.
.
.
Atlas opened his eyes.
White.
An endless, devouring white.
There was no sky. No ground. No horizon. Just a void so absolute it mocked the idea of distance or time. No warmth. No cold. No air. Not even silence. Just absence, so complete it felt like a scream that never started. His breath didn't echo—because there was no breath. His body wasn't floating. It wasn't sinking. It just...was.
Weightless.
Like a thought unspoken, waiting to become real.
Something inside him was fading. Or reforming. A sensation not of pain, but of dissolution. Of layers peeling away—flesh, memory, meaning. Leaving only the raw core.
His name, even, felt heavy. Foreign. Not because he forgot it. But because it was too small now.
"You've crossed over again," came a voice.
Deep. Low. Inevitable.
Like the cracking of glaciers. Like the creak of a rope over a hanging beam.
Atlas turned—or at least willed himself to—and saw the one thing that should never be seen.
Death.
