He leaned forward. Gravity began tugging at his collar like the pull of a possessive lover. Far below, the expanse of asphalt striped with yellow lines waited patiently. Arka closed his eyes. His jaw muscles went completely slack. There was no prayer left. No string of childhood memories flashing before him like a scene from some cheap movie. His mind was filled with nothing but a silent echo. Empty. A soundless solitude.
One last breath.
Free.
Then reality spat him out once again.
Just as his right heel lifted from its rough foothold, the tip of his dress shoe caught on something. Hard. Extremely hard. Something strange clamped down on his sole with brutal force.
His balance shattered instantly.
The primate instinct buried in his spinal cord took over. The animal reflex that always refused to die. Arka's arms flailed wildly in the air, reaching for the wet night wind. Instead of gliding into the asphalt's embrace, his body was hurled backward.
Thud.
His tailbone slammed into the reinforced concrete floor. The impact sounded horrifying. A sharp ache spread like lightning, jolting up his spine until it stabbed the base of his neck. His breath broke off. Caught in his throat.
Damn it.
Even when it came to ending his life, the universe refused to cooperate.
Arka coughed violently. Thick cement dust that had settled for years forced its way into his mouth. It mingled with the taste of rust and the salt of rainwater. He curled up like a malformed fetus, clutching his violently trembling knees. His eyes flew open as he stared at the murky, starless night sky. Fear suddenly seized his chest. Was anyone there? A patrol guard who had heard him fall?
"Fuck..." he whispered brokenly. His voice was swallowed by the deafening roar of wind across the rooftop. "I just... had to jump... Why's it gotta be so damn difficult?"
He struggled to crawl back to his feet. His right palm, torn open earlier by the rusty fence, swept across the wet asbestos roofing. Leaving a messy red streak across the floor. The pain sharpened, throbbing brutally in time with his heartbeat. But it wasn't the wound that cut off the rest of his cursing.
His index finger touched something.
Not a sharp pebble. Not a shard of liquor bottle left behind by construction workers.
Its coldness was different. Not the chill of concrete absorbing the dampness of the night. This was an unfamiliar cold. Solid. Pure metal.
Arka dragged himself closer to a small recess near the roof's edge. The glow from the streetlights below reflected dimly, casting a strange shadow over an object embedded halfway in the old concrete pour.
A disk.
It was no larger than a ceramic dinner plate. Dark bronze, covered in a thick layer of corrosion with an unnatural texture. Its rim was lined with asymmetrical, blunt teeth. Arka narrowed his eyes and wiped the rain from his stinging lids. Apparently, the tip of his dress shoe had caught on one of the teeth jutting crookedly from the crack in the concrete.
Arka's common sense rebelled violently. This building project had been abandoned nearly ten years ago. The rooftop floor had been poured carelessly, riddled with rough cavities. So who had gone to the trouble of embedding a metal plate this precise here?
He reached out. Trembling. Torn between fear and a deranged curiosity.
He brushed the object's surface. It was covered in shallow engravings that made absolutely no sense. Not rows of Latin letters. Nor the ancient local script he had once seen in a museum during a school field trip. The markings looked more like malformed constellations. Interconnected, winding around one another to form a complex fractal pattern. Staring at it too long made Arka's eyes feel sick.
Then he felt it. There was a vibration in it.
Extremely faint. Rhythmic, almost matching his own heartbeat. Like the hum of dozens of bees trapped inside a thick glass jar.
Arka lowered his face toward the floor's surface. The storm began to pour again. Harsh drizzle slapped the side of his face. Yet an anomalous sight suddenly made his stomach cramp. For some reason, the raindrops did not fall straight when they neared the metal disk. The water bent. Curving slightly through empty air, as if an invisible repulsive veil were brushing every form of liquid away from its surface.
"What the hell is this..." Arka mumbled incoherently. His exhausted brain refused to process the law-defying physical phenomenon unfolding before his eyes.
He tried prying up the metal's edge with his right thumbnail. It was hard. The object was fused into the concrete's density like a parasite that had taken root and sunk tendrils deep over hundreds of years. Unconsciously, his still-gaping right palm continued pressing against the center of the disk, searching for leverage.
Blood dripped from the tear in his skin.
A single drop of fresh, warm blood fell directly onto the center point of the circular engraving in the middle of the metal.
The pungent liquid did not seep toward the edge. Nor did it fade beneath the spray of the wet wind.
Instead, the blood was sucked into the groove of the engraving. Swallowed greedily. Like parched earth drinking in the first drop of dew at the height of the dry season. The fractal engraving suddenly responded. It began to glow. Faintly at first, then transforming into lines of golden light that raced wildly outward like veins newly injected with life.
In an instant, the roar of the storm across the building's rooftop vanished.
It hadn't eased. It had frozen.