A seed of thought bloomed in Naren's head.
'I'm sleepy.'
His mind was lax, dangerously so. It was moving slow and uncontrolled, like someone who was abruptly woken.
"I'm really sleepy."
"Did you stay up all night again?"
An unfamiliar voice. Or wait, was it familiar? It felt strangely so. Something that had long since been forgotten, but the feeling of which refused to let go.
Naren's tired eyes lurked open.
Barely. Just enough to let the light in, which immediately made him regret it.
White ceiling. He stared at it for a moment, letting his mind catch up to the fact that he was alive. That took longer than it should have.
He was on a bed. Clean sheets, the kind of clean that meant someone had put effort into it. His body felt wrong beneath them — smaller than he remembered, or maybe just emptier. Like something had been wrung out of him and not yet replaced.
There was a tube in his wrist. He looked at it without much feeling. It led up to a clear bag hanging above him, some liquid moving slowly through it. His wrist didn't hurt. His chest did — a dull ache sitting right behind his sternum with no obvious cause, the kind that had nothing to do with ribs.
He looked around. A neat room. Fruits on the table, bright and fresh. He wasn't hungry.
Then he found her.
She was young — barely twenty, maybe less. A crimson scarf wrapped around her neck, trailing over pale skin. Wavy golden hair falling loosely across her face, pushed back by a headband but not really contained by it. She almost didn't look solid. Like something that might not be there if he blinked.
Her golden eyes were already on him. The expression in them was caught somewhere between relief and irritation — the specific look of someone who had been waiting a long time and wasn't going to say so.
Something about it pulled at him. Familiar in a way he couldn't place and didn't want to examine too closely.
"You did, didn't you?"
Her question urged a response, even though she already filled in the blank.
"Yeah."
He answered unconsciously, he didn't even remember the question, but still somehow felt he had said the only right answer.
"Jeez, the nurse told you how important rest is didn't you? You won't get bet—"
Naren was staring at the walls. Something about them was all to familiar. He couldn't quite pinpoint it, but it was unsettling.
The girl flicked him on the forehead. Softly, just enough to get his attention, and far from enough to hurt him.
"Are you listening? How do you expect to get better?"
She held a look of worry buried behind the scowl of a mother who's son wouldn't clean his room.
"Get better?"
His voice cracked. This wasn't the right answer. This wasn't natural.
The girl smiled. It was a bright smile, effortless looking — the kind that took practice to make look that way. It didn't quite reach the part of her eyes that was still afraid. She was wearing it for herself more than for him.
"Yeah. You'll get better in no time. The nurse told me."
Naren opened his mouth. He choked back his words. Almost letting another involuntary response slip. Then his mouth opened again, searching for new words to fill it.
"You're not Cendrine."
The girl looked at him artificially. Her face had no semblance of hearing Naren's words. It just stuck there. The same look on it — bright, effortless smile. Nothing was wrong, nothing could go wrong.
Then the smile sank into a more slight curve. A look more genuine then he had seen taking its place. A tender proud look, genuine care caressing the girls cheeks. A grace of affection adorning her face.
"You found a good friend."
The room rippled.
Not all at once — at the edges first, the corners softening, the white walls losing their certainty. Like a reflection disturbed by something dropped into still water. The image held for a moment, then folded inward, pulling toward the center until there was nothing left of it but dark.
Naren was sprawled out in the dark obsidian skinned waters. The horizon pitch black, empty. The water was maybe an inch high now, barely even recognizable.
The familiar noise of a candle flickering filled the space.
"I've been seeing you a lot lately."
Silence.
Naren swung his body to seated position. Looking around the empty void until he spotted the rusty shackles. His gazed fixed on the balls of golden light succumbed by the darkness.
"Don't play coy now. I heard you speak before."
The candles flicker grew louder. Or maybe it was just Naren's imagination.
He sighed. Eyes heavy.
"So am I dead?"
He laid back down, hands under his head. Staring at the empty sky above.
"I guess it's not so bad. I get to sleep as long as I want. I don't get hungry. Nothing to worry me."
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The flapping of clothes grew more aggressive as wind pushed back.
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"Yeah, this is great actually."
————————
The scenery around quickly plunged, turning into a blur of grey and black.
The wind grew more and more agressive.
Something was falling, very fast.
————————
"Like hell it is. I haven't found you yet Cendrine."
His gaze turned intense. Golden eyes shimmering despite the dim light. Naren stared at the shackles as the hands trembled in idle. A coarse voice escaping the darkness.
"Tomb of Atlas...Hold up the sky."
Naren blinked. His ears hurt. A lot.
