Kevin woke up
Or at least, he thought he did.
He wasn't in his bed. He wasn't anywhere at all, really. Around him stretched a vast, silent void—endless and white, but not bright. It was filled with light, yet somehow devoid of it, as if the space defied the normal rules of reality.
There were no shadows. No walls. No horizon.
Just... stillness.
Kevin blinked, but nothing changed. His footsteps made no sound, and when he looked down, there was nothing beneath him—no floor, and yet he didn't fall. The world held him in place like an invisible thread.
The air was thin, unreal. Like the space itself was holding its breath.
A strange sensation settled in his chest—a quiet pressure, like a forgotten memory brushing the edge of his mind. He felt connected to this place, though he couldn't explain why. It was familiar in the way dreams sometimes are: not because you've been there, but because a part of you feels like it always has.
"What... is this?" he whispered.
His voice barely carried, swallowed whole by the silence.
Kevin turned slowly in place. Nothing. No figures. No landmarks. Just the abyss, gazing back at him.
And yet, somewhere deep inside, he could feel it shifting. The void was not empty.
It was waiting.
After walking for what felt like an eternity, he saw something: a gate—an ancient wooden gate, as old as time itself. Perhaps older...
Then something changed.
The eternal light gave way to a new darkness.
What was once unending white, stretching towards all of infinity, had now turned dark. Images flashed before his eyes: the previous day, the old vendor, the book, and its contents.
The entire world—if it could even be called that—had gone from a serene void where everything seemed still and orderly, to a black void—disorderly and unpredictable.
But to him, it felt right, like he belonged here...
Time passed, or maybe it didn't. There was no reference point, no way to know for sure. But Kevin feltit—decades, centuries, perhaps even millennia, each moment folded into the next, like the pages of a book he couldn't stop reading.
He felt no hunger. No thirst. No fatigue.
Just a persistent and uncanny sense of being watched—not with eyes, not from any one direction, but from every direction, as if the darkness itself were watching him.
Darkness to light, then back. And back again. The world changed, an unknowable pattern. Kevin lost count. The world shifted endlessly around him, yet he kept on walking...
At some point, a book had appeared in his hand—though he didn't know when, and neither did he care... In this expanse of endless nothingness, any form of entertainment—anything to distract him from the absurdity of this place—was a mercy...
He opened the book—the words were written in some unknown script. It wasn't anything he was familiar with—not symbols, not runes. They just felt... strange.
And yet, he understood them. Effortlessly.
The markings felt like information, the sentences carrying pure meaning—not words at all—almost as if the book wasn't meant to be read, but to be understood...
Something about it drew him in. He started reading—and couldn't stop. The world around him—the void—continued to change.
And yet, he didn't mind. The book held him in a trance-like state.
Until something tore him out of it...
A stench,
The stench of rotting flesh.
He looked around.
The endless expanse he had grown attached to... was gone.