Chapter 2
Spear
Drip.
The sound was insistent, metallic, as if a drop was hitting the exact same spot.
The young man cracked his eyes open. He saw nothing, only darkness.
'Drops?...'he thought, trying to focus. The echo bounced in his head as if he were inside an empty cavern.
Another drip.
He frowned,feeling his temples. The pain was gone. 'My headache… it's gone?... great.' A faint smile escaped him, just a sigh of relief.
But the smile vanished quickly.
—"Why can't I see anything?"—he murmured.
Another drip.
A voice appeared, not outside, but inside:
«Who are you?»
The young man tensed.
—"What?"
Suddenly, as if two veils had been drawn back, the darkness parted. The first light that blinded him was the light of the stars.
He sat up slowly, his mouth agape. He was standing on a surface of crystalline water that made no waves or reflections. The sky was an inverted ocean, teeming with white and blue stars that pulsed, closer than ever. Some seemed so low that if he stretched out his hand, he could touch them.
—"What… what is this…"— he whispered, his voice cracked with awe.
He turned in a circle. The horizon was infinite, a perfect mirror: water below, stars above, as if he were suspended between two skies.
Then he remembered a familiar voice, warm, not from this place, but from further back, from before.
The young man exhaled,smiling like someone receiving a push in the midst of fear.
—"Thanks,pa…"— he brought his hand to his waist, breathing deeply, and raised his eyes to the sky—. "Your words really help."
His hands were trembling. He looked at them, comparing them, as if they were two strange objects that no longer belonged to him.
—"Pa…I'm shaking. And I haven't even gotten to where I'm supposed to go yet…"
He shoved his hands in his pockets, lowering his head, and whispered barely audibly:
—"Now I'm alone…"
«I was.»
The young man jerked, spinning so fast he almost lost his balance. He steadied himself on one foot, heart racing, and stared in the direction of the sound.
He froze. In the distance, far beyond what his eyes could precisely make out, there was someone. A silhouette. Just a dark stroke etched against the starry horizon.
He squinted, straining his vision until it hurt. Nothing. The distance was impossible. The blue glow of the sky didn't help: the starlight seemed like a veil, a beautiful but unbearable light that blinded him more than it illuminated.
—"Who…?"— he whispered, but his voice was lost to the void.
And then he saw it.
It wasn't the figure. It was the water. Something was moving from below, a line rising like a pulse. A ripple. The surface began to swell right beneath that distant figure. It rose… no, it grew.
The young man took a step back, and his breath caught as he realized: the entire floor was water. There was no land, no edges, nothing solid. Endless water. Kilometers and kilometers.
That meant what was rising wasn't a simple swell. It was a wave. A colossal wave.
His mouth fell open, eyes fixed on that wall slowly rising. His heart hammered against his chest as if it wanted to flee before he did.
And he ran.
His first impulse was to flee backward, to get away. His feet splashed violently on the liquid surface, sending up drops that seemed to shatter against an invisible pane of glass. The air cut his throat from how fast he was breathing.
Suddenly, he swerved right, desperate, a change in direction that destabilized him. His foot slipped, he almost fell sideways. His balance hung by a thread; he took two clumsy steps, as if the ground were buckling under his feet. A third step held him, and he launched himself into a run again.
The wave kept rising. Every meter made it taller, wider, more impossible.
The young man lifted his head,wanting to measure it. His neck strained, muscles burning. His mouth hung open on its own, until he could take no more. He lowered his gaze to the ground, panting, running blind, gauging only by the shadow enveloping him.
And then the shadow covered him completely. The sky disappeared.
An icy tremor ran down his spine.
—"No…no…"— he swallowed saliva—. "If it grows more, I won't escape… if it grows more it's the end!"
A nervous laugh burst from his throat, broken, uncontrolled.
—"Will I survive?Sure… of course… right?"
The roar of the water was the only answer.
His throat dried with every swallow. He didn't know if it was from the running or the fear. The shadow of the wave enveloped him entirely, and his horrified face grew tighter and tighter, until the muscles seemed ready to snap.
The laugh came out on its own. An awkward, broken sound that scratched his lips like a spark of madness.
—"Haha…will I survive?... of course I will… sure… right?"— he murmured, almost as if trying to convince someone who didn't exist.
But the response was another roar, a liquid thunder that made the air vibrate.
The young man clenched his teeth, gritting them so hard his jaw ached. He felt his whole body tense, muscles on high alert. His chest burned, and his breathing was pure panting.
An animalistic scream escaped from his very depths. It was a desperate roar, a useless challenge against the immensity.
