PROLOGUE — BOOK II
Before the Names Were Known
(Morning, September 2001)
The morning began without ceremony.
A woman paused at a pedestrian crossing, shifting her weight from one foot to the other as the signal took longer than expected. Somewhere, a kettle clicked off and was forgotten. A man adjusted his tie in a mirrored column and frowned at the angle, then let it be.
In an apartment high above a street already filling with sound, a window was left open. The air carried the usual mixture of heat and impatience, the smell of coffee, the distant argument of traffic. Someone laughed at nothing in particular.
Schedules held.
A train departed on time. Another did not. A watch was checked. A message went unanswered and was assumed to be unimportant.
Across the city, people moved with the quiet confidence of routine—plans made days earlier, intentions laid down with the expectation that the day would obey them. The future was still a short distance ahead, unchallenged and unremarkable.
Nothing signalled itself as fragile.
There were no sirens yet. No running. No gathering of strangers around screens. The sky was clear enough to be taken for granted.
If anyone had stopped to name the hour, they might have called it ordinary.
If anyone had listened closely, they would have heard only the sound of a world continuing to expect itself.
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