Every city hides a place where time doesn't move forward — a spot where the living and the dead breathe the same air for a few stolen hours. This staircase is one of them.
By day, it's ordinary. Lovers walk hand in hand beneath the bare trees, tourists take photos of the cobblestones, and the air hums with chatter. But when night falls, and the last tram bell fades into the fog, the streetlights begin to flicker — and the silence thickens like breath on glass.
That's when the forgotten start to climb.
They come from the shadows below the stairs — the zombies of the old city. Not the kind that rot and stumble, but the ones born from memory and regret. They wear the faces of those who were never buried right, whose last thoughts still echo in the air. Their eyes are hollow, glowing faintly with the last image they saw before death.
They climb slowly, in rhythm with the wind that sweeps through the trees, dragging their feet along the cobblestones that once carried them to work, to love, to despair. Some are dressed in torn coats, others in the uniforms of long-gone wars. One carries a suitcase that's half open, papers fluttering out and vanishing before they touch the ground.
At the top of the stairs, they pause. Always. They lift their heads, listening for something — maybe a name, maybe forgiveness. Then, just as the first light of dawn breaks, they fade. Not vanishing — slipping back, like waves pulled into the deep.
The staircase remains. Empty. Silent.
But if you pass it at night, when the city sleeps, you might see them reflected in the lamplight — faint, trembling outlines of what once was human.