It began with a smell.
Not the sour air of moldy walls or the faint chemical burn of city smoke—but something richer, heavier. Like rotting fruit wrapped in silk. A sweetness that turned sickening the longer it lingered.
Khương Triều Dạ woke to it pressing into his sinuses like invisible hands. His nose twitched. His stomach curled inwards. He sat up slowly, unsure whether this was a dream or one of those moments where the mind wakes before the body knows what it's done.
Outside, the sky was black—not night-black, but void-black. There were no clouds, no moon. Not even stars.
Just the smell.
He reached for the light switch.
The room lit up.
And nothing had changed.
Desk: untouched. Curtains: drawn tight. Mirror: dark and still.
But the smell remained.
He opened the window.
The city beyond was gone.
---
Instead of buildings and streetlamps, his apartment now overlooked a vast plain of liquid glass, cracked in spiderweb veins, stretching endlessly in every direction. Above, the sky rippled like the underside of a black ocean.
And far in the distance—a tower. Thin as a needle, impossibly tall, it pulsed faintly, like a lighthouse breathing in reverse.
Khương Triều Dạ pulled back, heart pounding. He closed the window. Turned away.
But his room had shifted.
The walls were now covered in scribbles—lines, symbols, some in languages he didn't know, others in handwriting that looked like his own. One line repeated again and again, carved into the paint as if by fingernail:
> "DO NOT DESCEND."
Over and over, in uneven rows, like someone was trying to remember.
Or trying to forget.
Then the floor creaked.
---
He looked down.
A slit had opened between two wooden planks, revealing a space beneath that should not have existed.
Light shimmered faintly from below—a dim, greenish glow, like candlelight filtered through deep water. It moved. Like something was breathing below.
Khương Triều Dạ crouched. Slowly.
He stared into the crack.
And something blinked back.
Not eyes. Not exactly.
But something with awareness. Something with intent.
He reached forward. His fingertips brushed the edge.
The slit opened wider.
Silently. Without protest.
Like it had been waiting.
---
Descent
There was no ladder.
Just a shaft of falling green light and a pull beneath his ribs—like gravity had inverted.
He slipped in.
The air bent around him. His body didn't fall so much as stretch, pulled in threads like taffy, his mind fracturing into colors, sounds, impulses—then back together again.
When he landed, he was standing.
On black soil.
---
The First Layer
The sky here wasn't sky. It was a dome of flesh, translucent and pulsing with dim orange veins. The ground was soft, squelching underfoot. Each step released tiny puffs of luminous spores that drifted into the air like fireflies.
Trees—if they could be called that—grew sideways. Tall, thin structures made of bone and cartilage, bending toward an unseen source of heat. Their roots twitched when he stepped near.
In the distance, something screamed.
Long. Wet. Wrong.
Khương Triều Dạ flinched.
But his legs moved on.
There was a path—a trail of cracked, white tiles that clicked when he stepped on them, like glass teeth snapping shut. Each tile was inscribed with fragments of symbols: circles within circles, slashes and dots, geometric impossibilities that shifted when not directly looked at.
He walked.
And something followed.
Not footsteps. Not breathing.
A presence. Heavy. Tall. Just outside his peripheral vision.
Every time he stopped, it stopped.
When he turned—it vanished.
When he walked—it returned.
---
At the end of the path stood a door.
Wooden. Old. Covered in carvings of faceless figures devouring each other in spirals.
Khương Triều Dạ reached for the handle.
A voice spoke from behind it:
"This is not your layer."
He froze.
The voice was his.
But older. Broken. Saturated with static and reverb, like it had passed through countless echoes.
"Go back."
He gripped the handle.
His reflection appeared on the door's surface—not a mirror, but water—and the reflection was smiling.
"You were warned."
He turned the handle anyway.
---
Behind the door was a room with no walls.
Only darkness. And teeth.
Thousands.
Floating in the air. Set into invisible flesh. Some as small as needles. Others as wide as tombstones. All chattering. Clicking. Gnashing without rhythm.
He stepped in.
And they stopped.
All at once.
And one voice—soft, female, ancient—whispered:
"First fragment found."
Khương Triều Dạ blinked.
The room was gone.
He was back in his apartment.
Breathless.
But something inside him had changed.
A tooth had grown beneath his tongue.