Delirium -nikraria- Apr 2026

That was Day One of Delirium. By Day Three, the walls of Nikraria began to breathe. Not metaphorically. I pressed my palm to the plaster, and I felt a slow, wet inhalation. The city, I realized, was a single organism. The canals were its veins. The bell towers were its teeth. The people? We were just fleas dancing on a hot skillet.

If you come to Nikraria, do not look for the catacombs. Do not ask for the map. When the white fog rolls in, do not breathe.

“No,” he said, tying a knot. “You are the Delirium. You always were. Nikraria is sane. You are the fever dreaming a city.” Delirium -Nikraria-

I refused the salt bath.

— A fragment recovered from the sea wall, written in charcoal and salt water. The author was not found. That was Day One of Delirium

Instead, I walked to the Spire of Unwound Clocks. At the top, I found a room with no door. I had to break through a wall that tasted of gingerbread and grief. Inside sat an old man weaving rope from his own beard. He did not look up.

And if you see a woman made of mirrors walking backward on the water— I pressed my palm to the plaster, and

The fog, however, had other plans.

It started with the fog. Nikraria’s famous white breath, rolling in from the Sunken Quarter. The locals wear cloth masks dipped in vinegar and rosemary. “Keeps the memory worms out,” the innkeeper’s wife said, laughing. I did not laugh. I was here to map the old catacombs beneath the Cathedral of Unfinished Saints. A simple commission. Dry work.

I ran. But running in Nikraria during Delirium is like running in a dream—your legs are pillars of wet sand. The streets folded. An alley I entered at midnight spat me out at noon the previous day. I watched myself arrive at the city gates, clean-shaven and confident. I tried to shout a warning. My mouth filled with seafoam. The cure for Delirium, I later learned, is not a medicine. It is a surrender.