The sky outside was nothing but gray. Rain streaked across the window in crooked lines, each drop racing until they blurred together. I leaned against the glass, chin propped in my hand, watching the storm instead of the movie playing on the screen in front of me.
Flying always made me restless. Too much noise, but also too much silence.
A program booklet sat in my lap—Commemoration Ceremony — Honoring the Hall Family's Sacrifice. My parents' names were printed on the back in sharp letters. Everyone else called them heroes. Martyrs. I only knew them as names on a stone. To me, they were just gone.
Ben nudged my elbow. "You're brooding again." He said it with that crooked grin, like teasing me would make it better.
"I'm not brooding."
"You've got the look. Same one when–" He stopped himself, then shrugged. "Never mind."
I panned my eyes to him, glanced at him, then turned back to the window. "Feels weird. Flying to a party for people I don't even remember."
"Not a party," he corrected. "A commemoration." He said it like a teacher, then grinned. "But hey, free food, right?"
I almost smiled. Almost.
The rain hammered harder. It hit the windows so loud it felt like we were flying through a waterfall. The lights flickered. The plane shuddered. People shifted in their seats, whispering.
Then silence.
The rain stopped. The engines cut out. Everyone around me sat still, caught mid-breath.
Everyone except me.
I glanced over to Ben, his glassy, lifeless eyes staring into the unknown.
My chest tightened. I grabbed Ben's shoulder. "Hey. Wake up." Nothing. I shook harder. Echoing silence.
"Ben?" My voice cracked. He didn't move.
I slid out into the aisle. My feet carried me forward before I even thought about it. Every row I passed was the same, passengers stiff and still, eyes glassy, mouths caught mid-word. They didn't even look alive.
At the front, I pressed a hand to the cockpit door. Locked. My fingers found the latch of the smaller service door beside it.
I pushed it open, taking in the scene before me.
Rain droplets hung in the air like beads, shimmering faintly against the cabin light. The storm stretched over the indigo sky, a canvas of lightning and clouds.
And past that…
A man walked along the clouds as if they were solid ground. The way he walked felt regal, almost godlike. He wasn't glowing or monstrous, just… ordinary.
I tried to burn his image into my mind, but it kept slipping away.
Suddenly, as if noticing my gaze, his eyes landed on mine, and a small smile coated his lips.
The window beside the wing stretched outward, and streaks of light twirled in front of my eyes. Space folded wrong, and in the next breath, I was outside.
My body stood weightless in the frozen rain. No wind. No sound. Just me and him.
He didn't open his mouth, but words still pressed into my mind.
When you arrive where you need to go, mention the name Izak.
I froze. My throat locked.
He tilted his head, almost amused.
Only a piece of the puzzle. Remember.
I twisted my mind around his words, reaching for any semblance of a clue as to what they meant.
Still staring at me, the man flashed a curious smile. His eyes looked happy, but also extremely tired. I wanted to reach out to him, but my body wouldn't listen, still frozen within the expanse of water droplets.
Suddenly, the world cracked open beneath me.
I fell through the world as the stranger's last words echoed in my mind.
The dark wasn't empty. Lights drifted all around me, tiny sparks that floated like fireflies. Some brushed past my arms and fizzed away, others darted ahead, weaving paths between the stones.
The specks of light slowly stretched into lines as the metal around me spun in random directions. The sky itself seemed to dance along my skin as I kept moving toward wherever I was meant to go.
Colors stretched through the dark greens, blues, and faint ribbons of white. They curled and crossed each other, slow as paint poured into water. The whole place breathed in rhythm, a world that wasn't mine, pulling me deeper.
It was then that I noticed it. The texture of the sky around me began to dissolve.
Lines split into shapes, spirals of stone and light racing past my body. Patterns flickered in the air like constellations, too old for me to understand. One blink and they vanished, the next blink and they were back, shifting faster, layering until my head pounded.
My chest heaved. The silence pressed so hard against my ears that it felt louder than any scream.
I reached for something, anything, but the world slipped through my fingers.
The purple veins in the largest slab below throbbed brighter, brighter, until the whole surface burned with light. My body tilted toward it. I couldn't fight it, couldn't stop.
The colors bent together, twisting into a single blinding thread. It shot straight through me, tearing the breath from my lungs.
I tried to shout. No sound came.
