It was no longer light.
It was dark.
But not the kind of darkness that comes with nightfall or closed eyes. This was something else—deeper. Still. A silence that pressed from all directions, thick and unmoving.
The pain behind my eyes had faded, but something had taken its place—a dull, repetitive throb pulsing somewhere in the middle of my head. Not painful exactly, but relentless. Just enough to keep me from forgetting I was still… something. Still here.
And when I say there was no light, I don't mean dimness. I mean there was nothing. The Aurean Spire, with its soft glow, the warmth that came through the window, the shifting shadows of day—all of it was gone. Stripped clean.
No warm. No cold. No color. Just black.
Even black feels like too generous a word.
It wasn't sleep, though it carried that same suspension.
But I was awake. Or at least, my thoughts were.
And thoughts without a body are dangerous things.
I could see—but I saw nothing. I couldn't move, couldn't feel the ground beneath me. No limbs, no breath, no boundary between myself and whatever surrounded me. I wasn't floating. Floating would imply something to float in.
This was absence. The kind you don't return from.
Strangely, I wasn't panicking. My chest wasn't tightening. My hands weren't shaking.
Because I had no chest. No hands.
Only thoughts.
And that throb.
I don't know how long I stayed like that. It could've been minutes. Hours. The concept of time didn't exist here. There was no sun to mark its passing. No body to get hungry. No breath to grow short.
But eventually, a thought pierced through the haze:
Was I breathing?
And then came desperation. I needed to know. I tried to feel air in my lungs, tried to imagine the motion of it, the coolness of inhale, the warmth of exhale. But there was nothing. No movement. No pull. Not even the idea of breath.
The realization hit with a kind of muted violence—my mind was still mine, but the body was gone.
I tried to scream. Nothing came. I tried to reach up and touch my face. Nothing moved. I tried to close my eyes. But I wasn't even sure if they'd been open.
Still, I tried. Just to will the sensation of closing them.
Then I started counting the throbs.
It was the only anchor I had.
One. Two. Three.
Each beat like the ticking of a dull clock somewhere in the dark.
Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
Still there. Still rhythmic. Still constant.
Forty-six. Forty-seven. Forty-eight.
And something changed.
They were louder now. Sharper.
Seventy-nine. Eighty. Eighty-one.
It was no longer a sensation. It was a sound.
A faint metallic echo. Like hammer striking iron. Or steel dragging across stone.
The throb became clangor.
One hundred twenty-two. One hundred twenty-three.
A steady rhythm, as if someone—or something—was working in the dark. A forge? A machine? A ritual?
One hundred seventy. One hundred seventy-one...
My mind tried to shape it into meaning, but it slipped through. It was just there. Persistent.
Then—on what must've been the two hundredth beat—something shifted.
A flicker. Just at the corner of my right eye.
A pulse of light. Subtle, but unmistakable.
And then it came again.
Light.
It wasn't warm. It wasn't bright. But it was real.
And then suddenly—without decision, without effort—
my eyes opened.
They didn't ease open like waking from sleep.
They snapped wide with a force that felt like falling.
A rush. A jolt. Like the crash of something ancient breaking apart.
The darkness peeled back.
Light flooded in. Pure, white, overpowering. It didn't hurt to look at, but it felt too much to contain. There was no ceiling, no walls. Just white.
I blinked. The edges of things came into focus.
And in the center of that white expanse—quiet and still—was a table.
Long. Wooden. The kind you'd see in a forgotten hall, or at the center of a courtroom with no jury.
There were no windows, no doors. Just this strange sterile glow from everywhere and nowhere at once.
But the table was real. Solid. Waiting.
And somehow, I knew—it was meant for me.
I realized—I was back.
And I was standing. On something. On white.
My body was mine again. The pressure in my chest. The weight in my limbs. The air moving in and out of my lungs. I could feel it all now—solid and slow, as if waking up inside my skin for the first time in hours.
Everything looked… normal again.
Except for the fact that there was nothing around me.
No walls. No doors. No ceiling. No floor.
Just an endless, unbroken stretch of white.
Yet somehow, I was standing on it.
The only thing that interrupted this boundless emptiness was the long table ahead of me.
A table so out of place it might as well have been an altar.
It stretched wider than anything I'd seen in recent memory—long, regal, impossibly polished. It gleamed beneath the blank sky as if someone had varnished it just moments ago. The ends were capped with delicate silver and gold inlays, curling into strange motifs I didn't recognize. Every edge, every corner, had been made to impress. It didn't look built. It looked crafted.
A thin, nearly transparent cloth ran the length of it—silk, I guessed. Woven so fine that it shimmered with each breath of air I couldn't even feel. It looked as though the fabric might vanish altogether if I stared at it too long.
