Melvin stepped forward toward the door, but instead of passing through it, his body melted into the monolithic door. The moment he crossed the threshold, the world folded inward.
There was just absence, the kind he had subtly experienced the first time he entered the Silver Spire. Only that there was a bit of a difference—there was no ground beneath his boots, or marble, or even a sign of impact.
Melvin turned his back to understand his situation better, but that was when guilt washed over him. He thought he shouldn't have turned back in the first place.
Because the air thickened. His breath slowed and sound dulled. Even the faint hum of the Bastion vanished. In fact, there was no Bastion anymore, not even the door he had melted in through.
He returned his gaze to the front and muttered, "…what now?"
His voice did not travel far, however. It felt swallowed.
Then, a pale haze gathered at the edges of his vision, tempting him to look in that direction. And he did.
When he looked down, he saw a vast expanse of drifting mist beneath his feet. Only now did he come to understand a bit why he wasn't falling into the cosmos below.
He was suspended at the boundary of the drifting mist, which stretched endlessly behind him.
Melvin didn't turn back again to avoid the creepy feeling that came when he initially did. Instead, he focused his attention before him and realized that he was moving.
The fog below his feet moved like a slow ocean, its currents folding and unfolding themselves over in silent tides. He was currently floating forward, apparently flying in this endless cosmos.
Scattered around him in the cosmos were countless glimmering green lights of hope. They pulsed faintly, just like the green flames in the lantern suspended in the pillar walls of the Bastion hall.
Some were distant and dim, like fireflies lost in a forest. Others were larger, hanging deeper in the rolling mist like submerged moons beneath murky water.
They, however, didn't look anything like flames or stars. Maybe Melvin just thought them to be points… anchors… perhaps beacons?
Melvin narrowed his eyes.
"This again?" he breathed, though it wasn't clear to him why it should be bothering him at the moment.
He had been right with his guess when he assumed crossing the door was going to throw him into another dimension. But, on honest notes, he never expected what was currently going on.
Many questions soon formed in his mind.
Where was the fog beneath him taking him to? What is with all the "green" since my entrance into this Spire? He was flying… really? But where to?!
As expected, all these questions and some more he ignored, materialized no answers for themselves. Taking a deep, struggling breath, Melvin gave in to the cosmos and the boat of fog beneath his feet.
Nevertheless, his mind remained sharpened, and his instincts flared, ready to engage any danger if he faced one.
Steadily, he moved along the mist. Then, one of the nearer green lights at his current position drifted closer, rising toward him through the current of fog. It rotated slowly with a restrained but steady glow as if asking Melvin to kill his curiosity and touch it.
'For what?'
Melvin watched the green light intently, trying to make clear what was happening. Then—
'I'm checking you out because I am bored. Not the other way around. Not because I am curious,' Melvin mused.
Although it sounded ironic, Melvin tried to convince himself of the reason he was about to touch the green light. Out of boredom, he cautiously extended his right hand.
Aftertick was still held in a tight grip in his left hand.
He moved the bare fingers of his right hand through the thick air, and in response, the green light of hope pulsed and hovered within reach. After hesitating for another brief while, Melvin touched the colorful light.
The reaction was immediate.
The moment his fingertip brushed its surface, a ripple burst outward through him.
A wave of translucent markings surged from the chest of the green light, which was roughly the size of the pictorial depiction of the smallest planet, diverging like liquid streaks of lines across Melvin, serving as streamlines on both sides.
Now, Melvin was currently in between the liquid streaks of lines of the green light, which still affixed themselves to a focal point before him. Then, the focal light flared violently, erupting into a short spear.
"What—?" Melvin was stunned, instinctively crackling Aftertick by his left side should he be in danger.
However, what Melvin dreaded never came.
Instead, with the diverged liquid streaks of light serving as streamlines for both him and the erupted spear of light, the fog beneath his boot suddenly developed a speed that was almost akin to that of sound in air.
Melvin was saved from falling off the fog as he was pulled back violently by the inhuman speed at which he now floated in the air, thanks to the fog clamped tightly beneath his boot. His disheveled silver hair flew up, responding to the furious thick air that bit at his skin, and at the same time, threatened to cost him his sight.
Unusually, Melvin felt that he was safe in this dimension… region… whatever it was called. Hence, after luckily steadying himself against the flow, he dismissed Aftertick and shut his eyes.
The further he traveled into the beyond, the more he got the strange feeling that he belonged to the region.
'Scratch that. I'm just enjoying the fact that I'm flying.'
But to be realistic, the furious flow of thick air now appeared seamless, as if he was part of the cosmos in the first place.
"…!"
Just as soon as the satisfying feeling began to glow within Melvin, it died down. Because he was no longer moving.
Confused, he opened his shut eyes, trying very much to maintain his composure to avoid collapsing out of shock.
The fog that had carried him thinned, flattening into a pale surface like the deck of a silent boat. He stepped off it cautiously.
Similar to when he entered the Spire for the first time, a floor stretched forward… only this time, into an open hall before him.
The floor was polished marble, smooth and faintly reflective. There were no walls, or ceilings, or even pillars by its edges. The hall just floated within an endless, slow-moving cosmos. Green currents drifted past like rivers of light.
It somehow reminded him of the Bastion Hall, but there was a very big difference.
Melvin exhaled slowly, summoned Aftertick in his left hand, and began to walk forward. Each step he took echoed softly across the marble aisle.
Then, there were other details.
With every foot he placed forward, pillars began to rise from the abyssal green cosmos beneath the floor's edges. Tall columns of pale stone emerged from nothingness, ascending with composure and aligning themselves along the aisle as if respecting his passage.
One after another, the pillars continued to rise.
Melvin didn't stop either. He continued forward until the pillars completed their formation behind him, now standing in perfectly, spaced rows. Ahead, the aisle stretched toward a raised platform.
Melvin now slowed as he approached. At the same time, the green cosmos covering the platform gradually and eventually dissipated away. And he saw it.
The raised platform was indeed an altar.
It looked exactly like the altar he had seen within the last formation at the floating ceiling of the opening bastion.
But—
Melvin shrugged.
'Another missing piece… pieces?'
"What is happening?"