The world was ending again. Not with fire or floods, but with convenience. The kind that sneaks in, rearranges the furniture, and leaves you thinking it was always like this.

Streets remembered layouts no one had drawn. Towers stood where ruins had been; too clean to be real but too familiar to be questioned. Something underneath it all had not been fixed. Only covered.

The one behind it all called himself the Archivist. He didn't want to rule the world. He wanted to curate it. He did not burn cities. He simply removed the reasons they had ever crumbled.

A man appeared without context and kept showing up. He had no passport. No paper trail. No version of history that included his presence.

Something was wrong when he arrived. He stood in a city that used to be rubble and looked at a place called Café Null. The whole block felt assembled rather than built.

Across the square, someone smiled like they'd just solved a puzzle and realised they were holding the wrong lid.