Jack

Jack remembered the quiet sweetness of a single wild berry, picked and eaten in a field where the only sound was the wind. That memory was a world away from the roar of Waterfall City, a place that smelled of fried fish, wet stone, and a thousand strangers. An insatiable curiosity—and an equally insatiable stomach—had pushed them out of their tranquil life and into this sprawling, vertical world. The soft cloth of their ninja mask was a relief, a small patch of silence in a city that never stopped shouting. From behind it, they could watch everything: the frog-merchants haggling, the children chasing each other up the rock-hewn stairs, the sheer scale of it all. They never spoke first, but they always listened.