When I ca to my senses, I was sowhere else. No longer in the tower, no longer beside Victor, Rupert, Arthur, and the rest of the response team, just... sowhere else. It took no more than a single blink, a brief and almost insignificant second, for everything around to change.
The scenery shifted and rebuilt itself before , all within a single instant while my eyelids were closed. I felt no physical transition, no displacent, no imbalance that might betray movent. My body remained steady, as if I had never left my original position.
There was no sound at all, no crack, no distant echo, no rush of air slicing through space. Everything was so silent it felt artificial. For a mont, I hesitated to move. The only certainty I had was simple: sothing had happened.
Shaking my head to dispel my wandering thoughts, I tried to focus on what lay before , and failed. No matter how hard I stared or forced my concentration, my mind refused to form a clear image, anything that would allow to truly understand what I was seeing.
It wasn’t exactly darkness, though my eyes found nothing concrete to grasp. There was no light either, yet sohow I could still distinguish vague “shapes” around , like silhouettes dissolving into a diffuse glow that seed to co from everywhere and nowhere at once.
And yet, it wasn’t emptiness. I felt everything. A subtle presence pressed against my senses, vibrating in a slow, irregular rhythm. The air, if there even was air, carried a strange texture, brushing against my skin.
It was simply... a sensation. A feeling that slipped through my thoughts every ti I tried to define it, becoming aningless, like a forgotten word sitting at the tip of my tongue.
Even so, strangely, I wasn’t panicking. Though my face naturally carries a certain indifference, I am still capable of feeling emotions, even if, most of the ti, they manifest only internally. Lately, those emotions have felt lukewarm, muted.
Still, I knew I should at least be extrely confused. I was fully aware of that. Anyone in their right mind would be on alert, searching for an exit, calling for help, letting instinct take control. But inside there was no urgency. No desperate impulse.
Only a gentle, deep calm, strangely comforting, like finally arriving ho after a long journey, closing the door behind you, and realizing that, for a mont, nothing else matters. It was an almost unnatural tranquility, unnatural enough to make question whether that lack of reaction was truly my own.
Anyway... where exactly was that “Ho”? The place Eryanis called the cradle of creation? The place where we were born? It was beautiful, or at least I believed it was, but even so, it did not compare to what now lay before . I didn’t really know what I was seeing, technically, it was as if I weren’t seeing anything at all.
And yet sothing in that space continued to fill my senses. There was a strange, warm, welcoming feeling surrounding everything like a silent embrace. I took a deep breath, more instinctive than deliberate. The air felt... familiar.
Not because of any sll or temperature, I couldn’t identify either, but because of the way it filled and spread through my body.
It was as if every breath followed an ancient rhythm, sothing my body recognized before my mind could understand. A mory without images, without words... only a constant sense of belonging.
I felt a strange emotion slowly growing within , like a silent tide advancing without haste. The tension that had weighed on my shoulders monts before began to fade, dissolving little by little until it vanished completely, like mist under morning light.
In its place ca sothing different, a warm, gentle nostalgia, almost comforting, spreading through my chest and slowing my thoughts. I tried to rember what I was seeing. I forced my mind, searching for any detail I could hold onto.
But I simply couldn’t. Every ti my awareness approached a shape, a color, a concept... it unraveled, slipping through my fingers like fine sand. Only the sensation remained, vague and persistent. And yet, I knew. Sohow, inexplicably, I knew.
I had a strange certainty that there was “sothing” in that space. Sothing vast. Sothing... important. I felt neither fear nor reverence, only recognition. It was like passing a familiar face in a crowd of strangers, not knowing where that familiarity ca from but being absolutely certain it existed.
It felt as though I had rediscovered an ancient part of myself, a part so distant that I didn’t even know I had lost it, or that I had ever possessed it at all. A silent yet welcoming presence filled the environnt.
For an instant, just a brief, fragile instant, I had the impression that sothing was watching . No... not exactly. It was strange. Instead of being observed by sothing external, it felt as though I were observing myself, as if a distant version of stared back through an invisible mirror.
Then, just as suddenly as it began, the sensation changed. It didn’t disappear; it simply withdrew. It receded slowly, like a silent tide pulling back from the shore, leaving behind a subtle emptiness and the lingering certainty that there was still “sothing” there.
And then the “space” before simply tore open, not like a door opening, but as if reality itself had yielded under a pressure greater than it could withstand. Sothing erged. Three flas of absolute white floated in the void, vibrating with a low, continuous hum, both light and profoundly deep at the sa ti. They remained there, impossibly stable.
