ly.

was a modern city, with towering buildings littering the newly paved streets in a constant competition to see who can touch the stars first.

The air was often consumed by a thick fog, stained white by the streetlamps. A glittering glass tower scratched the sky, crammed full of -. Inside, ladies draped in extravagant gowns, their necks and fingers heavy with diamonds, slithered across the transparent floor. Ceilings, walls, floors – everything was glass. It was almost impossible to see where the building stopped and the sky began. Most of the - buildings were like this: gauzy, statuesque, scintillating, majestic. But in every city there is a hamartia. Away from the electric fizz that crackled and glowed around the elite members of the - lay the drowsy, derelict buildings draped in shadow. The steady heartbeat, the rhythm of this place was the drip drip drip of the raindrops sliding from the gutter onto the cracked pavement. This part of - was known as -. And it was here that two stories crossed and parted and then crossed again. Two lives intertwining like fabric woven into a tapestry, like the hands of lovers after years apart. Like the tendrils of the - coiling delicately around the veins of an innocent.

was a city split in half.