The Serpent Eating it's Own Tail

Eren's heart hammered against his ribs. This was it. He had rehearsed a dozen speeches, each more insane than the last. "Hello, I'm a man from another world who got stuck in your novel." He'd be locked in an asylum. He needed something else. Something plausible.

He pushed back his chair, the scrape of wood loud in the relative quiet. He walked over to the bar, standing a few feet from the man.

"Excuse me," Eren said, his voice hoarser than he intended. "You look like you're with the city police." It was a terrible gambit, a shot in the dark.

The man turned, his expression unreadable. "And why would you think that?"

"Just a sense," Eren said, forcing himself to meet the man's gaze. "You have the look of a man who's looking for something. Or someone. And I have… a problem. A strange one."

Dunn's eyes narrowed slightly. He gestured with a gloved hand toward a more private booth. "Tell me."

Eren sat, his hands clasped on the sticky table. "My name is Eren. I woke up here about a month ago. I don't know how. My memories before that are… fractured. A blur. Just flashes of another place, another life. I can't explain it." The lie felt clumsy on his tongue, but it was the best he could do. A man with amnesia was a tragedy; a man from another reality was a lunatic.

Dunn listened without interruption, his face a mask of polite interest. When Eren finished, there was a long silence. The pub's noises seemed to fade into the background.

"These 'flashes'," Dunn said finally, his voice low and even. "Do they involve… things that defy logic? Impossible colours, whispers without sources, a sense of vast, uncaring space?"

The question hit Eren like a physical jolt. He had felt it. That pull from the City of Silver, the sheer alien nature of this world's metaphysics. He had dismissed it as part of the transfer, but Dunn described it with unnerving accuracy. He nodded, unable to speak.

Dunn's expression didn't change, but a new tension entered his shoulders. He reached into his inner coat pocket and pulled out a small, silver pocket watch. He didn't check the time. Instead, he held it on the table, its polished surface reflecting the dim gaslight. "Look at your reflection, Mr. Eren. Tell me what you see."

Eren leaned forward. He saw himself: pale, gaunt, with the fear of the past month etched around his eyes. But there was something else. A faint, almost imperceptible shimmer around the outline of his head, like heat haze rising from summer asphalt. It was there for a second, then gone.

"As I suspected," Dunn murmured, snapping the watch shut. The metallic click was final. "You've been… contaminated. Touched by something from beyond the fog. What you're experiencing isn't amnesia. It's the aftershock of a reality you weren't meant to survive. The police aren't equipped to handle your kind of problem, Mr. Eren. But I might know someone who is."

He slid a plain, white card across the table. On it, embossed in black ink, was a single image: a coiled serpent eating its own tail. The same symbol from the margins of Eren's books.

"I am an appraiser of antiques and a mediator for those with… unique afflictions," Dunn said, standing up. "Come to this address tomorrow after dusk. Come alone. And do not, under any circumstances, speak of our meeting to anyone. Your memories are not fractured. They are a liability. Until we can determine their nature, it's best you pretend you don't have them at all."

He placed a few coins on the table to cover Eren's ale, tipped his hat, and walked out of the pub, leaving Eren alone with the card, the cold dregs of his beer, and a terror that was slowly, terrifyingly, being replaced by a sliver of hope.

***

The address on the card led Eren to a quiet, respectable street in the city's Core District. The buildings here were made of cleaner stone, the gas lamps brighter, the air less thick with the stench of the docks. It was a world away from the squalor of the East District, but the fog was still a constant, a shroud that muted all sound and colour.

The house was a three-story terraced residence, indistinguishable from its neighbours except for a small, polished brass plaque beside the door. It bore the same ouroboros symbol. Eren's knock was answered not by Dunn, but by a young woman with sharp, intelligent eyes and hair tied back in a severe bun. She wore a simple but well-made grey dress.

"Eren?" she asked, her tone business-like. He nodded. "I'm Frye. Dunn is waiting for you. Follow me."

The inside of the house was a revelation. It wasn't opulent, but it was meticulously clean and organized. The air smelled of old paper, beeswax, and a faint, antiseptic herbal scent. There were no personal touches, no family photographs, no clutter.

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