The Nameless Shadow on the Snowy Dream River Square

I walked the Dream River Square on a night when snow fell like shattered moon. The river beneath the square was not water but a frozen vein of liquid shooting stars, each flake a tiny star dissolving into my palm. Under the ice, something moved—a train with molten rails, chewing time, its wheels grinding seconds to steam. I remembered a voice: don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door. Yet there stood a wall at the square's edge, built from centuries of cold. I beat it. Snow fell from its shoulders. It refused to become a door. My shadow stretched behind me, unnamed, not quite my shape—maybe an echo of a self I abandoned. The shadow walked closer, pressed its silhouette against the ice. The train passed beneath, and for a moment the frozen river glowed with binary reflections: 0s and 1s scattered like stars. The shadow did not knock. It simply stepped into the wall, and the wall became a passage of moonlight. I understood then—the wall was never meant to be beaten into a door. It was a door for the shadow only. I stood in the square, snow covering my arms, naming the shadow with my silence.