The wind carried with it the scent of oil paint and scorched parchment, drifting across the crumbling promenades of Lumière—a city that had once been alive with laughter, now trapped beneath a sky that refused to turn. The Monolithe loomed in the distance, silent and waiting, its surface untouched by time, its shadows stretching unnaturally across stone and soul alike.

It was the 12th year of the Gommage.

No one yet questioned the numbers etched in celestial ink—etched high above by the Peintresse’s brush, descending slowly, inevitably. Back then, people still clung to ritual, to stories of divine order and inherited punishment. They lit candles at sundown. They whispered names of the disappeared. They prayed to a figure who would never answer.

The first expeditions had not yet begun. No hero had risen. No child had watched a friend vanish mid-laugh simply because they’d turned thirty-nine. The Peintresse still wandered unseen, her footsteps barely disturbing the paint-soaked soil, hands trembling as she added one more stroke to a world she could no longer control.

In the outskirts, the first signs of unraveling had begun—strange beasts formed from memory, citizens forgetting what they had for breakfast only to remember things they’d never lived. Time cracked like old glass. The Gestrals had arrived, their gleaming mechanical limbs clicking in rhythms no human hand could mimic, bartering nonsense for meaning, offering riddles as comfort.

And somewhere beyond the city's edge, a man with silver in his hair and fire in his gaze watched the Monolithe from afar. Renoir. First of the broken. First of the damned.

He would soon step forward.

He would call it salvation.

And the world would begin to end—one brushstroke at a time.