A second ago there had been dark water below him and a candle and the sound of chains. Now there was wind. A lot of it. It hit him from below, which meant he was falling fast enough that the air was pushing back.
He pressed his hands against his ears. Holding tight. There was no use, it hurt like hell. He just had to bear it. Looking around, he immediately wished he hadn't.
Naren's eyes widened as his face dropped.
The sea was staring right at him. Parallel to him blurring as he continued to fall. It was impossible, the sea was standing horizontally. Though, that was the only thing close. Everything else was just distance.
The ocean was pouring down. All of it. In every direction. The entire surface of the sea folding over the rim and dropping, a curtain of black so wide that the far edge of it wasn't a wall or a line or even really a shape. It was just where the world stopped being visible.
He couldn't see the other side.
He looked. He kept looking. Through the mist and the spray and the sheer volume of falling water he tried to find where the ring ended and couldn't. The far edges had dissolved into haze somewhere out past comprehension — hundreds of kilometers at least. What he could see — the nearest edge where he must've fell off — was already pulling away above him as they dropped, shrinking, and even that close edge was enormous. A cliff of falling ocean stretching left and right until it curved away and vanished.
Everything else was just air. Empty, open, roaring air.
Below his feet, a metal giant fell with them. Not crashing, not tumbling — just descending, with the slow deliberate patience of something that had chosen this. Its rusted frame caught what little light existed down here, throwing dull reflections off the metal as it dropped.
His golden eyes adjusted to the metal construct.
'Where did THAT come from?'
Something locked around his wrist mid thought. Its grip tightening.
Vera. Her knuckles were white. Her eyes shut painfully tight. He jaw clenched as to not let the fear escape.
Naren opened his mouth before the second surprise hit him. His injuries, were better?
He pulled his crimson scarf over him tighter before patting down his arms, ribs, legs. Everything was still there, albeit it hurt to touch, but nothing was broken. Nothing was missing. Actually, he couldn't believe he didn't ask this sooner.
"How am I alive?"
As the rush of wind strained his voice and muffled it completely, he forgave himself for not realizing the miracle sooner. Afterall, he was in an even more unbelievable situation as it was. And just like that, his second miraculous recovery was dusted under the carpet. Once again he strained his voice.
"VERA! WHERE ARE WE!?"
His ears perked up in pain. It was even worse than he thought. Quickly, Naren used his free hand to wrap the crimson scarf around his ears to bring even a slice of solace.
Vera's eyes were shut tight as she mumbled something inaudible to herself. Swiftly carried away by the rush of wind. It was impossible for anyone to hear. Except Naren that is. She was calling for her mom.
"C'mon that's no help."
————————
Nobody knew it.
How could they. The void was too large for knowing. Too large for anyone inside it to see past their own small piece of falling sky.
But somewhere else in that same darkness — separated by distances that made the word "somewhere" feel inadequate — other people were falling too.
A woman with dark blue, almost black, hair held a white flower flat against her head with one hand. Alone, the waterfall a distant curtain on every side of her. No one near her. No one visible in any direction.
A man with short scruffy white hair and bandages wrapped thick around his right eye fell with his arms loose at his sides, an unsightly grin etched into his face. Kilometers of empty air between him and the next living soul.
A woman with a hand pressed hard against her side, dark red pushing through her fingers. A man in dark glasses. A girl with auburn hair glowing faint in the dark.
Hundreds of them. Each one alone in their own small piece of the void, unable to see the others, unable to know. The hole was too wide for that. Too deep for that.
They just fell. Each of them toward the same dark, from a different piece of the same sky.
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Naren's vision quietly blurred. He blinked a couple times, eye slightly blocked by his scarf. Odd. Then he blinked once more, this time something in the peripheral caught his attention. Averting his gaze, his heart almost stopped. In fact, for the first time, all noise stopped for Naren. There, in the distance shrouded by fog above him. Nestled deep inside the thick atmosphere was a small dinghy.
A worn rowboat. Ten feet long at most. The wood was splintered, the hull cracked and splitting. Even the oars looked ready to fall apart. But it kept moving. In the endless emptiness, Naren could only watch as a figure rowed — slowly, methodically — upward. Rowing the boat into the sky as if the air itself were water.
Then his eyes grew heavy. His lids dragged shut against his will, pulling him down into forced drowsiness. His consciousness fought, clawing for clarity.
But inevitably, it gave way.
And slowly, his world returned to darkness.
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On October 17th, 1300 years after Grimm, almost a thousand men and women vanished from the face of the world, all in the same place. No wreckage. No bodies. History had an explanation for these vanishes.
A freak phenomena that would happen ritualistically each year without fail.
The Tomb of Atlas.