Neon Covenant Alley

He bent low, striped sweater catching the amber shopglow, the cardboard plea stark—WHERE VOJTA?—as if words alone might coax him from serrated shadows. Bioluminescent fungi pressed against cobblestones, breathing pale blue sighs in the hush between footfalls. Lantern-warm windows framed silhouettes weaving in slow ritual, limbs studded with circuitry, some writing ledgers, some gesturing in frail arcs, all sworn keepers of secrets older than the towers spiraling skyward. I taste metal on the air, faint and sour like rain on rusted tin. Then: vendors shouting, spores drifting, masks glinting, striped sleeves trembling. I kept watch because someone had to, because in their fevered glow and the vine-choked cornices above I feel the fragile tether of oath. A world adjusting mid-breath, yet holding to some solemn spine. But his name clings brittle to the paper and dust—still no sign, not a whisper, and Vojta does not step out from this electric dusk.