Chapter 2 — The Glass Sphere
"It beats with your thoughts."
---
The silence clung to him like wet cloth.
Every breath scraped his throat.
Elis knelt before the sphere, his reflection bending across its perfect surface.
It was warm.
Too warm for glass.
And yet, when his fingertips brushed it, his chest shivered with a strange, electric pulse…
…a rhythm identical to his own heartbeat.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The light inside flared.
Once.
Twice.
Then stopped.
Elis's breath hitched.
For a moment, it felt as if the sphere was listening.
"...What are you?" he whispered.
The answer came in silence,
but his mind shifted —
as if someone else's thoughts brushed against his own.
---
He scanned the fog,
but nothing stirred.
The world remained still…
…too still.
Behind him, the stone doorway stood open.
Its carved runes glimmered faintly,
like embers hiding in ash.
Thirteen symbols.
All pulsing faintly,
in time with the sphere's light.
Elis reached for one.
The instant his fingertip hovered above the rune —
the light died.
The fog around him deepened,
turning from pale gray to a suffocating black.
From somewhere within that darkness…
a second heartbeat.
Not his.
Not the sphere's.
Something else.
---
The sphere suddenly rolled from his palm
and glided toward the doorway.
Its movement was smooth. Silent.
Almost… deliberate.
It stopped at the base of the stone arch.
Then — a faint hum vibrated through the ground.
Elis froze.
The hum was inside his skull.
He tried to step back —
but his legs wouldn't move.
Instead, a soft voice drifted into his thoughts.
Not from outside.
From within.
"Find me… before it does."
The sphere pulsed violently,
its glow collapsing in on itself,
until the entire thing cracked down the center.
And from the fracture,
a thread of light stretched into the doorway,
marking a path through the darkness.
---
Elis hesitated.
His body screamed don't follow.
His mind whispered you already have.
He stepped forward.
The moment his foot crossed the threshold,
the fog behind him sealed shut like glass.
Inside the doorway…
something moved.
Something with his voice.
"You shouldn't have touched it."
---
To be continued…