Everything folded. My vision smeared into black.
My mind gave out.
As clarity came back, the feeling of gritty sand washed in my teeth.
The sand was damp, cold waves dragging at my legs before retreating again. I sat motionless along the shore, piecing together the fragments of memory I had from that whole experience.
I rolled onto my back. The sky above was pale and endless. Not the ceiling of a plane. Not the void I had fallen through. Just sky.
The man said, when I arrive where I'm supposed to go, mention the name Izak… Who was Izak? Who was that man? Where am I supposed to go? The harder I try to piece together the face of the man who brought me here, the less I remember.
"Curses." I spat with deploration. I'm lost on a beach I don't recognize. No idea where to go, no food, no people. I guess the first course of action is to survive.
I searched for my phone, maybe my luck was good, and there was a signal.
Alas, my luck would never be that good. The phone was cracked, with splinters of glass poking out in all directions.
I tried powering it on, but the second I did, sparks shot out of the phone, burning my hand.
Welp, I tried to live… But how am I gonna live without a phone?
I glanced around me for the first time since arriving here, taking in the surroundings.
The beach curved into a forest. Pines and redwoods pressed together like a wall, their trunks banded with moss. The air smelled of iron and wet bark. The tree line stood magically along a mountain, pressing around the towering sky with a mystical quality.
That's when I saw it, far inland, beyond the haze of green, a black monolith jutted from the horizon. It stood against the trees like a broken tooth, taller than anything around it. Even from this distance, I felt its weight. The longer I stared, the louder the hum in my head became.
I took in a deep breath as I measured the horizon. Yeah… nothing ominous about the black tower in the forest... But as much as I protested in my mind, the horror story protagonist took over, and I got too curious. Could that thing be what the man wanted me to find?
The forest swallowed me quickly as I ventured toward the structure. Roots coiled across the path. Shrubs snagged at my arms. Shadows pressed in from every side.
The foliage grew stranger the deeper I went. Ferns brushed my knees, damp with mist. Leaves hung heavy, veined with colors I didn't recognize. Reds branching into silver, greens so dark they seemed black. Mushrooms towered at my waist. It was quiet, eerily so for a forest of this size.
In a clearing, I stopped. Grass lay flattened. Trees were scarred with claw marks deep as my fingers. Whatever had left them hadn't passed long ago. The air smelled ripe of blood, sending shivers down my spine. It was either go through this area or risk going another way, where something else lurked.
My stomach growled, loud in the silence. I pressed a hand against it, muttering to the cold silence that he could've sent me with a lunch box at least.
I looked around for something, anything that seemed like it wouldn't be too poisonous to eat.
I tore clusters of berries from small bushes, stacking them against my arm. I crushed one between my teeth and gagged on the sour taste. The texture felt like a gooey mess, making it hard to swallow, but it was food.
One by one, I fought against the taste and swallowed the berries, each one varying in bitterness and sourness. Soon, I only had a handful left, and I guess that was the queue for trouble.
A shadow flickered overhead. My face went from a pucker to an eerie calm.
Wings swept down in a blur, leathery and wide. I quickly dove out of the way, my berries scattered across the dirt.
I looked up at the culprit.
A fox's face stared back at me from the canopy, upside down, black eyes glossy. It chewed noisily on the fruit it had stolen, juice dripping down its muzzle.
Another swooped past, then another. The air filled with sharp chatter, their shrieks bouncing between the trunks like laughter.
I lunged, but the nearest one snapped its wings wide and vanished into the branches. The rest followed, leaving only scraps of pulp behind.
I stood there empty-handed, chest heaving. I rambled about how I would cook them, imagining their eyes as tapioca balls.
A sudden low growl from the sky pulled me out of my stupor. Looking up, I saw what looked like a plane pulling across the sky, the clouds obscuring the major details.
If I could signal towards it, maybe I could get off this beach. Instantly, my heart started to race as I became aware it was do or die right now.
I worked with a renewed fever, twisting small twigs off of shrubs and piling them together. I pulled some moss and bark off one of the giant trees nearby, planning to use it as my fire starter.
I quickly pulled out my broken phone, remembering the sparks. Please… please work.
I clicked the power button again, sparks flew out, but it wasn't enough. I pressed it again, and again. I spammed the button with the speed of a professional Tetris player, watching as the sparks now rained down onto the moss and bark, slowly heating them to a smoky burn.
