Sezon stood contemplating what would become of her on the final steps.
'What's gonna happen next? Am I gonna turn into a sand statue? Oh wait—I already have one. So is it gonna show me what I'll become, or something else entirely?'
She scratched her head, her expression caught between curiosity and caution.
'I already did 3 steps before, so... another 3 for something to happen?'
She hesitated, her right foot hovering inches above the sand, her body now turned away from the line of statues.
'Should I really do this? I mean... it's an endless void of sand and darkness in all directions with a creepy statue line showing human evolution... ok fuck it.'
'F—four, five.'
A dark and fearful expression plastered across her face.
'S—six...'
Nothing.
Sezon planted her foot fully on the ground, then brought her other foot down in sync. She stared at the sand where her feet rested.
'Ok so nothing... ok so what now—.' A small glow of light began growing under her feet, expanding bigger and brighter at rapid speed.
Just as a burst of grey was about to peak past her feet, it reversed and sank back into the sand. Sezon noticed the brief delay—as her eyes were not about to close fully yet. They opened slowly, adjusting back to the darkness of the endless sands. She glared at the darkness below her feet where the grey light had almost burst.
"Wha—?"
Then suddenly, a burst of grey shot out from beneath her feet and exploded into a ring that raced across the sands in a perfect circle. It rippled outward through the surface, illuminating the sand with brief grey flashes before continuing across the expanse toward the line of statues and beyond. When it reached the statues, they glowed grey as well, but only briefly, just like the sand—then the ring kept moving into the void.
Confused, Sezon tracked the ring's path in different directions, then focused on the line of statues as the ring washed over them. Each one got briefly lit with grey. By the time the grey ring expanded far down the line of statues, it was about to reach the point where Sezon had woken.
"It just keeps going..." She focused down the line to the end where she'd awoken. The grey was about to pass the beginning of the line, and it looked like it would continue at its breakneck pace into the void forever. But it stopped abruptly at the spot where she'd awoken, and not even a second later, the ring collapsed in on itself—shrinking into a single pooled circle of grey in the original spot where Sezon began.
Sezon had no words. She stood dumbstruck, staring at the spot where the glow pulsed at the beginning of the line of statues.
Then she noticed small particles forming what looked like a sphere of black sand, all streaming from the pool of grey light and coalescing above it.
'Is that sand?'
The dark sphere grew slowly above the pool of grey light.
Fine grains of black sand rose from below, circling it as they gathered into an increasingly perfect shape. Roughness disappeared beneath layer after layer until even the sand ceased to look like sand. Its surface became smooth. Unbroken. A sphere of black suspended in grey. Then the rising grains stopped.
The pool beneath had changed.
Bands of grey essence began peeling from its surface—one, then another, then dozens at once. Sezon recognized them immediately. They matched the same strange current she had seen when she first awakened.
Each one climbed toward the sphere, slipping into it without resistance as more followed.
The pool dimmed with every passing current until, little by little, nothing remained beneath the core at all.
Sezon stared.
The sphere hadn't turned grey—it remained completely black.
Yet a thin line of grey traced its outermost edge, outlining the sphere against the darkness around it. The light seemed unable to exist across its surface. It only appeared where the curve ended—a narrow grey corona wrapped around an otherwise lightless orb.
'An eclipse...'
Sezon narrowed her eyes.
'No. This was different.'
An eclipse still had a sun behind it. This looked like darkness itself had been given shape, with only that thin grey rim betraying where it began and ended.
"Okay so... a black hole and an eclipse had a dark core child, close enough."
Sezon came to that conclusion about the dark core of grey hovering statically in the air of the endless void.
But after a moment of respite.
Something began.