Liora arrived at the city by mistake.
At least, that was how it first appeared. She had been following a road that promised destinations—markets, ports, towers—when the ground subtly shifted beneath her steps. The road thinned, curved, and then, without warning, ended in a wide, open threshold where a city stood without walls.
There was no gate in the ordinary sense. No doors, no bars, no guards with weapons or questions.
Only a sentence.
It was carved directly into the stone of the threshold, large enough that it could not be missed, yet incomplete in a way that unsettled the eye.
Only those who understand may enter—
The words were deeply cut, the dash long and deliberate, as though the stone itself had paused mid-thought.
Liora stopped. She read it again.
Around her, others had stopped too. Some frowned. Some smiled with the confidence of people accustomed to solving puzzles. A few laughed, assuming it was a trick meant to impress travellers.
A man stepped forward and announced, loudly, “—the law!”
Nothing happened.
A woman followed: “—the true nature of things.”
The stone did not stir.
Another traveller muttered, “—themselves,” and crossed his arms, satisfied.
Still nothing.
Liora noticed a figure sitting slightly to the side of the threshold: a gatekeeper of sorts, though he wore no uniform and carried no key. He was weaving reeds into a basket, moving slowly, methodically, as if time had agreed to wait for him.
“What comes after the dash?” Liora asked.
The gatekeeper did not look up. “Whatever you put there,” he said.
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
He smiled faintly. “Fairness is not the issue.”
“Then what is?”
He set one reed carefully into place. “Completion.”
Liora watched as others tried again. Someone proposed a definition drawn from a book. Another cited a doctrine. A third offered a clever paradox, clearly pleased with themselves.
Each attempt had the same effect. The sentence felt heavier, less welcoming, as though the more precisely people tried to finish it, the more firmly it resisted.
“Do you know what it means?” Liora asked the gatekeeper.
“I know how it works,” he replied.
She waited for more. He returned to weaving.
As the light shifted, Liora realised something else: those who argued longest about the sentence never crossed the threshold at all. They became absorbed in debate, gesturing at the words, circling them, defending interpretations that hardened into positions.
The city beyond remained visible, but distant—streets rearranging themselves, voices carrying on the air. It was clearly inhabited, clearly alive. Yet it did not respond to the arguments shouted at its edge.
“Is there a correct ending?” Liora asked.
The gatekeeper looked at her now. “If there were,” he said gently, “the sentence would already have one.”
She felt irritation rise in her chest. “Then how is anyone supposed to enter?”
He gestured toward the threshold. “By entering.”
That night, Liora slept nearby. She dreamed of sentences that moved, of words that changed their shape depending on how they were spoken. In her dream, punctuation wandered freely, refusing to stay where it was placed.
At dawn, she returned to the threshold. The sentence was unchanged.
She read it one last time, not as a challenge, but as an invitation.
Only those who understand may enter—
She noticed, then, what she had missed before: the sentence did not demand understanding of something. It did not point outward. It did not represent a requirement. It asked for a manner of approach.
Understanding, she realised, was not something to be declared.
It was something to be enacted.
Without finishing the sentence, without naming what she understood, Liora stepped forward.
The stone warmed beneath her feet. The threshold yielded—not dramatically, not ceremonially, but as though it had always been ready.
She crossed.
Inside the city, nothing announced itself as complete. Streets shifted subtly depending on how one walked them. Conversations unfolded differently depending on how one listened. Signs changed their emphasis depending on what one expected to find.
Grammar was everywhere—not as law, not as structure, but as a set of possibilities that shaped what could happen next.
Liora spoke with a passerby and noticed that their words did not describe the city so much as participate in it. Meaning did not mirror what was already there; it oriented what could come to be.
She looked back. The threshold was still visible. Others stood before it, arguing.
The sentence remained unfinished.
It always would.
Liora smiled and continued walking, understanding now that no sentence worth entering could ever afford to end.
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