There are places that don’t exist on Google Maps or Waze, places that would send any vehicle’s GPS into an existential crisis.
And yet, like a Gengar lurking in the shadows, they stubbornly persist.

Perhaps you ended up here by a navigational error.
Or perhaps “happenstance” is merely a fancy codename for forces that, unlike British bureaucracy, prefer not to fill out forms,
not to answer emails, and to dodge responsibility faster than Manchester United fleeing the top of the table on a bad day.

Something is being cooked here.
And no, it isn’t Ratatouille.

We are talking about badly told stories, mistakes older than the secrets of Hogwarts, escape routes designed to outmanoeuvre loan sharks,
and truths that took so long to mature they nearly became yet another Stephen King film adaptation.

It wasn’t for lack of warning.
It was an excess of silence, that very specific silence that precedes the omae wa mou shindeiru in a fighting anime.

What comes next is not an invitation to afternoon tea in the Shire, nor an announcement from Stark Industries.
It is a belated warning, the sort that only makes sense once the monster has already stepped out of the wardrobe
and you realise your only weapon is a broken umbrella.

I promise no clarity. I promise only notice.
The rest, my dear reader, you will have to interpret.

— A. A. M.