The boundary between waking and sleep was thin.
Not fragile—just indistinct.
Liam lay still, eyes closed, breath shallow enough that it barely disturbed the air. He had learned long ago that sleep did not require surrender. It only required stillness.
The room felt the same.
The faint warmth of the lantern.
The smooth weight of the blanket.
The quiet certainty of stone walls that had never failed him.
Nothing announced itself as wrong.
That was why the first sensation went unnoticed.
---
A thought crossed Liam's mind—uninvited, slow, almost gentle.
> *The night feels… close.*
He did not open his eyes.
He waited.
---
The feeling was not pressure. Not exactly.
It was more like space deciding it no longer needed to keep its distance.
Breath in.
Breath out.
His heartbeat remained steady.
Fear did not come. Fear required context, and nothing here demanded one.
His fingers twitched—or perhaps they didn't. The distinction felt unimportant.
Another memory drifted forward, unasked.
A different night.
A different bed.
A ceiling lit by passing headlights.
A child's voice calling his name.
The memory did not hurt. It simply thinned, like paper left too long in water.
---
Liam was thinking that this felt familiar.
Not the place.
The *process*.
---
The room did not blur. It did not darken.
It simply lost its certainty.
Edges softened. Distances forgot their purpose. The lantern's light no longer traveled—it existed.
His body felt light.
Not floating.
Unclaimed.
> *If I stop breathing,* he wondered distantly,
> *will that matter?*
The question lingered.
Unanswered.
---
Elsewhere in the estate, his father shifted in his sleep.
Not waking.
Not alarmed.
Just the instinctive adjustment of a man who had spent too many years listening for threats that never came in dreams.
For the briefest moment, a thought brushed past his mind.
> *Tomorrow will be difficult.*
The thought passed.
His breathing evened out again.
---
Liam's awareness narrowed.
Not into darkness—but into clarity.
He realized, without panic, that he could no longer feel the bed beneath him.
There was no falling sensation.
No lifting.
Only the quiet certainty that *here* was no longer applicable.
> *So this is how it happens,* Liam thought.
Not death.
Not movement.
Just… absence of location.
---
The world hesitated.
Only for an instant.
An imperceptible pause, like a sentence reconsidered and then allowed to continue.
Then the night let him go.
---
Cold came first.
Not biting—stale.
Air that had been used too many times and forgotten how to refresh itself.
Liam's eyes opened.
The sky above him was wrong.
It did not stretch.
It did not breathe.
It did not move.
Gray pressed down from every direction, heavy and unmoving, as if the concept of distance had been abandoned here.
The ground beneath him was uneven. Broken. Stained.
He sat up slowly.
Carefully.
His body responded.
That, at least, had not been taken.
---
Back in the clan estate, the night continued.
Lanterns burned.
Guards walked their routes.
Formations hummed softly beneath stone and soil.
No alarms sounded.
No one paused.
In his chambers, his father turned onto his side, exhaling quietly. The sense of unease from earlier had already faded, dismissed by habit and exhaustion.
The world remained whole.
---
Liam stood.
The air smelled of rust and decay.
Somewhere far away, something screamed.
The sound cut off abruptly.
He did not flinch.
He only acknowledged it.
> *I'm not home,* he thought.
The realization settled without drama.
Without denial.
---
The night that had taken him offered no explanation.
And the world he left behind—
Did not notice his absence.
---