There are places that exist in history, written in stone and parchment.
And there are places that never should have been—forgotten by time, erased by fate, swallowed by the world itself.

I once found such a city.

A city that was never meant to exist.

It was a place of impossible architecture, shifting streets, and whispers that spoke from the walls.

A place where time bent like a river, where the people walked as though they had lived before and would live again.

I did not discover it.

It found me.

A Map That Shouldn’t Have Been

I have spent my life traveling through kingdoms lost to time, searching for knowledge, uncovering secrets that should have remained buried.

But the strangest thing I ever found was a place that did not exist.

Or rather…

A place that should have never existed at all.

It began with a map.

One that should not have been real.

I found it in the ruined library of Alestria, buried beneath scrolls so old they crumbled to dust at my touch. The ink was still fresh, the parchment untouched by time.

Yet, the map depicted a city no one had ever seen, no record had ever mentioned, and no traveler had ever spoken of.

It was labeled simply:

“Tír na Seachran”—The City of Stray Paths.

And something about it… called to me.

The Road That Led to Nowhere

I followed the map’s directions.

Or at least, I tried to.

Because no matter which road I took, no matter how far I traveled, the path always changed.

Rivers flowed in the wrong direction.
Mountains moved overnight.
Villages I passed through did not remember me when I returned the next day.

It was as if the world itself was trying to lose me, trying to make sure I never reached my destination.

And yet, I persisted.

For days, for weeks.

Until one morning, without warning…

I stepped through the veil of mist—

—and the city appeared.

A Place Between Time

The first thing I noticed was the silence.

Not the peaceful kind.

The unnatural kind.

A silence that made even my footsteps sound wrong, as if the air itself was hesitant to carry the noise.

The city was massive, its buildings stretching high into the sky, yet there was no sign of life.

No merchants.
No guards.
No children playing in the streets.

And yet…

I felt watched.

Not by people.

But by the city itself.

The People Who Should Not Be

Then I saw them.

Figures moving through the streets, walking in perfect silence.

Dressed in clothes from different eras, speaking languages long forgotten.

A knight from a kingdom that fell a thousand years ago.
A woman in robes from a future yet to come.
A child dressed like a peasant from the age of Eldoria.

They walked past one another without acknowledgment, as if unaware of each other’s presence.

As if they were all trapped in different times, layered upon each other.

And that was when I realized—

They were not living people.

They were echoes.

Memories of the past. Or perhaps… glimpses of a future yet to happen.

And somehow, I had stepped into the place where they all converged.

The Whispering Walls

As I wandered deeper into the city, the walls began to whisper.

Not with voices, but with fragments of thoughts.

Memories.

“We built this place to last beyond time…”
“I was here before, wasn’t I? No, that’s not possible…”
“The city is dying. The city is reborn. The city never ends.”

I reached out to touch the stone…

And for a brief moment—

I saw it.

Not just the city as it was now, but every version of it that had ever existed.

• The ruins of an ancient civilization.
• A bustling kingdom filled with life.
• A city on fire, collapsing under its own weight.
• A future where nothing remained but ghostly lights floating above an empty world.

It was not one city.

It was all cities.

A place caught between existence and oblivion.

And I was trapped inside it.

The Truth of Tír na Seachran

Then, I saw the final vision.

The creators of this place.

Not gods. Not sorcerers.

But scholars. Scientists. Builders.

Long ago, they had built this city to outlive history itself.

They had woven time into its foundations, so that when the world changed, the city would remain, forever unbroken.

But they had made a mistake.

Time does not like to be caged.

And so, the city had split apart, existing in all times at once, yet belonging to none.

The people within it had become fragments of memory, forever repeating their lives in loops they could not escape.

And now, I was caught in it too.

Unless I found a way out.

Merlin’s Escape

The city did not want me to leave.

The streets shifted beneath my feet.

Doors led to places that should not exist.

The figures of the past turned their heads toward me, their empty eyes watching as I ran.

I was not supposed to be here.

I was not supposed to remember.

And so, I did the only thing I could.

I closed my eyes…

And walked backward.

Because if time was broken here…

Then the only way out was to undo my steps, in reverse.

And when I opened my eyes…

I was back in the real world.

The city was gone.

As if it had never existed.

But I still had the map.

And sometimes, when I look at it…

The ink is still fresh.