Light

The air tastes like old copper and damp earth as I stumble forward, barefoot on the jagged, glittering stones. Somewhere above, the sky is bleeding lavender, streaked with rippling ribbons of ink and silver. It’s not a sky I’ve ever seen before, but it feels like one I’ve dreamed of—long ago, when I still remembered how to feel at home in my own skin.

The trees around me are tall and skeletal, their branches curling like the fingers of some forgotten god, clawing at the void. Their bark glistens in the pale glow of the orbs hovering in the air—tiny stars, humming and vibrating as though alive. The light they give off isn’t warm; it’s sharp, like frostbite, like the crackle of neon signs in the rain.

I don’t know why I’m here, or how I got here. There was a door, I think. Was it a door? Maybe it was just a hole in the fabric of the world, fraying at the edges and spilling out this fractured dream. I walked through it, and now I’m nowhere and everywhere all at once.

A sound breaks the stillness—a low, resonant hum, like the purr of some ancient machine buried beneath the ground. It seeps into my bones, makes my teeth ache. My eyes dart to the shadows, where shapes move just out of reach, their outlines melting and reforming like smoke. I try not to look too closely; they’re not meant to be seen, only felt.

The forest floor pulses under my feet, soft and spongy, like the skin of some colossal creature. As I move forward, the ground begins to tilt, subtly at first, then violently. I’m climbing now, or falling upward—it’s hard to tell. Gravity is a suggestion, and time doesn’t exist here.

There’s a mirror ahead. Its frame is ornate, carved from something that might be bone, might be wood. The glass ripples like water, its surface reflecting not my face but my shadow—a darker, sharper version of me, with eyes that burn like dying stars. She smiles, and it feels like a knife sliding into my chest.

“Are you lost?” she asks, her voice dripping with something sweet and venomous.

“I don’t know,” I reply, though the words don’t come from my mouth. They echo around me, bouncing off the hollow spaces in my skull.

The shadow-me reaches out, her fingers stretching through the glass like ink spilling across paper. I back away, but the forest is closing in, the trees bending low to trap me in their brittle cage.

Somewhere in the distance, a clock chimes, its tone deep and mournful. With each strike, the forest quivers, the orbs flicker, and the world dissolves a little more.

And then I’m falling—not upward, not downward, just falling, endlessly, into a void that feels like velvet and static and the end of everything. My hands grasp at nothing, and my breath is swallowed by the darkness.

When I wake, if I wake, I’ll try to remember this place. I’ll try to piece it together, but it will slip through my fingers like smoke, like sand, like the threads of a dream unraveling.

For now, I am here. And here is nowhere.