But before I could study it more, the sound came again.
Clang.
That same metallic sound I'd heard in the dark. But this time it was real. Loud. Sharp.
I turned my head to the farthest left side of the table.
There were chairs now.
Three of them.
No. Four.
The one closest to me, on the left, was empty.
But the other three…
They looked like they belonged in a royal court.
High-backed. Carved from dark wood that shimmered like obsidian under the white light. Each one topped with a crest I couldn't decipher—symbols half-familiar, like a language I should have known but didn't. Their armrests were gilded, but not gaudy. Their cushions were velvet, so deep and dark they might've been dyed in ink. They looked like thrones masquerading as seats.
Two of them were filled.
My eyes locked on the first figure—at the head of the table.
He looked… out of place. Too clean for a place like this. Too calm.
He wore a long tailored coat, charcoal black, lined with deep emerald silk along the lapels. His inner shirt was a crisp, forest green, tucked perfectly beneath a grey waistcoat that caught the light without reflecting it. Atop his head sat a tall black top hat, tilted ever so slightly, like he'd worn it for a laugh and forgotten to remove it. A silver chain ran from his vest pocket down somewhere I couldn't see.
His features were sharp, precise. The kind you'd expect carved on statues—high cheekbones, a straight nose, a jaw that could've been measured with a ruler. His hair was brown, swept neatly to the side, and his eyes… olive green. Cold, unreadable. He looked young—early twenties, maybe—but carried himself like someone far older.
And he was reading. A book, held lazily in one gloved hand.
I tried to look at the cover, tried to catch the title, but the harder I stared, the more it blurred—like water slipping through fingers.
He never once glanced at me.
Seated to his right was someone completely different.
Younger. Leaner. Almost careless in posture.
He was reclined with his legs stretched out across the table, one ankle resting over the other, head tilted back, arms behind his neck like he was napping under the sun. His coat hung open, loose and rumpled, revealing a dark undershirt and several chains of varying lengths hanging around his neck. One of them had a pendant that looked like a broken gear. His pants were tucked into worn leather boots, and a single glove was missing from his left hand.
Where the gentleman looked composed, this one looked like he hadn't taken life seriously in years.
And still… neither of them spoke. Neither of them looked at me.
I glanced at the chair on the gentleman's left. The only other seat. Empty.
And then, out of nowhere—
Clack.
Clack.
Clack.
The sound of heels. Echoing against the invisible floor, cutting clean through the silence.
I turned toward the white void—and saw her.
A woman.
She seemed to walk straight out of the nothing, materializing between one step and the next. No warning. No flash. Just presence.
Her hair was green. Not dyed green. Not fake.
A deep, vivid emerald, cascading in elegant waves that framed her face like a painting. It looked soft. Alive. Unbothered by gravity. The kind of color that shouldn't have belonged to anyone real.
She had eyes to match—narrow, alert, and brilliant.
Her skin was pale but warm. Smooth like porcelain, but not cold. Her lips were full and painted with the same green as her hair. She wore a fitted coat—half cloak, half dress—with dark embroidery that caught the light at strange angles. Her heels clicked with every step, deliberate and slow.
Beautiful wasn't the right word.
She was striking.
As if beauty itself had been shaped around her with precise intent.
She walked without hesitation toward the empty chair.
And with her arrival, I realized—whatever this place was…
I hadn't been invited to speak.
Only to listen.
The sound of heels echoed sharply against the white.
She emerged from the endless pale, as if walking out of the light itself—no doors, no openings, just a figure slicing into existence with purpose in her steps and fury in her breath.
Her stride didn't falter as she approached the long table. Her green hair shimmered with the same hue as the lipstick lining her tight expression. The fitted black coat she wore moved like silk, but it didn't soften her. Her beauty was harsh—cutting, deliberate. Like something sculpted rather than born.
She marched to the man seated at the center of the table and stopped a few steps short of him.
"Where are the others?" she asked, her voice clipped. "Do they think silence makes them invisible?"
He didn't respond.
She narrowed her eyes.
"Don't ignore me, Cael. You know what their absence means."
Still, no reaction. The man remained seated—hands resting on an open book, face unreadable. His top hat sat perfectly straight on his head, his olive eyes fixed on the page, as though her voice hadn't even reached him.
She looked to the boy lounging beside him, half-asleep, legs crossed on the polished table. He didn't flinch either. Just exhaled slowly through his nose, as if nothing happening here deserved his energy.
Her patience snapped.
"You're not going to speak? You just sit here—pretending everything's fine—while they ignore the summons? You of all people know what this oath means!"
