CASE FILE 001
DECLASSIFIED RECORD
Some identities are inherited. Others are manufactured.
Brussels. A forgotten locker. Three passports. A child's red glove. What begins as a search for answers becomes an excavation of a life that may never have belonged to the man living it.
FILE SUMMARY
City of Shadows is a work of literary historical fiction centred on memory, identity and the machinery through which personal histories can be altered, concealed or erased.
Lucas Verhoeven believes he knows who he is. Then a key leads him to a forgotten station locker and a metal box containing three passports, municipal records, a cassette tape, a notebook and a single red woollen glove. Each object points toward a life that has been renamed, reordered and deliberately concealed.
As Lucas follows the paper trail from Brussels to Liège and deeper into a network of witnesses, custodians and altered records, the investigation becomes increasingly personal: if every version of your past can be rewritten, what remains of the person underneath?
PERSONS OF INTEREST
Primary Subject
A man whose present identity begins to fracture when evidence surfaces of earlier lives under the names Matthias van der Meer and Luca Moretti. Intelligent, controlled and increasingly unwilling to accept other people's version of his past.
Confidante / Witness
Lucas's closest ally during the discovery that destabilises everything he believes about himself. Her presence grounds the investigation while forcing Lucas to confront the personal cost of continuing.
Mentor / Custodian
A man connected to the architecture of Lucas's past. His sparse notes and preserved fragments suggest both protection and omission, leaving Lucas to decide how much of the inherited record can be trusted.
Research Ally
One of the people drawn into the widening consequences of Lucas's search. Her choices carry their own personal stakes and reveal how institutional decisions can reach far beyond a single identity.
Witness to the Record
A figure whose knowledge intersects with the buried record. His perspective complicates the boundary between what was witnessed, what was recorded and what institutions later chose to preserve.
Personal Connection
Her connection to the case deepens the emotional stakes and complicates the difference between family history, constructed memory and intentional deception.
DECLASSIFIED PRODUCTION MATERIAL
Explore the principal cast, expressions, wardrobe, signature evidence and relationship map created for the visual production of City of Shadows.
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Approved front and back cover masters for City of Shadows.
GEOGRAPHIC RECORD
The city in which Lucas's current identity appears stable — until the first pieces of the archive surface.
A station rebuilt in 2009, beneath which a forgotten sequence of pigeonholes and lockers conceals evidence never intended to resurface.
A recurring geographical boundary through Liège: movement, reflection and the sense of histories carried downstream but never fully erased.
An old industrial site transformed by time, yet still carrying traces of the city that existed before reinvention.
EVIDENCE LOCKER
A small object that opens the first physical route back into Lucas's documented past.
Three names. Three identities. One face.
A child's glove carrying a memory no official record can explain.
Analogue evidence preserved outside the official record, carrying a voice that paper alone cannot contain.
Fragments of an older record, written as if someone expected the archive to be examined one day.
A Belgian municipal document stating that a previous registration was withdrawn by administrative order.
ANALYTICAL NOTES
At its core, City of Shadows asks whether identity is something we possess, something others remember, or simply the version that survives in the records.
CASE FILE 001
City of Shadows is available as a digital edition.