...a resonance. A fracture in the observed.
Cyanidrosis isn't a disease, not in the conventional sense. It's a state, a persistent hum beneath the surface of reality. It began, according to the fragmented records recovered from the Archives of the Silent City – records that themselves seem to shift and rearrange under scrutiny – with the construction of the Chronarium. The Chronarium, you see, wasn't built to *measure* time. It was built to *listen* to it.
Dr. Silas Blackwood, the architect of the Chronarium, posited that time wasn’t a linear progression, but a vast, echoing ocean. The Chronarium, a colossal structure of polished obsidian and interwoven copper filaments, was designed to detect the subtle ripples and dissonances within this ocean. He believed these weren't merely temporal anomalies, but echoes of *possibilities* – moments that had been, could be, or might never be.
...the unraveling of self.
The problem, as it turned out, wasn’t the detection of these resonances. It was the *interaction*. The Chronarium, once calibrated, began to attract them. Not with a gentle pull, but with a forceful, almost predatory insistence. Individuals who spent prolonged periods near it reported experiencing a profound sense of disorientation, a blurring of memory, and, ultimately, a loss of self.
This wasn't madness, not entirely. Subjects described seeing themselves – or fragments of themselves – overlaid onto reality. They reported conversations with versions of themselves who had made different choices, pursued different paths. These weren't hallucinations, but genuine encounters, felt with a startling clarity. They were experiencing the reverberations of alternate realities, bleeding through the cracks in the Chronarium’s containment field.
The Archives contain detailed accounts of these individuals – Elias Thorne, a cartographer who began mapping non-existent continents; Seraphina Volkov, a composer who composed symphonies that existed only in the Chronarium’s echoes; and Gideon Rhys, a linguist who claimed to decipher a language that predated human consciousness. All consumed, eventually, by Cyanidrosis.
...the silent scream.
The Archives suggest that the Chronarium itself wasn't the cause, but a catalyst. The obsidian, it seems, possessed a unique property – a sensitivity to temporal distortions. It acted like a tuning fork, amplifying these resonances and directing them towards living subjects. The copper filaments, designed to channel the energy, instead became conduits for the chaotic echoes.
Containment efforts proved futile. Attempts to dismantle the Chronarium only intensified the resonance. The Archives document a series of increasingly desperate measures: the construction of Faraday cages, the deployment of sonic dampeners, even the attempted ritualistic destruction of the copper filaments – all of which resulted in catastrophic consequences. The echoes grew louder, more insistent, threatening to overwhelm the Silent City.
Now, the Silent City exists in a state of perpetual static. The buildings are warped, the streets are empty, and the air vibrates with an unseen energy. The only inhabitants are the echoes – spectral remnants of those consumed by Cyanidrosis, trapped within the Chronarium’s influence. They wander the streets, repeating conversations, performing forgotten tasks, forever lost in the unraveling of their identities.