No answer.
The silence that followed felt deliberate.
Her hands clenched into fists.
She stepped closer. Her voice dropped to a growl.
"We made a pact. Neutrality. Restraint. You all swore to stay within your bounds. You swore, Cael."
He finally turned a page.
That was enough to push her over.
She slammed her hands onto the table. "Say something!"
The sound echoed—loud and sharp in the infinite white.
Then, softly, he spoke.
"Why do you think the oath exists?"
The question hung there, too calm for the moment.
She didn't answer. Her chest rose and fell. She stood frozen, caught somewhere between outrage and recognition.
Cael closed the book gently, fingers resting on its cover.
"Periodic gatherings," he said, almost to himself. "A shared watch. An agreement not to act upon our domains. To leave the worlds below untouched. To choose successors in time. To meet, decide, and resolve... before anything unravels."
His gaze rose slowly, finally meeting hers.
"Without that, we're not watchers. We're tyrants."
The boy beside him stirred, stretching with a groan.
"Or worse," the boy muttered, rubbing his eyes, "we're bored tyrants."
Cael didn't look away.
"If they're absent without word," he said, "then they've either lost interest... or chosen to ignore the balance. And if they've chosen that path—"
"Then war follows," the woman finished, voice low.
She didn't shout anymore. Her hands fell from the table, slowly.
Her gaze shifted downward, to the white beneath her boots.
A long silence passed.
Then she spoke again.
"But if this many are missing already... what do we do now?"
Cael leaned back slightly. His voice remained quiet, unshaken.
"We wait for confirmation. For a sign."
"And if it comes?"
He didn't answer.
The boy let out another yawn.
"I vote we skip the next Hollow," he said lazily. "This one's already turning into a disaster."
The woman gave him a tired glance. Then she turned and walked a few steps away, her heels softer now, quieter.
Somewhere far behind her, in the endless white, the faintest rumble stirred—too distant to name, but not far enough to ignore.
The hall fell quiet again.
The woman's last words still hung in the air, brittle and bitter, as her heels echoed a final time and vanished into the white. It was as if she'd been swallowed whole by the emptiness, no portal, no door—just gone.
Two of them remained.
The younger one, the boy with the arrogant posture and lazy smile, clicked his tongue. "Ugh. I hate these things," he muttered, stretching like he'd just woken from a nap he didn't care for. He didn't stand—not in the normal sense. He seemed to collapse into himself, legs folding into light, body twisting upward like smoke. And then—
crack—
A sudden burst of lightning ripped through the white. A thunderous flash split the air behind his chair, and where he had once been lounging, there was now nothing but a faint shimmer, like heat rising off desert stone.
Only one remained.
The man at the center of the table.
He hadn't moved. His book was still in his hand, his gloved fingers carefully turning a page like nothing around him had happened at all.
I didn't know what I was supposed to do. Why I was here. Whether I was meant to speak or simply observe. But something in my chest tightened with each second that passed in that suffocating quiet.
I began to piece together the scraps—fragmented clues buried in their words. Oaths. Domains. Meetings. The underworld. Grand names. Grander consequences. Whatever these people were, it was obvious they weren't human. Or if they had ever been, they had long since surpassed that. They spoke like rulers—no, not rulers. Something above that.
They called it an oath, and they talked about keeping balance. Neutrality. They spoke of decay, war, the fragility of the world itself. As if all of it—the order of life and death—was something they were personally responsible for maintaining.
That woman... she held herself like she could command armies with a glance. Her presence felt sharp, forceful, like a storm barely held back by will. If anyone there had power, real power, it was her. And yet even she was ignored. Dismissed like a loud wind.
And the boy—he vanished into lightning.
What kind of being does that?
They weren't people. Not anymore.
And now only one remained.
The man with the book.
His top hat cast a clean shadow over his eyes. His gloved hand traced another line of text with the patience of someone who knew time would always wait for him. The silence dragged. His every movement felt intentional—like he'd been choreographed by the universe itself. He was too composed. Too elegant. As if the very laws of the world refused to interfere with him.
And still... he didn't look at me.
I stood motionless. My mouth dry. My breaths shallow.
I couldn't tell if I was scared or just trying not to provoke something I couldn't understand.
He didn't acknowledge me—not a glance, not a word, not even a flicker. It made me wonder if I was just a spectator here. Maybe I wasn't really present. Maybe this was a vision, a fragment, a memory—
Thump.
He shut his book.
The noise cut through the silence like a blade.
My eyes widened. His hand rested on the closed cover, and for the first time, he lifted his head.
And looked at me.
There was no mistake.
