My eyes!
It feels like it's bursting!
Don't tell me... It's an allergic reaction to the alcohol I drank during the farewell party?! Floren Everett pondered for a few seconds before she groaned out loud as the pain intensified. It felt like something was squeezing her eyes with the intent of making them burst!
Ughh... Floren tried to lift a hand to rub her eyes, try to ease the pain, only to find out that it was in some sort of shackle.
What the f**k! Why am I shackled like a criminal?! Did something happen while I was drunk?! Floren panicked and opened her eyes, only to find out that she was in a void-like place, with no objects or structure in sight apart from the shackles around her wrists and ankles.
Was this some sort of weird lucid dream? But why would I dream of a endless void? At least my eyes don't hurt now. Floren sighed as she looked around.The only thing illuminating the place was a small, glowing star in the sky above her. She was captivated, but then her mind returned to her earlier predicament.
Why am I chained with... What the hell are these?! At first, Floren had thought that they were just chains, but now that she was actually concentrating, she realized that the chains seemed to be moving around or rather, squirming around!
Oh my god! The chains... They were made of millions and millions of squirming pieces of-nope! Don't think about it! Floren felt nauseous. As her stomach slowly settled down, Floren surveyed her surroundings. This lucid dream is crazy! How do I control my dream? Ahh this is so weird! Although these thoughts plagued her mind, Floren's face betrayed none of them.
She tried to imagine the... squirming... chains disappearing and finally snapping apart. She heard a tiny hiss and when Floren looked down this time, the chains were gone!
Finally!
If I looked at that... thing for any longer, I might have actually vomited my guts out!
Just as Floren took a tentative step forward, the void beneath her feet rippled—like a drop of ink dissolving into still water. She paused, brows knitting into a frown. There was no ground beneath her, not really—only a sensation, a certainty that she wouldn't fall, though everything about the place screamed that she should and would.
A whisper.
Not of sound, but of thought—sliding through the crevices of her mind like an eel through wet stone.
"You've awakened... earlier than expected."
Floren's breath caught in her throat. She turned sharply, though there was no direction here, and yet her body obeyed. Behind her—where there had been nothing just moments ago—stood a figure cloaked in ragged shadows, its outline unstable, like smoke wrapped in a shroud of memory.
The glowing star above pulsed once—softly—casting long shadows that danced like marionettes strung by invisible threads.
"Who are you?" she demanded, her voice wavering only slightly.
The figure tilted its head. Where its face should've been, there was only an ever-shifting mask—like the surface of the dark water reflecting thousands and thousands of unknown stars.
"You may call me... The Warden. For now."
A chill crept down her spine. The name scratched at something buried in her memory, like a scene glimpsed on the edge of a dream.
"This is the Threshold," the Warden continued, its voice like parchment crumbling under weightless pressure. "A boundary between the normal and the extraordinary. Few arrive here by chance. Fewer survive it."
"I was drinking... then the pain... the shackles—"
"Yes," the Warden said, nodding slowly. "The alcohol was... a key, nothing more. A veil pulled aside. You were already marked. The invitation had long since been sent."
A strange buzzing filled the air. From the corner of her eye, Floren glimpsed something—a glyph—carved not into stone, but into the very fabric of the void itself. It pulsed with a rhythm not unlike her own heartbeat, alive and living.
"Why me?"
The Warden stepped forward. The shadows around it clung to its limbs like extensions, moving as the Warden stepped forward.
"Because you saw. You touched. You remembered."
The glowing star above flared suddenly—its light now cold, like winter moonlight reflecting off a grave. The void shook.
The Warden raised a hand—long, pale fingers emerging from beneath its tattered sleeve—and pointed toward the darkness ahead.
"You may walk forward, Seeker... but know this: every step brings you closer to the truth that devours and devestates."
Floren hesitated—but only for a moment. Then, with a deep breath, she stepped into the darkness, the memory of the squirming chains still burning beneath her skin.
________________________________________
Elsewhere.
The scent of incense curled lazily in the air, weaving through tall shelves burdened with tomes bound in flayed skin and salt-treated vellum. Candlelight flickered, casting distorted silhouettes across a floor of cold obsidian tiles.
An aged man sat hunched over a table of silvery wood, a monocle fixed to his left eye, glinting faintly as he turned a fragile page. His hands—long and spindly, stained with ink and something darker—trembled only slightly as he traced a symbol etched into the parchment.
Suddenly, the candle nearest to him sputtered. Then another. Then all of them, in rapid succession—as if recoiling from a breath that had passed through the room unseen.
The man, Archivist Baruch of the Ninth Vault, did not flinch. Instead, he lifted his head, listening to the silence that followed like a priest to a sermon.
"A Threshold has opened," he whispered.
His voice, though barely audible, reverberated strangely—as though the walls themselves drank in his words. He closed the tome, muttering a soft canticle, and sealed it with a lock made of red bone. The seal hissed shut, threads of smoke rising from the keyhole.
Behind him, an orb of frozen mercury pulsed atop its pedestal. A single drop broke free, defying gravity as it hovered in place, then twisted itself into a sigil—one that did not belong to any of the known branches of the Thaumaturgical Tree.
Baruch turned, his lips pressing into a thin line.
"It's her, then. The girl with the severed chain."
He rose with surprising grace for his age, donned a cloak of dusk-blue feathers, and reached for his staff—a thing of wrought glass filled with swirling ash.
"Too soon," he muttered, stepping into the darkness beyond his chamber. "They'll try to reach her first."
A soft chime echoed in the chamber as he vanished, and from one of the locked cabinets nearby, a whisper seeped into the room like smoke through keyholes.
"The game begins anew…"