked at me.

She is remembering you.

It started with the fog. Nikraria’s famous white breath, rolling in from the Sunken Quarter. The locals wear cloth masks dipped in vinegar and rosemary. “Keeps the memory worms out,” the innkeeper’s wife said, laughing. I did not laugh. I was here to map the old catacombs beneath the Cathedral of Unfinished Saints. A simple commission. Dry work.

I saw the —the thing for which the city is named, though no one speaks its name aloud. It was not a monster in the common sense. No claws, no fangs. It was a woman made entirely of broken mirrors, walking backward down the main canal. Where her feet touched the water, the water turned to cold fire. She was singing a lullaby about the birth of the moon. Delirium -Nikraria-

And if you see a woman made of mirrors walking backward on the water—

She is not hunting you.

My watch still ticks, but I no longer believe in hours. My hand is writing this, but I am not telling it what to say. Somewhere below, the child in the yellow coat is laughing. The mushroom is still in my pocket—or rather, my pocket is now a mushroom. The distinction no longer matters. When a mirror looks at you, you do not see yourself

The fog, however, had other plans.

The first thing you lose is the clock. Not your watch—that still ticks, a tiny brass heart against your wrist. No, you lose the sense of it. The difference between a minute and an hour dissolves like a sugar cube in hot tea.

And the mirror-woman? She was standing behind me. Smiling with a thousand cracked lips. I am back in my room now. The pier. The rust-smelling sea. The canal was a spine

And in Nikraria, during Delirium, that is far, far worse.