Each one spun around itself in a perfectly circular motion, no wobble, no flaws, while the three also orbited one another in a hypnotic harmony, as if obeying a law of their own. Their glow did not illuminate, it devoured.
Where there should have been light, there was an absence of form. Details were consud, colors faded, and edges dissolved into unstable blurs, reminiscent of fire, but without heat, without smoke, without any familiar sign of combustion. The air around them seed to bend slightly, as if hesitating to exist near those presences.
The longer I watched, the stronger the feeling grew that they were not rely “flas,” but fragnts, echoes of sothing far too vast to fit within reality. A miserably reduced glimpse of an entity or concept whose true form remained beyond perception.
That was the last glimpse I had of that place, of whatever existed within it, before I felt my body suddenly pulled. No... pulled wasn’t the right word. It felt more like being violently ejected, as if an invisible force had ripped away without the slightest care.
For a single instant, my mind went blank, absolute emptiness. Then my eyes were forced open. I was back in the tower. The sa cracked, worn walls surrounded , covered in ancient fractures.
The air carried that dry scent of old stone and dust. My body cut through space like a fired bullet, wind tearing against my ears as I was hurled through the air. Below , darkness churned like a living sea, restless and hungry.
From it rose black, ghostlike hands, elongated and distorted, climbing upward in frantic, desperate motions. Their spectral fingers stretched as far as they could, almost reaching, almost touching.
The darkness seed to advance faster, more fiercely, alive, almost starving. The scene unfolded before my eyes with startling clarity, as if ti had slowed to a near halt. Hands erged from the shadows, pale and warped, reaching silently to grab the reaction team mbers by their feet.
Their gazes carried pure horror, wide eyes reflecting the dark, skeletal hands rushing toward them. So voices tried to shout orders, but they sounded muffled, swallowed by the suffocating tension of the mont.
Weapons were raised in haste, sights trembling. But it already felt too late. Nothing would stop them. Nothing would make them hesitate. And then... I simply wanted.
I wanted us sowhere else. I wanted there to be no hands chasing us. I wanted us to go wherever Emily and Laura were. I just wanted... to get out of that tower, or whatever that thing really was. I wanted... well, to be honest, I also kind of wanted so ice cream at that mont.
And then it happened. My eyes blinked, a single instant, a single fragnt of ti, and the world changed. We were sowhere else. My body still floated, suspended by an invisible force, while dark ribbons made of liquid shadow remained coiled around all the humans with , undulating slowly like living serpents.
Below , Emily and Laura stared at sothing outside my field of vision, their faces tense, marked by concern and alertness. Then their eyes lifted almost at the sa ti, as if pulled by an invisible thread. Toward .
Ti was still slow, dragging each second as though trapped in thick honey. Our gazes t for a single instant. Then ti returned. Gravity finally rembered it existed. And my body dropped, falling straight toward Emily.
Around us, the reaction team mbers were released as well, thrown into different trajectories by the sudden impact of the fall, their shouts and the dull thud of bodies hitting the ground echoing through the area.
Low choruses of discomfort and pain echoed through the environnt as the reaction team slowly rose, still dazed, trying to reorient themselves. So leaned against the walls; others pressed their temples as if trying to drive away the persistent ringing in their heads.
Curious and cautious glances swept across every corner while confused expressions ford on their faces. Fragnted murmurs began to erge, gradually filling the air.
That said, another murmur vibrated beneath , a low, constant hum that seed to echo through the ground. Only then did I realize the situation: I was on top of Emily. Literally on her face. For a second I froze, before springing up, pulling myself back in a hurry while dragging my little sister away.
I stepped back a few paces, the light sound of my movents contrasting with the weight I actually possessed. I looked at Emily with a carefully neutral expression, though inside an embarrassing wave ran through . It didn’t make much sense at first glance, I looked light, almost massless, but the truth was different.
I was much heavier than I appeared, sothing that didn’t match my looks. Heavy enough that Emily couldn’t even move when I was on top of her. For a mont, I averted my gaze, pretending to analyze the surroundings as if nothing had happened.
Emily slowly got up, as though each movent required extra effort. Her hand rose to her head, carefully massaging her temple while her eyes, still slightly unfocused, turned toward . There was confusion in them.
“Ugh...” she muttered, her voice low and raspy. Her eyes narrowed briefly, and her expression twisted into an involuntary grimace, betraying her discomfort before she blinked several tis, trying to clear the haze clouding her vision.
A throbbing stab pulsed behind her temple, and she instinctively raised a hand to her head, pressing lightly as if she could hold the pain back. She took a deep breath: “What the hell just happened?” she murmured, frowning as her gaze began to wander around her surroundings, cautious and alert.
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