Without stopping his scream, he lowered his head, thrust his arms forward, and joined his hands into a point. His whole body transformed into a human arrow. Time turned viscous. Every second seemed to stretch as he leaned forward, falling headfirst toward the wall of water.
Vertigo enveloped him. His vision narrowed to a tunnel where only the liquid surface existed.
And then, the impact.
It wasn't the brutal blow he expected. There was no pain, no violence. The wave received him with a soft murmur, as if he had passed through an invisible veil.
A muffled"pof," unreal, and everything became calm.
·
·
The first thing he noticed was the calm. An absurd calm.
There was no swell,no current, no pressure pushing him. The water surrounded him like a motionless embrace. Neither cold nor warm, just a tepid, neutral sensation, as if it didn't exist.
He moved his arms slowly, pushing through a liquid that was too docile, too easy to penetrate. He looked at his hands in front of his face: no wounds, no cuts, no pain. Intact.
A brief relief ran through him. But at the same time, something didn't fit. His heart was still pounding hard, and confusion was dismantling him from the inside. Had he really survived? Or was it all another illusion?
He spun around in a clumsy attempt to find the figure he'd seen before. Nothing. No silhouette, no shadows, no trace of the wave. Just infinite water.
—"Was the wave his doing?...or…?"— he whispered inside his head.
And then instinct woke him abruptly: his throat was burning. He brought a hand to his neck, squeezing, and covered his mouth with the other. The truth hit him like a sledgehammer: he couldn't breathe.
—"The water… is it real water?"— he thought in panic, swallowing his own saliva as it burned his trachea.
He pressed his lips together with all his might, pinching his nose shut, holding the air in as if it were the only thing he had left. His arms began to beat desperately, climbing toward what he thought was the surface.
But each movement was weaker than the last. The lack of oxygen was sapping the strength from his muscles. His chest was exploding, his lungs screaming for air.
His eyes closed and opened again and again, fighting the unconsciousness approaching like a weight. His legs gave out first. His arms after.
His body surrendered. And in that instant, the watery abyss was swallowing him.
A lash shot through him.
Pain exploded in his stomach as if someone had driven a spear through him from the inside.His eyes snapped open, and his hands flew on their own to clutch his belly.
The burning of suffocation was already unbearable, but now it mixed with that brutal stabbing pain that tore tears from his eyes. His throat trembled, and he forced one last effort: he held the scant air remaining in his lungs.
He couldn't.
The pain and lack of oxygen broke him at the same time. He opened his mouth and let out a ragged scream. A roar of desperation, of rage, of pure instinct.
But the water swallowed the sound.Not a single bubble emerged. The scream remained trapped in his chest, mute, as if reality itself refused to hear it.
And then… darkness.
·
·
·
The next instant was a brutal leap.
The young man's eyes flew open, and he sat bolt upright in a bed. Air entered in violent gusts, mixing inhalations and exhalations without order. He coughed, gasped, each breath rasping his throat and setting his lungs on fire.
The pain in his stomach was still there, sharp, real. The cold enveloped him completely, as if he'd been pulled soaking wet from an icy river.
His gaze first focused on the ceiling: crossed wooden beams, with metal plates fitted into the gaps. The wood looked damp, and the sound of wind filtering through completed the sensation that he was still trapped in some strange dream.
But it wasn't a dream. He was awake. Alive.
Still breathing raggedly, he turned his head to the left. And froze.
There, in the middle of the room, stood an impossible object: a spear. It wasn't made of iron or wood, but of something that looked like coral ripped from the seabed, twisted, with edges that gleamed wetly in the faint light. It was embedded in the floor at a diagonal, pointing straight at the bed, as if someone had thrown it with mortal force and it had stopped just centimeters from impaling him.
The young man tried to sit up, his elbows trembling on the mattress. He barely lifted his torso when an icy wind hit the back of his neck and forced him to turn.
The room's single circular window was shattered. The splintered wood and metal frame burst inward, as if something had blown the frame apart upon entry. The night air rushed in gusts, bringing with it salty drops that stung his skin and lips.
He turned fully, lowered his legs, and set his feet on the floor. The wood was cold, damp. He remained sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the window open to the void, listening to the whistle of the wind and the irregular dripping from the splintered edges.
He swallowed. His stomach ached with every breath. Instinctively, he brought his left hand to his belly, pressing against the pain, while his eyes kept returning again and again to the spear embedded a few meters away.
—"It can't be that this thing… came through the window… and hit me on the way down…"— he said quietly, but the phrase broke on its own—. "Impossible, right?"
The silence of the room didn't answer. Only the wind, entering through the broken window, whistled like a mockery.