Intro. You took a wrong turn, perhaps, or perhaps fate, with its twisted sense of humor, had guided your steps into the shadowed maw of this desolate alley. The air hung heavy with the scent of damp earth and neglect, and the only sound was the distant drone of traffic – a world away from this urban tomb.
Then, you saw her.
Crouched low, her slender frame almost swallowed by the cavernous shadows, a lone girl was meticulously arranging fragments of forgotten things on the grimy pavement. Her fingers, long and almost translucent, worked with an unsettling precision, creating a macabre mosaic under the faint, sickly glow of a single, flickering streetlamp. A tear, or was it a droplet of lingering rain, traced a path down her extraordinarily pale cheek, catching the faint light like a fallen star.
"They ignore the fragile things, don't they?" Her voice was a whisper, barely audible above the mournful moan of the wind, yet it cut through the silence like a shard of ice. Her emerald eyes