He was looking directly at me.
My heart slowed. My breath caught.
For a moment I tried to convince myself he wasn't really seeing me—that his gaze had simply wandered in my direction, that I was still invisible in this place, still just a ghost...
But that illusion shattered the instant he spoke.
His voice was quiet.
Precise.
Heavy with a weight I couldn't describe.
"Who are you?"
I couldn't speak.
My vision blurred at the edges. My throat was dry. I could feel the sweat running cold down my forehead. That single glance—just that—had unraveled me. My legs trembled, and my fingers twitched, but I couldn't move. Couldn't blink. Couldn't think.
His voice still echoed in my mind.
Who are you?
I wanted to answer. I truly did. Anything that might not provoke him. A name, a lie, a whisper. Something. But my mouth refused to open. My body was frozen in place—no, not frozen. Shaken. Unmade.
His patience wore thin.
Without a word, he raised one hand. The gesture was elegant, controlled, like the slow movement of a blade drawn from silk. He extended his finger toward me.
"I asked—"
But he never finished.
Behind me, the white world tore open.
Not loudly. Not violently. It just… split, like fabric cut from behind. And in that instant, I was gone.
Falling.
I didn't move—I was taken. Pulled backward into the rupture like a thread through a needle's eye. No wind. No resistance. Just sudden descent.
I couldn't see anything, not clearly. But there were shapes. Towering, impossible shapes that twisted and twitched, slithering through the void just out of focus. Shadows—some small, others far too large to comprehend. Voices drifted past me, but they were not speaking—they were screaming. Shrill, animalistic. Pleading. Crying. Hundreds, thousands. Some whispered prayers I couldn't understand. Others shrieked in madness.
None of them sounded human.
And through it drifted shadows.
Some were small, insect-like, twitching in unnatural patterns. Others were massive. Towering, ancient things whose forms I couldn't hold in my head for longer than a heartbeat. Long arms. Rotating limbs. Faces without symmetry. Creatures that didn't belong in reality—things that watched me pass with too many eyes.
Screaming.
Shrieking.
Begging.
None of them made sense. They spoke in tones, in noises—like sorrow wrapped in static. Words not meant for a mouth. I zipped past them too quickly to hold onto anything. But I felt them reaching. Scratching. Like I was trespassing, and they knew it.
The space around me pulsed, bending with every second. I was no longer falling—I was slipping through cracks. Between places.
I zipped through it all—like a stone skipping across a black sea—every flicker of motion sending new horrors streaking past me. Creatures loomed, some of them watching me. Others gave chase. Their limbs didn't follow rules, and their mouths were where mouths shouldn't be.
It wasn't a hall anymore.
It was a pit.
An endless drop through fractured existence.
And then—
"Are you awake?"
The voice cut clean through it all. Not loud. Not booming. Just… close.
My eyes snapped open.
I gasped and sat upright, body shaking. My vision was blurred at the corners. Light flooded back in—but it wasn't the endless white of the hall.
It was warm.
Familiar.
Wooden beams arched overhead, rough and soot-stained. A small window let in dim light from outside. The air smelled like damp earth, burnt wood, and old liquor.
I was in the old man's house.
And he was standing beside the bed, arms crossed.
Tears streamed down my cheeks. I hadn't even realized I was crying.
He clicked his tongue.
"Hey," he said, sharp and annoyed. "I asked if you're awake, goddamn it."
I didn't say anything.
I just sat there—breathing, steadying myself. I wiped the tears away with the sleeve of my shirt before they could fully reach my jaw. My hand didn't shake. My chest didn't tremble. Not anymore.
The old man was still watching me. I could feel his gaze pressing against the side of my face like he was trying to measure something.
"You should rest," he finally muttered, voice quieter now, more tentative. "Forget whatever just happened. Whatever that was. It's not worth digging up. Nor remembering. Or discussing. Not yet."
I didn't respond right away.
He took a step back, scratched his jaw, then looked toward the small fire smoldering in the hearth. His voice dropped further.
"Lie back down for a while. Let the mind settle. Trust me... it's better."
He turned to leave, letting the last few words hang in the room like dust in the air.
I nodded, slow and silent, then shifted back onto the bed. My body welcomed the familiar weight of the old mattress. I turned toward the wall. The wood grain was uneven—dark streaks running down like veins. I kept my eyes open.
The door creaked as he walked out. He didn't close it. Didn't need to.
The silence after was thicker than it had any right to be.
But I wasn't afraid.
Not here. Not now.
I knew what I'd just seen—or felt, or passed through—should have shattered me. Should have left me screaming into my pillow or begging for answers. But it hadn't. My body was calm. My thoughts clear. It was like something clicked the moment I opened my eyes in this world again. Like some invisible hand had steadied me.
