PART I - GRAYSCALE CITY
Copyright © [2025] by Cindy Angelique Fagegaltier. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations used in reviews, scholarly articles, or critical commentary, which must properly acknowledge the source.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is purely coincidental.
Preface
There was once a time when colour was truth.
Every hue carried a memory, every tone a name.
But the city forgot.
Somewhere between the pulse of trade lights and the hum of machinery, colour became currency — and when it could be sold, it could be stolen.
The first body appeared beneath the bazaar’s neon arches, drained until only grayscale remained.
A pair of RIDINHI headphones still clung to its ears, the faint shimmer of their logo pulsing a lifeless blue.
No sound leaked through — only static.
The air reeked of burnt pigment and metal dust.
Traders whispered of a killer who fed on spectra, who left nothing but silence where light had been.
Others said it wasn’t a killer at all — that the planet itself had begun to starve.
That Cinnabar’s heart, once molten red, had cooled into amber glass, reflecting nothing but its own decay.
Above the ringed world, ships drifted like fireflies, carrying their cargo of memories and sins.
And on the billboards between them, a mirrored face smiled down — changing subtly with the angle of the light, never quite the same twice.
The slogan shimmered in ten dialects: Feel Yourself Whole.
Somewhere beyond the glass, Kethrael stirred, tasting every look, every pause, every unguarded want.
And somewhere beyond their light, Calla dreamed again — a vision of colour breaking like water through the dark.
It opened her eyes, and through her, the world’s.
For what she saw was not meant for one mind alone — it was the memory of creation itself, waking from its sleep.
And somewhere within that chromatic void, a detective who could no longer see colour was about to learn that perception isn’t born in the eyes.
It’s born in the fractures between them.
Because in Cinnabar Valley, truth doesn’t die.
It only changes who can bear to see it.
