Alex walked at a cautious pace. The plane was simple—too simple. Only the resonance of shattering clicks signaled the passing of time. There were no anomalies, or it would be better to say the whole place was an anomaly.
The stone beneath his feet remained pale and featureless. Each step landed with the same muted sound, absorbed instantly, as if the ground refused to acknowledge impact. He tried marking his path—scratches with his spear, drops of blood, arrangements of small stones—but when he looked back, the markers were gone.
Not erased.
Absent.
As if they had never existed.
Slowly, Alex was losing his orientation in space.
Forward felt the same as backward. Left mirrored right. The horizon never approached, never receded. Distance became suggestion rather than measurement.
He knew if he went any further, it would be hard to go back.
After all, he had come here before.
But he wasn't so… rejected then.
The place had changed over time. Or he had. Or both.
The pressure that had crushed him during his first attempt—the weight that forced blood from his throat—had lessened. Not vanished. Just… adjusted. As if the west had recalibrated its response to his presence.
That should have been a relief.
It wasn't.
The clicking continued. Rhythmic. Patient. Emanating from everywhere and nowhere.
Shatter. Pause. Shatter. Pause.
Like bone breaking in slow sequence.
Like something vast, chewing methodically.
Alex kept walking.
— — —
After a couple of days, the repeated clicking stopped.
The silence that followed was worse.
Not absence—attention.
Alex froze mid-step, breath catching.
The air thickened. The pale expanse sharpened, details he hadn't noticed before suddenly hypervisible: faint grooves in the stone, shadows that fell at wrong angles, the way light didn't quite touch the ground evenly.
Then he saw it.
A comet in the sky.
Brilliant, trailing light in a slow arc across the void overhead. Beautiful. Impossible. Wrong.
Alex stared.
The comet didn't move like an object in motion. It pulsed. Breathed. Its tail bent at angles that had nothing to do with trajectory.
He blinked.
And looked down.
An ivory figure stood before him.
Flat.
Completely two-dimensional.
It had no depth, no thickness—just a shape pressed against reality, a cutout that refused perspective. Its surface was smooth, seamless, the color of old bone. Red eyes stared from where a face should have been, positioned symmetrically, unblinking.
Not painted.
Not carved.
Present.
The figure didn't move.
It simply was, occupying space it had no right to fill.
Alex's breath stuttered.
The red eyes tracked him. Not following his motion—he hadn't moved—but knowing him. Recognizing something.
He stepped back.
The figure remained exactly where it was.
Not closer.
Not farther.
Still facing him.
Alex shifted left.
The figure stayed oriented toward him without turning, as if rotation were irrelevant when you had no sides.
His hand tightened on his spear.
The figure's eyes brightened—not glowing, not flaring—just more.
A sound emerged.
Not from the figure.
From behind it. Below it. Beneath the stone.
Click.
Then another.
Click.
Slow. Deliberate. Answering.
Alex's wings flared instinctively—
The figure vanished.
Not fleeing. Not dissolving.
Gone, as if it had only existed while he was looking at it one way.
Alex spun, scanning the pale expanse.
Empty.
The clicking resumed.
Shatter. Pause. Shatter. Pause.
Louder now.
Closer.
And ahead—far in the distance where the horizon should have been—something moved.
Not walking.
Not flying.
Displacing.
The white plane rippled, stone compressing and expanding in waves, as if the ground were trying to accommodate mass it couldn't contain.
Alex backed away slowly.
The ivory figure reappeared.
Closer this time.
Still flat. Still staring.
Its red eyes were patient.
Waiting.
Alex turned and ran.
Behind him, the clicking followed.
And above, the comet pulsed in rhythm with something vast chewing far below.
Yet Alex persisted
— — —