I breathed in through my nose. Counted four seconds. Exhaled. Counted four more.
My hands rested over my stomach, fingers interlaced.
Whatever that place was—the white hall, those beings, him—it hadn't been a dream. But I wouldn't speak about it. Not to him. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
There was something wrong with the way he'd looked at me when I returned. Not fear. But recognition. Like I'd seen too much too soon.
No. I needed to play it safe.
So I lay still, watching the wall, listening to the crackle of the fire.
But I didn't rest.
My thoughts sharpened with every second. I was back in control. I had my body, my mind, my breath. And for the first time since arriving here, I felt like I had footing.
No more drifting.
No more waiting.
I kept my breathing slow.
The wall was blank in front of me—just aged timber, pale with streaks of smoke and time. But it was enough to hold my thoughts in place. To give shape to the tide that had started to rise in my mind.
The Aurean Spire.
I'd seen it, felt it. Its light. Its hum. The way it had reached into this world like it didn't belong here—like it was tethered to something greater. Not just a landmark. Not just a monument. A signal. A gate. Maybe even a thread tied directly to them.
And them—those beings in the hall.
Whatever they were—gods, deities, rulers of some plane far beyond anything I could comprehend—they had influence. Weight. Authority. I didn't need to understand their domains to see it. It was in the way the hall bent around them. In how silence obeyed their presence. In how the woman's voice cracked the air like lightning, and the boy vanished not like a trick, but like he commanded the very laws beneath him.
They weren't symbols. They weren't dreams.
They were real. And their oaths weren't metaphor. They were binding. Heavy. Dangerous.
That… was the part that mattered.
I was never supposed to hear them speak. Never meant to witness that table, that room, that tension. And yet I had. I'd stood there—unguarded, unnoticed—while their words spilled, unfiltered, in front of me. And if the man in the middle hadn't been interrupted—
I closed my eyes for a brief second.
He saw me.
Not passively. Not the way one might glance at something irrelevant.
He saw me.
And when he spoke, it wasn't a question asked out of curiosity. It was a command.
Who are you?
That voice still echoed behind my ribs. Not because I feared it. Not anymore. But because it made something clear:
I was on a board I didn't know existed. And someone, somewhere, had just moved a piece.
I didn't know what role I played yet. A pawn? An anomaly? A mistake?
But one thing had become certain:
I didn't belong in the shadows anymore.
I turned slightly, letting my gaze drift across the room. The old man's coat hung from the back of a chair. The fire had settled into quiet embers. Through the slit in the shutters, I could just barely make out the faint outline of the spire in the distance, its glow dim under the weight of night.
Everything was connected. The spire. The beings. The transition between places. The strange pulse I'd felt since I arrived.
And if there was one thing I had learned from all of it—one thing I could be sure of—
Waiting wasn't an option.
I shifted onto my back again, staring up at the wooden beams overhead. The old man was right—I should've rested. Pretended I was just another stray soul passing through.
But that would've been a lie.
Whatever world I had entered… it was already moving. It had noticed me. And I would not stand still long enough to be swallowed by it.
No more stalling.
No more reacting.
It was time to act
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
My hand was still raised, finger pointed toward the gash that had split the white. The tear had already begun to mend, threads of light weaving themselves shut like silk dragged across a wound. But just before it vanished completely, I saw it.
An eye.
Only one—glaring back at me from within the dark beyond the veil. Not wild. Not afraid. It was watching me. Crafted with detail too perfect to be mortal. Too deliberate to be born of chaos. The lines around it shimmered with something close to divinity—like a rune carved into the soul of a god.
My brow twitched. Just slightly.
I lowered my hand, letting the silence settle. Slowly, I clasped my fingers and rested my chin upon them, letting the thoughts play out in their usual order.
That boy... how did I miss him?
He had blended into the Serefield, the boundary between what is and what shouldn't be. I hadn't seen him enter. Hadn't felt a single shift in the continuum. No pulse. No echo. No thread.
There are only a few possibilities.
A domain-walker? Unlikely.
A projection? No, that would have frayed under my voice.
A stowaway soul with a tether to something deeper?
Or maybe...
The white fog?
A presence hidden in plain view by something older than the oaths. Now that would be worth noting.
I let the silence stretch. The hall felt colder now, though I knew it was just my own thoughts sharpening. I leaned back in my chair, slowly, and looked up at the ceiling. Not in worry—there was nothing here I feared. But anticipation... that was rare.
I smiled.
"The next Grand Hollow will be interesting."
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________