That massive steel palm slapped down with the whistling sound of rushing wind.
“To the left! That’s the entrance!”
In the spot where the giant hand had just burst from the earth, the silt had been overturned to reveal a black iron door embedded in the bottom of the riverbed. The doorframe was tangled with water weeds, and a reflective bronze mirror was set into the door panel, shimmering in the murky river water.
“Jump into that hole? Are you crazy?” Although Zebulon was cursing, his body was honest as he hiked up his robes and rushed toward it.
Vivian only felt the world go dark as the massive steel hand brushed past her head and smashed into the stone embankment beside her, sending stone fragments flying.
“Go on then!”
Before she could even react, she felt a kick to her backside. Cicero had kicked her directly toward that pitch-black opening.
The three of them tumbled through the door like dumplings falling into a pot.
*Bang!*
As the last person rolled inside, the iron door slammed shut behind them, sealing off the deafening roar and the howling river water outside.
*Urgh…*
Vivian sprawled on the ground and let out two dry heaves.
“This is the B-side of Paris…”
Cicero’s voice drifted down from above.
Vivian looked up and froze, her mouth hanging open wide enough to fit a light bulb.
If that thing just now had been a Transformer, then this place was a madhouse painted by Dali.
She was currently lying on a cobblestone street, but the street wasn’t beneath her feet—it was above her head… No, it was beneath her feet.
However, all the buildings were growing “downward” from the ground.
Above this world, in the position where the sky should be, was a vast, boundless expanse of deep cyan water. That water’s surface was like a massive layer of jelly covering the entire world. Through that “water-sky,” she could faintly see the blurry shadows of boat bottoms from the real world, looking like whales swimming through the clouds.
Light filtered down from the water-sky, refracting into a hazy, fluctuating net of light patterns cast across the entire inverted city.
Vivian cast a trembling glance downward.
It was a bottomless abyss.
If you were afraid of heights, this place would definitely make you drop dead on the spot. All the tall buildings, skyscrapers, and church spires that should have been standing tall were hanging like inverted stalactites, thrusting down into the infinite void below.
The smoke drifting from the chimneys of those hanging houses fell straight “down,” eventually dissipating into a deep blue mist that seemed to have no end.
“We… we ran down here, but… what about that old man?” Vivian gripped a nearby lamppost tightly, terrified that she would fall into the depths. She looked around but couldn’t see the old man who had been selling books by the river.
“That old man vanished a long time ago.” Zebulon was straightening his crooked collar, appearing unfazed by the scene.
“Huh?”
“This is a space composed of ‘historical sediment,'” Zebulon said, pointing at the inverted buildings.
“The city of Paris is too old. Hundreds of years of emotions and all that undigested historical junk have settled at the bottom of the Seine. The real world has no room for them, so they grew their own city within the reflections.”
Vivian tentatively let go with one hand and found that she didn’t fall.
In fact… her body felt excessively light.
She felt like a feather. The friction between the soles of her feet and the ground was pitifully low; the slightest movement felt like she was about to float away.
“If it’s sediment, shouldn’t it be very heavy?” Vivian asked in confusion.
She looked ahead.
There were actually “people” on those inverted streets.
They wore clothes from various eras; some wore leggings and ruffled collars, some wore tattered work clothes, and there were even noblewomen carrying hoop skirts. They were like actors in a silent film, hurrying along through this inverted city.
“That’s them.” Cicero pulled a cigarette from his pocket, but the air here was too damp. He struck a match several times, but it wouldn’t catch.
“In this world, gravity is subjective.”
Cicero turned around to look at Vivian, who was shuffling forward cautiously like a penguin. A mischievous smirk played across his lips.
“To put it simply, the more things you have on your mind—the heavier your guilt, the deeper your obsessions—the heavier you are. That allows you to stand more firmly in this inverted world.”
He pointed at the road beneath their feet.
“But for certain heartless people…”
Vivian blinked.
‘Heartless?’
She looked down at her toes.
That weightless sensation was growing stronger. The feeling of the soles of her feet treading on cotton caused the “death-seeking” spark in her heart to flare up.
“But I suggest you don’t—”
Cicero hadn’t finished his sentence.
