Beyond the boundaries of the dome that separated sanity from madness, at an altitude where oxygen grew thin and the stars felt sharper, the Sheepman Sailor stood. He didn't hover, nor did he fly in any way understood by the laws of physics. He was simply... there.
His skeletal legs, clad in worn-out boots, trod upon nothingness. Yet, the air beneath his soles was not still; it warped, solidified, and bent in impossible ways, creating an invisible floor of dense spatial distortion. It was as if the atmosphere itself feared him, choosing to harden into a foothold rather than letting him fall.
His dull, old sailor's coat, reeking of ancient sea salt, fluttered softly, tugged at by the cold stratospheric winds. His thin, skeletal arm emerged from a pocket, bony fingers drumming against the empty air, as if counting down the remaining time trickling from a cosmic hourglass.
Sheepman Sailor:
"Not yet... not yet... it is not yet time..."
The voice did not come from vocal cords, but echoed from the hollow cavity of his chest. It was heavy, dry, and hoarse, sounding exactly like two ancient tombstones grinding against each other in the dead of night. A torturous wait, the patience of a being who had watched oceans dry up and mountains turn to dust.
But suddenly, the rhythm of his waiting was disrupted. His dark eye sockets caught something—an anomaly down below, inside the dome that should have been sealed tight against outside fate.
How can he be here?
He looked up, gazing at the expanse of rolling black clouds above him. It was time to summon the retriever.
Sheepman Sailor:
"Albrag, come."
The command was spoken in a flat tone, yet its effect was catastrophic.
"GRRMMMMMM..."
The world seemed to shudder, groaning in pain down to its marrow. Up above, thick clouds were forcibly split apart. A massive black line formed in the sky, tearing the canvas of the atmosphere like a razor slashing through silk. The tear widened, revealing not stars, not sky, but a pitch-black void—a nowhere land.
From within that gaping maw, rain fell instantly. Torrential, heavy, and cold. It was no ordinary rainwater; it was a pitch-black liquid from another dimension, falling to drench the earth's atmosphere. And from behind that curtain of black rain, he emerged.
"KIIIIIIIIEEEEKKK!!"
A shriek capable of shattering a dragon's eardrums echoed out. Albrag descended.
Its size was truly absurd, a sky leviathan over a hundred meters long that made the clouds look like mere wisps of mist. Its neck was long and sinuous, covered in dirty yet majestic white feathers. A long mane like dull silver horsehair hung from the back of its head, dancing wildly in the storm winds of its own making.
Its head was an ornithological nightmare; a giant seagull's beak, sturdy and sharp, with eyes that stared vacantly yet piercingly. However, the true horror lay in its body. Its chest was wide open, skin and flesh peeled back neatly to reveal a massive, curving white ribcage. Inside? Empty. Void. No heart, no lungs, only darkness swirling within the skeletal frame of its chest.
Two muscular arms sprouted from its shoulders, ending in eagle talons as sharp as scythes, ready to tear mountains apart. Its lower body possessed no legs, instead elongating into a giant white-scaled serpent tail that slithered endlessly through the sky. Its giant gull wings spanned wide, so vast that when they flapped, the moonlight was completely blocked, casting a shadow of death over the ocean of clouds.
The Sheepman Sailor did not jump. He had no need for such vulgar effort.
The space around him suddenly pinched. Reality folded itself like origami paper.
ZHHHPP!
The Sheepman Sailor's body shrank, distorted into a thin line, then vanished from his foothold. In the blink of an eye—teleportation? Or perhaps he simply erased the distance between them—he reappeared, standing upright atop Albrag's coarse-feathered head.
Albrag surged forward. Its serpentine body undulated, slicing through the air at a muffled supersonic speed. They dove sharply toward the vast forest below.
In the distance, the Dome appeared. A massive visual distortion, like a solidified heat wave, covering an area hundreds of kilometers wide, hiding the village and forest within from the eyes of the world.
"WUUUUUSSSHH..."
Albrag did not slow down. It had no intention of destroying it.
When Albrag's giant beak touched the surface of the Dome, there was no explosion. No impact. That Dome, a wall of magic that had imprisoned thousands of souls and sins for years, was nothing more than cigarette smoke to Albrag. The creature penetrated it smoothly. Its massive body phased through—passing as if the Dome were merely meaningless empty air. A ghost passing through a wall.
Albrag's colossal shadow swept over the forest below, momentarily darkening the burning village, making the fires look small and insignificant.
And at the nadir of its flight, right above that chaotic village, reality played another trick.
Albrag and its rider did not fly off into the horizon. Their massive three-dimensional bodies suddenly flattened. They shrank... and shrank... losing depth, losing volume, until finally becoming nothing but a thin, one-dimensional line against the night sky.
Ting.
The line blinked once, then vanished completely from existence, leaving the night sky empty once more, as if the god and his steed had never been there at all.