A Record of Origin
Dæmon stepped through the shimmer—and the world changed.
No longer a courtyard. No longer a void. He stood in a hallway that felt subtly wrong.
It was grand, yes. But not ornate. Walls rose at right angles, arches framed tall windows, and everything bore the weight of symmetry. But the space felt stitched together, like pieces from different buildings pretending to belong. Narrow beneath a ceiling that stretched too high. A door inset too low into a marble arch. Coherent at a glance, but strange if you looked too long. As if built for a purpose he didn’t yet understand.
On the wall beside him hung a framed poster—thick black wood, museum-quality glass. Inside it, Barney Rubble smiled dumbly from a worn cartoon still. He was wearing a T-shirt that read simply: TROUBLE. The hallway continued past it like nothing was wrong.
Just beyond, tucked into a shallow alcove where a sculpture might have belonged, stood a jukebox. Classic, rounded, and colorful—arched glass, red and chrome trim, a slow-turning vinyl visible behind the panel. Its buttons were lit, and a few titles glowed brighter than the rest:
- In Oz with Two Grand
- Garden Gate
- Dinky Doo
From its speaker grilles played an old recording of "Any Old Iron"—David Jones, high-pitched and cheerful, belting it with vaudeville swagger. A song meant to be funny. Here, it felt like a taunt.
He walked forward, shoes muffled by impossibly quiet carpet. No sound but the Cockney anthem bouncing from the jukebox. Dæmon walked on. Past the jukebox. Past the color and chrome. The music stayed behind him—but it felt like it watched him go.
The hall bent gently to the left. Then opened.
The man was already there, standing beside the balustrade that framed the gallery below. Hands resting on the wood.