Vivian had already excitedly jumped in place, wanting to test this low-gravity sensation.
“Wahoo—!”
Normally, this jump would have barely cleared 0.5 meters. But this world had almost no restraint on someone so “light-hearted.”
*Whoosh—!*
Vivian felt the ground vanish beneath her. She was launched like a little yellow bird from a slingshot.
The surrounding inverted buildings instantly stretched into blurred lines.
“Holy crap, ahhhh—!”
Vivian watched the rapidly approaching “water-sky,” her screams echoing throughout the City of Reflections.
*Thump!*
A muffled sound rang out.
Vivian slammed headfirst into the clouds above.
She punched a person-shaped hole through the cloud layer, shattering the surrounding mist.
“Help… help! I can’t stop!”
She flailed her limbs in mid-air like a drowning toad, still drifting upward. It looked like she was about to plunge headlong into that rippling water surface to have an intimate encounter with the bottom of a real-world boat.
Zebulon stared dumbfoundedly at the figure that had shrunk into a tiny black dot.
“…Does she really have nothing in her heart?” Zebulon muttered to himself. “Even an insect should have some survival anxiety, right?”
“Her head is probably only filled with what she’s having for dinner tonight.”
Cicero sighed.
With a flick of his wrist, the top of his black cane clicked open, and a silver grappling hook shot out.
*Zip—*
The hook was like a silver snake, accurately piercing through the clouds and snagging Vivian’s ankle.
“Get back down here!”
Cicero applied strength to his arm and gave a violent tug.
High in the air, Vivian felt her ankle tighten before she was yanked down like a kite with a snapped string, falling head-first.
“Boss! Catch me! Catch me!!”
Vivian watched the ground rushing toward her and squeezed her eyes shut in terror.
Cicero took a step to the side.
*Splat.*
Vivian hit the cobblestones beside Cicero’s feet like a flat piece of dough.
It was a hard fall, but strangely enough, it didn’t hurt much. Instead, it felt like she had landed on a sponge mattress.
“…You’re way too heartless.” Vivian sprawled on the ground, looking up with a resentful expression.
Cicero leisurely retracted the grappling hook. “Think about something heavy while you walk, and you won’t float up like a helium balloon.”
“Alright, you two.” Zebulon pointed toward the inverted long street ahead. “Since we’re down here, let’s get to work.”
The three of them set off again.
The streets of Reflected Paris were very quiet. Only the fluctuating light and shadows of the water ripples flowed across the buildings.
The translucent pedestrians ignored them, walking past as if they didn’t exist.
“Are these all former Parisians?” Vivian watched a soldier in a Napoleonic-era uniform pass through her body. It felt cold, like a draft of wind passing through a hallway.
“Most are projections of obsession,” Zebulon explained. “They don’t know they’re dead. they just keep repeating the last moments of their lives. Like that one over there…”
He pointed to a fat man by the side of the road who was constantly stuffing something from the air into his mouth.
“That one probably starved to death.”
Just as they turned a street corner and prepared to cross an inverted arched bridge.
“Wait.”
Cicero suddenly stopped, holding his cane out in front of Vivian.
The scene ahead had changed.
The street that should have been paved with cobblestones had suddenly turned into a massive mirror. The mirror stretched across the road, reflecting the rippling water-sky above and the three of them in distorted silhouettes.
“This mirror… where did it come from?” Vivian sensed something was wrong.
In the depths of that mirror’s surface, countless grayish-white figures slowly began to emerge.
Those figures became clearer and larger, as if they were stepping out from the other side of the glass.
*Clack, clack, clack.*
It was the sound of leather boots stepping through standing water.
The first figure stepped out of the mirror.
It was a man in an old blue military uniform. Although his body was translucent, the rusted rifle in his hands was incredibly real.
Then came a second, a third…
In the blink of an eye, the entire street was packed with blue uniforms.
They had no faces. Beneath those tattered military caps was nothing but a blur of mist.
The faceless soldier in the lead took a step forward. The sound of a rusted bolt being pulled back exploded in the deathly silent street.
“The road to the Belleville barricade…”
Hundreds of men whispered simultaneously, their voices raspy and dry.
“…how do we get there?”