The door closed behind me with a drawn-out groan, and then the world went mute. In an instant I moved from the Pyramid's constant hum to a stillness so pure it seemed I could hear the darkness breathing. I took a step, then another. Each footfall raised a whisper of reddish gravel unlike any indoor sound; it was like walking on fine bones. The air smelled of iron and stagnant water, and the light—if it deserved the name—was little more than drifting ash, faint enough that the horizon blurred into the sky.
I hurried down a dry riverbed that sloped gently. The channel was strewn with pebbles streaked in bluish veins; they looked like the seeds of a mineral that had dreamed of the sea and awakened petrified. Beneath the gravel I uncovered basalt posts, dark columns half-buried and coated in a whitish patina. I ran my fingers along one and felt a weak heartbeat, a mineral pulse that climbed to my shoulder. I yanked my hand away.
Then I remembered the jade—the amulet. The night before I left, Kren had set it in my palm and whispered, *"If the Voice calls you in a way you don't understand, press this to your chest; it won't save you from dying, but it will tell you why you die."* It was an opaque green shard, rough and irregular, its cracks shaped like letters. I pulled it out. Nothing moved, nothing sounded. I slipped it back into my pocket and went on.
The channel opened onto a stone arch—two pillars, a lintel, a symbol: an eyelid-less eye carved into the rock. I stepped through and felt as though I were plunging into cold water. The ground changed from reddish gray to an almost-black brown, crusty yet soft. Every footprint sank half a handspan and rose with a viscous smack. Stones turned into serrated blades; pools became still dense sheets that reflected a sky that did not exist.
I crouched beside a round slab bearing the same eye at its center. Resting the jade on it, I was struck by a swift, hollow heartbeat—three pulses, then silence, as though a door had slammed. I pocketed the stone, wiped the sweat from my nape, and moved on.
That was when I saw the tracks: impossibly long toes, hooves cleft into three, trails crossing as though several creatures had danced without ever seeing one another. I couldn't tell whether they followed me or I followed them, but an electric unease filled me—a certainty that I was treading on a stage already taken.
A moan rose out of nowhere. Not wind, not machine: a cold breath choosing to sing. My skin prickled; my teeth chattered. The gravel's crunch became an unbearable racket; I ended up walking on tiptoe, holding my own breath. The passage narrowed between rock blades. The floor softened—a gelatinous layer giving beneath each step. A whitish film clung to my boots and crept upward as if intent on devouring me.
Blue flames appeared—small floating campfires—forming a ring that opened as I approached. I passed through; the fire dipped and rose behind me, murmuring. In the center burned an open well. Sulfurous vapor spilled out, full of voices: smoke-faces, eyelids opening on deeper void. For a heartbeat I thought I recognized my own profile. A panic-born notion urged me to jump. The jade flared hot—like a heart against bone. I stepped back. The well snapped shut, the flames went out, and the night resumed listening to itself.
And then the Voice.
It didn't arrive through my ears; it vibrated within my skull:
—Jareth…
I thought it memory, but it repeated, clearer. The amulet shuddered until it hurt. A corridor opened in the gloom, a violet point trembling at its end. Walking toward it felt like the only law left. Yet halfway there the mist birthed a second path. Centered in it stood a black monolith, fronted by a figure draped in dark cloth. No face—only a hollow where the darkness lay darker still.
Escape never even occurred to me. It drew me like a well. The being lifted a thin arm, a gesture of supplication. Behind the monolith, the ground cracked into a whirlwind of purple spirals. The Voice's song poured from everywhere—so sweet I hungered to sleep in it forever.
The jade struck my sternum three times. That was enough. The abyss sealed, the figure unraveled into fog, and the path lay empty. The violet point faded to ember and vanished as though it had never pulsed. Alone, I knelt, breathing in ragged stitches.
When my legs obeyed again, I turned toward the densest dark. The ground became wet gunpowder; each step left glowing prints that fizzled out. Images flooded my mind—the Pyramid's command hall, a song that smelled of lemon, hands I hadn't held since another life. I brushed them away like flies.
I stumbled over a smooth mound smelling of salt. Thousands of needle-thin stakes sprouted from it; white things—desiccated larvae, candle petals, burst shells—hung at their tips, clinking together. Offerings, I thought, and touched none of it.
Higher up, cages of red light trapped blurry forms fighting to escape. Each shove tore frayed pieces from their vaporous bodies. I watched an instant; my eyes grasped the horror before my mind could name it. I walked on without turning.
The ground sloped to a false lake of greenish oil. Its skin swelled and collapsed as though breathing. A fallen canopy lay on the shore, oval plaques hanging between its irons, thin as wafers, spinning in breezes I could not feel. I lifted one: unknown letters, but I knew they were names. Touching it turned it to silver dust that coated my hand.
From the lake came a reflection—a featureless mask, hollow eyes. It dissolved at once, replaced by the image of a garden that had never been: a path of sleep-walking flowers, a stone bench, a girl seated with her back to me, brushing her hair. The jade heated and the mirror shattered into flakes of oil.
The Voice whispered again, so close it curled my fingers:
—Remember who you were.
I followed the shore, feeling my way, never looking at the water. When I raised my eyes, the Pyramid was no longer even a shadow on the horizon. Solitude was so vast I felt I was moving inside the mind of something far larger than I.
At the foot of a cliff the Night exhaled a freezing draft. I climbed a crack twisted, it seemed, to disorient; at the summit lay a polished plain where no wind blew yet my body froze. In its center sighed a column of shadow—pure absence of light, upright as a black pin. I advanced. The nearer I came, the smaller it shrank, as though darkness wished to hide. A meter away it contracted into a disk hanging at chest height. It pulsed dim violet and spoke without sound:
—One step from you. One step from me.
I reached out. The disk's liquid rim sprayed my fingers with crawling cold. Images rippled across its surface: corridors lit by red lamps, a library of chained-floating tomes, hands entwined on a stone swing. The disk shuddered, flared violently, and burst into mist.
The blast doubled me over. I collapsed, trembling. No wind, no stars, no shelter. Only the jade, tapping slowly like a tired metronome. I knew I would not return. The journey had no way back; the Voice was calling ever closer, a heart buried beneath layers of time and madness, beating to be found.
I rose. With a fingertip I drew a circle in the dust and inscribed the eye within it. Pressing the stone to the drawing until the jade burned, I watched the line glow, tear open, and fill with reddish bubbles that formed a faint trail—a vein that barely pulsed.
It was the only sign I had. I set off along the vein of light. The bubbles burst beneath my steps, yet the line rekindled a handspan farther on, extending into darkness—perhaps toward some earth-mouth where the world intended to forget itself. My mind quivered: every footstep erased a little sanity, yet fed a misty certainty that reality does not end where reason ends, and that love, like terror, can grow in places words refuse to dwell.
The Voice fell silent. The jade gave one last slow beat, like a drum far away. And I kept walking, convinced that the deeper my descent into this Night, the nearer I drew to the only thing still worthy of being called light.