I pulled back, cupping my hands over the moss, watching it go from a verdant green to a pale orange. As soon as smoke started to rise from the bark, I put some sticks and twigs overtop of it. Soon enough, the heat built until I had a small flame. It was enough for now.
I contemplated the next part for a long time, but ultimately, if this were a plane and I missed the chance to call for help, I would be devastated. I pulled over a small splintered log, just the right length to increase the flames' size.
I threw the phone into the fire, placed the log over the flame, I listened as the phone crackled and then.
Boom.
The log faltered within the flame of the explosion, catching and now burning.
Quickly, I pulled a small stick from the fire, coated in battery acid and flame. I threw it into the air like a flare.
And finally, I noticed something. The plane was… flapping?
Then, it dove from the cloud, its form now in full display of what something out of this world would look like.
Every hair on my head stood along my scalp. The only thought in my head was how easily I could be eaten by that thing.
Its head swiveled and noticed the smoke coming up out of the forest, and it dove down.
I ran, ran as far as I could into the woods, my mind an ever lapsing course of cursing and rambling.
I felt the ground around me shift, and a booming thud hit the air as the thing landed behind me.
I swear I felt it glance at me, but it ignored me.
It soon let out what could only be described as a whistle of death from its throat, my ears throbbing from the force of the noise. The next thing I could see was its form flying back up into the sky.
Yeah, that covers it, I'm definitely not sleeping well tonight…
I tore my gaze away and pressed deeper into the forest. The monolith waited, and I had no choice but to follow. Whatever lived in this forest, it couldn't be better than the tower.
As I made my way closer to the tower, more details became prevalent about it. It was definitely manmade. Large bricks of lustrous black stone lined the structure, with small exposed chunks lining the exterior.
Now standing at the bottom, the full picture came into play. Black slabs stacked like ribs, half-buried in earth, slick with moss and rain. Runes lined the mask of the tower, cutting into the stone like constellations of stars.
I hesitated for a moment, contemplating whether what I was about to do was smart.
But my hand reached out anyway.
The stone shivered under my palm. The runes glowed faint violet, then dimmed as if embarrassed to be seen. A tremor ran through me, sharp enough to blur my vision.
The hum in my head aligned with the shrine's rhythm. For an instant, it felt like the world itself breathed with me.
Then it was gone.
The runes dulled, the monolith silent again. My hand tingled as if something had passed through it.
I stumbled back, looking towards my hand for any sign of damage, none.
Yep, that confirms it, I've officially become a haunted horror movie protagonist.
I quickly looked around me, making sure nothing was ominously staring down at me from the ceiling. But what I noticed quieted down the peril in my mind. The roof of the tower was… vast.
Small white dots lined the pillar, each one glowing and twisting along the black stone. I breathlessly noticed at the center stood the brightest light, like a shining star twinkling in the night sky.
I traced the pattern of lights, breath catching as I realized they were spiraling downward, like a drain in the sky. My eyes followed the curve until they reached the smallest point, a single dot low on the wall.
I approached it cautiously, sweat slicking my palm. I pressed my hand to the cold stone.
Nothing. No hum, no flash, no hidden door to some secret world.
Then I noticed the silence. All the other lights were gone.
Why am I just thoughtlessly approaching stuff right now? I'm not usually this dumb.
I glanced around one last time, confirming that there definitely wasn't any change.
With all the lights gone, I finally noticed that the sky was darker. It was nighttime.
I stepped into the forest, the small glow from the night sky illuminating a small amount of my surroundings.
The forest was, somehow, more peaceful looking at night, mushrooms glowed along the cusp of trees, the calm melody of crickets echoed around.
I glanced upwards, expecting the comforting embrace of the moon, but it was gone.
This wasn't the sky I was familiar with, far from it. If I could describe this sky in one word, I would use… Painted.
As if someone had stolen every color the human mind could imagine and poured them across the sky. Colors fade into each other with perfect blends along the edges.
As if mocking the Sun, rivers of stars flowed along the colors, spilling speckles of light across the sky, all converging up, swirling and crossing along their paths.
All of that described how it was a painting, but words couldn't describe the center. Following the rivers of light up to the very peak, at the apex of the sky, stood a city of stars.