23/11/2025 Incident at the Garbage District Exit: They Made It All the Way to the Gate From: The Shadow Informant Date: 23 November 2025 – 04:52 a.m. Location: Gate 3, North Exit of the Garbage District, Uttia Good early morning to anyone still brave enough to read this. For the first time in 27 years, the Garbage District spat its residents out. Yesterday, around 23:41, three truck drivers doing the night-time waste run swore (both on their word and out of sheer terror) that they saw at least twelve figures cross through the rusted gate at Gate 3. They didn’t climb over it. They walked straight through, as if the metal simply wasn’t there. Anyone who knows the Garbage District is aware of the city’s silent agreement: after 7 p.m., no one goes in, no one comes out. Whatever happens inside stays inside. The place is Uttia’s rotting stomach: every bit of chemical, medical, electronic, and human trash the city produces has been dumped there since 1958. The ground reeks of burnt batteries and old meat. During the day you can still get around with a mask and an armored truck. At night… at night the district digests. And whatever it digests comes back changed. The truckers described it like this (I’m transcribing verbatim from the audio one of them sent me before he vanished off the grid): “They were people… but sewn together wrong. Arms made of melted plastic, legs from old refrigerators, doll heads cracked open with burnt-out light-bulb eyes. They walked slowly, but never tripped on anything. One was pushing a shopping cart full of children’s arms. Another was chewing on a tire like it was bread. The smell… God, the smell was like garbage reheated in a microwave.” The scariest part: they were all heading the same way. Out. Municipal guards were called at 00:14. They found only greasy handprints on the outer side of the gate and a child’s sneaker stuffed with freshly pulled human teeth. No bodies. No tire tracks. Just silence and the distant sound of metal being chewed. Residents on the outskirts (the few who haven’t lost their minds yet) have been reporting green lights blinking inside the scrap heaps for the past week. They say the Mana is stronger there now, feeding on everything the city throws away, including bodies that were never officially declared dead. The result: the Garbage Eaters, neither alive nor dead, just eternal hunger stitched together with barbed wire and plastic bags. Tonight, for the first time, they crossed the invisible border. I asked an old city hall source (who prefers anonymity and a liter of cachaça) why now. The answer was short: “The hospital waste truck last Tuesday brought something it shouldn’t have. Something that was still alive when it arrived. Now the district has finished digesting… and it wants to give it back, with interest.” If you live in Dead Acacias, Scrapyard, or anywhere near Gate 3: lock everything. Do not open the door for anyone who knocks asking for “just a little bit.” They don’t know what “a little bit” means. And if you hear the sound of cans being dragged down the street at night… pray it’s only the wind. Because the wind in Uttia never drags cans. It drags what’s left of them. Stay inside. Stay alive. Or at least stay in one piece. — The Shadow Informant (sending this from the basement, door welded shut) If you live near the Garbage District and you’re not already subscribed to this newsletter… this might be your last chance.
22/11/2025 New Whispers in the Shadows of Uttia From: The Shadow Informant Date: 22 November 2025 – 03:17 a.m. Location: Broken Clock Alley, Old District, Uttia To the readers who still dare open this newsletter at night, The city doesn’t sleep. It only pretends. And lately Uttia has been pretending very badly. For the past few weeks, something has been moving again beneath the worn stones of our streets. It’s not the wind. It’s not the polluted river. It’s the Mana waking up: that ancient poison that has run through this city’s veins long before it ever had an official name on any map. Here are the facts I managed to gather before the lights in my room started flickering on their own: Cristiana vanished from the Barquel Bookshop for 72 straight hours. The girl everyone knows for spending entire nights among dusty shelves disappeared last Tuesday. She came back yesterday: pale, eyes glassy, clutching a book that has never been catalogued on any shelf. I asked her what she had read. She only answered: “The table of contents is wrong. There are chapters missing that haven’t happened yet.” Old man Barquel locked up the shop early and, for the first time in 40 years, chained the gate. He knows something. He has always known. Eduardo and Marco were seen arguing in the Cemetery of Mirrors at 4 a.m. Their friendship was the last pure thing left in this pit. It isn’t anymore. Witnesses (two scrap-pickers who prefer to remain nameless) swear Marco was crying blood while Eduardo tried to claw something out of his own chest. When the police arrived, they found only footprints that stopped dead in the middle of nowhere, as if both men had been erased from the world mid-step. The Tall Man was sighted again. This time not on the outskirts. He was standing in the city center, right in front of City Hall, at 11:47 a.m. on a sunny morning. Three people took photos. In all three pictures there’s only a two-and-a-half-meter blur with a hat pulled down over where eyes should be. City Hall denies it. Of course it denies it. But the clock in the square stopped at exactly 11:47 and still hasn’t started again. Books are bleeding. Not a metaphor. Residents of the Green Building in the Dead Acacias district report that old books (especially those with no listed author) have begun oozing a dark, warm liquid from their edges. Anyone who touches it carries the fingerprints for weeks. A seven-year-old licked some. She’s been hospitalized ever since, speaking in languages the doctors swear do not exist. Uttia was never safe, but now it is awake. And when Uttia wakes up, it hungers for stories. Real stories. Stories with names, dates, and endings no one wants to write. If you live here, lock your doors. If you’re thinking of visiting, don’t. If you’ve already read too much about the Awakening of the Mana… well… it might already be too late. Because the pages are turning by themselves. Stay vigilant. The next update might be about you. — The Shadow Informant (lifetime subscriber to fear) If you received this newsletter by mistake, burn the device. Blocking the sender won’t help. Here in Uttia, the Mana always finds a way to deliver the message.
