The universe was indifferent, and that was exactly why Kian loved it.
At 2:00 AM, the air on the flat rooftop of his parents' house was crisp, smelling of damp concrete and the distant, acrid exhaust of the sleeping city. Kian adjusted the focus knob on his Celestron telescope, his fingers moving with a practiced, gentle touch. The blurry orb in the lens sharpened into the pockmarked, brilliant white face of the moon. Beyond it, the darkness stretched out forever.
He took a deep breath, letting the cold air fill his lungs. Up there, in the vacuum, nobody cared about grade averages. Nobody cared about the University Entrance Exam that was exactly seven days away. Up there, entropy ruled. Stars burned out. Galaxies collided.
Down here, Kian was nineteen years old, and he was a failure waiting to happen.
He pulled his eye away from the eyepiece and leaned back against the parapet wall, staring up at the naked sky. He knew the theory of everything, but he had practiced the reality of nothing. He had spent the last four years consuming stories—devouring anime arcs where underdogs became gods, reading high fantasy novels where magic systems were explained in excruciating detail, analyzing the mechanics of mana and ki. He was a scholar of worlds that didn't exist.
Meanwhile, his textbooks for Physics and Chemistry lay unopened on his desk three floors down, gathering dust like tombstones.
"Theory," Kian whispered to the night. "I'm just a spectator."
He knew he would fail the exam. The logic was irrefutable. You cannot cram two years of syllabus into a week when your brain is wired for escapism. The anxiety of it usually sat in his chest like a lead weight, but looking at the stars diluted it. Compared to a supernova, flunking out of the education system was a microscopic event.
But tonight, the comfort didn't last. The itch was back.
He turned away from the telescope and looked at his hands. They were pale, slender—the hands of someone who held controllers and books, not swords or tools. But he didn't feel the itch in his nerves. He felt it deeper.
He felt the Veil
That was what he called it. For four years, ever since he first started meditating to improve his focus for reading speed, he had felt it. It was a spiritual claustrophobia. A sense that the world around him—the traffic, the exams, the concrete, the oxygen—was a thin, artificial skin painted over something real. A cage. A blanket thrown over a birdcage to make the bird sleep.
Most people just called it "life." Kian knew it was a prison.
He walked to the center of the roof, where he had laid out his yoga mat. The resistance started immediately. It wasn't physical pain; it was a heaviness in his soul, a magnetic repulsion trying to force him to go back downstairs, open a bag of chips, and watch another episode. Stay asleep, the world whispered. Don't push.
"Not tonight," Kian muttered. "I'm doing it tonight."
He lay down on the mat, facing the zenith. He closed his eyes.
Darkness took him, but not sleep. He had trained for this. He regulated his breathing—four seconds in, seven seconds hold, eight seconds out. The "4-7-8" technique. His heart rate slowed. The sounds of the city—a distant siren, a barking dog—began to fade into a dull hum.
He visualized the Rope.
It was his anchor. In his mind's eye, a thick, braided golden rope hung from the infinite blackness above him, dangling just within reach of his chest.
For years, he had tried to grab it. In the beginning, he would try to lift his physical arms, breaking the trance. Then, he learned to lie perfectly still, paralyzed by sleep, and try to move his "phantom" arms. Usually, his imagination would falter. The rope would turn to smoke, or his focus would snap, jarring him awake with a gasp.
Focus, he commanded himself. You are a theorist. Apply the theory.
He didn't imagine his hands moving. He imagined his will moving. He pushed his consciousness upward, separating the "watcher" from the body.
The vibration started. It was violent, a humming frequency that rattled his teeth, though his physical jaw was slack. This was the vibration of the Veneer. It was thicker tonight, heavier. It pressed down on him, screaming at him to stop.
Seven days to failure, he thought. I have nothing left here to lose.
In the darkness behind his eyelids, the Rope shimmered. It was solid. More solid than the roof he lay on.
With a mental scream that made no sound, Kian lunged upward.
He didn't use his muscles. He used the part of him that felt the music in a sad song, the part of him that felt weightless when he looked at the stars.
GRAB.
The sensation was shocking.
Cold, rough texture. Friction. Weight.
His phantom hands closed around the golden rope. It didn't fade. It didn't turn to smoke. He was holding it. For the first time in four years, his grip held.
His physical body lay catatonic on the roof, barely breathing. But his soul was dangling, suspended over the abyss of his own existence.
"Pull,"
He hauled himself up. The resistance of the Veil shrieked, a tearing sound like fabric ripping apart. He felt a pressure in his head, intense and searing, as if his brain was being squeezed through a sieve.
He pulled again.
SNAP.
The sound was louder than a gunshot. It wasn't a sound in the air; it was the sound of a reality breaking.
The gravity reversed instantly. Kian wasn't pulling himself up anymore; he was being sucked in. The roof, the telescope, the exam, the city—it all dissolved into a streak of terrifying white light.
The theorist was done thinking.