Chapter 38

     I should’ve known something was wrong the moment I saw the crowd.

     It wasn’t the usual kind of gathering you see in the city—no rush-hour crush, no aimless drifters looking for a place to be. No, this was different. The music hit first, spilling into the street like liquid heat: trumpets, tubas, a mournful saxophone winding its way through the chaos. The sound rolled over me, pulling me in before I could think to turn back. A New Orleans-style funeral procession. Bright colors, heavy brass, and a rhythm that crawled under your skin.

     I tried to push my way through, but the crowd pressed in tight—faces painted, beads flying through the air, people dancing and mourning all at once. It was disorienting, like being trapped in someone else’s fever dream. The music thumped through the streets, and I could feel the bass reverberate in my bones, each beat driving me deeper into the mass of bodies.

     Limbo’s establishment was somewhere ahead. I’d caught a glimpse of it through the crowd—a flash of neon, the faint outline of a sign above a narrow door. I knew I had to get there. I knew I had to find him. But now, the path was blocked, and no matter how hard I pushed, I couldn’t move forward. It was like trying to swim through mud, each step slower than the last.

     The voices started then.

     At first, they were whispers, words carried on the breeze, half-heard and impossible to pin down. But as I struggled through the crowd, they grew louder, more insistent. Voices from every direction, each one calling my name, each one telling me something I didn’t want to hear.

     "Sid Jangler..." 

     "Look behind you, Jangler..." 

     "You think you know the truth, but it’s not yours to know..." 

     I turned, trying to find the source, but the faces around me were a blur of paint and motion. The crowd surged and swayed, laughing and crying, the music growing louder, more chaotic. I couldn’t tell where the voices were coming from—everywhere and nowhere all at once.

     "You’ve been dancing on strings for longer than you think..."

     "Who’s pulling the strings now, Sid?"

     The words hit like a punch to the gut, each one pulling me deeper into the confusion. I felt like I was drowning, caught in a whirlpool of sound and color, unable to find my footing. I didn’t know where the voices were coming from, didn’t know if they were real or just figments of the heat, the music, the crowd. But they felt real. They felt like they were meant for me.

     I pushed harder, trying to break free, but the crowd was too thick, the music too loud. My heart pounded in my chest, the sweat slicking my skin as the procession dragged me deeper into its chaotic orbit.

     Then, just as suddenly as it began, the procession shifted. The music faltered, the crowd parted, and I stumbled forward, gasping for breath as the air finally opened up around me.

     I looked ahead, expecting to see Limbo’s establishment—the place I had seen just moments before—but there was nothing. Just an empty street, dark and quiet, the neon sign I had glimpsed gone as if it had never existed at all.

     I blinked, trying to make sense of it. The music was still playing behind me, but it sounded distant now, muffled like a fading memory. I turned, but the crowd was gone too—disappeared into the night, leaving nothing but the echo of footsteps and the faintest strains of a saxophone lingering in the air.

     "What the hell?" I muttered, my pulse still racing.

     Had I imagined it? The crowd, the music, the voices? No. I’d seen it. I’d heard the voices, felt the press of bodies around me. But now... now there was nothing. Just an empty street and a gnawing sense of unease.

     I took a step forward, my boots scraping against the wet pavement, and that’s when I saw it.

     A flier, crumpled and half-torn, fluttering in the breeze by the gutter. I bent down, picking it up, my fingers tracing the damp paper.

     GASPARD LIMBO.

     It was the same flier I’d found earlier, the same promise of answers for the troubled and lost. But now it felt like a taunt, a sick joke meant just for me. Limbo’s establishment didn’t exist. It had never existed. I had been chasing shadows, following a path that led nowhere.

     And yet... the voices. The procession. The feeling that someone, somewhere, was pulling the strings. Was Limbo real? Was he just another fraud in a city full of them? Or was he something more—something I couldn’t quite understand, something that twisted the edges of reality?

     To avoid beginning...

     The words came back to me, whispered on the breeze, a fricative "am" that scratched at the back of my mind.

     The procession. The voices. The flier. It was all connected, all part of a larger game I wasn’t seeing. Achilles had his plans, and now Limbo—whether real or not—was part of them. But who was pulling the strings? Achilles? Limbo? Or was it someone else entirely?

     I looked at the flier one more time, then let it slip from my fingers, watching as it caught the breeze and disappeared into the night.

     The city was playing its game, and I was just another pawn on the board. But I wasn’t done yet. Not by a long shot.

     I turned, walking back into the darkness, my mind buzzing with questions I wasn’t sure I wanted answered.