The rooftop bar was half empty, the kind of place where the music was soft enough to let people lie to each other in peace. Strings of yellow lights floated above the tables, trembling in the wind. From up here, the city stretched endlessly a sea of neon and shadows, beating like a living thing. **Amelia** stirred her drink, watching the ice spin like time refusing to stop. She hadn’t planned to come back to this city. Or this bar. But some ghosts don’t stay buried just because you leave. “Still prefer whiskey over wine,” a voice said behind her. She didn’t have to turn around to know who it…

The city never truly slept only pretended to. Even past midnight, the old central station breathed with the rhythm of fluorescent lights and the echo of footsteps that didn’t belong to anyone. **Nora** sat on a bench near Platform 9, her suitcase between her legs, cigarette burning low. The clock above the ticket counter was broken stuck forever at 12:17. She wasn’t waiting for a train. She was waiting for him. **Julian** always came late, always with that same careless grin and smell of whiskey. Tonight, though, he looked different suit wrinkled, tie loose, eyes clouded with something that looked too much like regret. “You came,” he said, voice rough.…

The rain started just before midnight soft, deliberate, like fingers tracing the skin of the city. From his apartment window on the twelfth floor, **Eli** watched the streets blur into ribbons of red and gold. Down below, the club signs pulsed through the mist like veins of neon. The city after dark had always been his muse and his undoing. He took another sip of bourbon, the ice long gone, and stared at the blank canvas waiting for him. He hadn’t painted in months. Not since *her*. A knock echoed through the silence. Three times. Slow. When he opened the door, **Mara** stood there drenched, shivering, eyes glinting like wet…