The first sign was the silence
Not the peaceful hush of solitude, nor the reverent stillness of a church at dawn—this was something else. A vacuum where sound should have been. A creeping absence that pressed against the edges of perception, making the world feel… wrong.
Erasmus sat at his desk, fingers drumming lightly against the wood. His expression remained impassive, yet his senses sharpened. Something was shifting.
The church had always been a place of controlled noise—prayers whispered, robes rustling, the distant crackle of torches. But now? Everything was too still.
Even the priests, their minds dulled by faith, sensed it. Their whispers, usually murmured with habitual reverence, had taken on a nervous edge. They spoke of the cold, the fading sun, the unnatural heaviness in the air.
And yet, none of them truly understood.
Erasmus did.
This was not some passing anomaly. It was escalating.
The temperature had dropped further, though no winds howled through the stone corridors. The light—dim even at midday—had begun to thin, its golden glow washing out into something pale and sickly. It was as though the world itself was hollowing out, drained by unseen hands.
Erasmus leaned back, threading the patterns together. He had felt small disturbances before—a future only half-glimpsed, reality flickering at the edges. But now, the weight of inevitability pressed against him.
Something was coming.
And it would change everything.
—
Then—it happened.
A fracture in perception.
A deep, soundless tremor rippled through the air. Not a vibration of the ground, not a quake of stone—but something far deeper.
The world folded.
One moment, he was seated. The next, his surroundings stretched, warping as if existence itself were being pulled apart at the seams.
The flickering candle beside him elongated into a jagged smear of light. The wooden desk beneath his fingers felt both solid and distant, as though it existed in multiple places at once.
A sharp sensation—a pull—tugged at his mind.
Not physical. Not something he could resist. It was a rupture through reality itself.
Instinct took over.
His hand shot out—not toward the desk, not toward the vanishing world, but toward the one thing that mattered.
His scale.
His fingers curled around its cold, familiar weight just as the unseen force claimed him.
Darkness swallowed everything.
—
Erasmus awoke to nothingness.
No light. No sound. No sense of time.
His first instinct was to assess.
His body was intact—that much he could tell. He was standing, his boots pressing against something solid. But there was no wind, no temperature, no scent of air.
An absolute void.
He reached out, fingers brushing against something rough. Bark. A tree.
The texture was unnervingly deep, as if carved by unseen hands. The sensation was too real, aged beyond time, coarse beyond reason.
Slowly, his heightened senses adjusted.
Shapes emerged in the abyss.
Twisted silhouettes of trees loomed, gnarled branches reaching like skeletal fingers toward an unseen sky. They stood perfectly still, frozen in eerie rigidity.
The silence here was not normal.
It was absolute.
No rustling leaves. No chirping insects. No distant howl of the wind.
As if the world itself was holding its breath.
Erasmus inhaled.
The air was… thick.
Not heavy in a physical sense, but weighted—as if it carried the presence of something immense and unseen. It pressed against his skin, coiling around him like an invisible force.
Then—he felt it.
A gaze.
Not from a creature. Not from something he could see or confront.
It was deeper than that.
It was watching.
Erasmus did not move. He did not react.
Instead, he waited.
The presence did not retreat.
It lingered.
Not hostile. Not welcoming. Simply… observing.
A moment passed.
Then another.
His grip tightened around the scale in his hand. A reminder. A symbol. A tool.
The silence stretched—unbroken.
And then, it whispered.
Not a sound. Not a voice.
A thought that was not his own.
You should not be here.
Erasmus smiled faintly.
And yet, I am.
—
So.
This was the new world he had been thrown into.
He took a measured step forward. The damp earth did not give beneath his feet. No leaves crunched. No twigs snapped.
As if the very ground conspired to keep him silent.
His mind, ever sharp, pieced together the implications.
There had been no warning. No transition. One moment, he had been in his chambers. The next—here.
Whatever had pulled him had not been natural.
He exhaled.
Even without sight, he could feel the world around him. His heightened senses mapped the air currents, the subtle shifts in texture. And yet—
Nothing moved.
Not even the trees.
He reached out again, his fingers trailing along the bark. The texture deepened. It felt… wrong.
Too real.
As if it had been carved from something older than time itself.
A low sound drifted through the void.
Faint. Almost imperceptible.
A whisper.
Not words. Not human.
Something beneath speech, a sensation of meaning without language.
Erasmus turned his head slightly.
The whisper was not external.
It was within.
An impression pressed against his thoughts—not a command, not a question. Just a simple truth.
The unknown devours. Change is destruction. To resist is to perish.
Erasmus exhaled, his lips curving slightly.
Then let it devour.
Because without change, there is no progression.
He took another step forward.
The darkness loomed, vast and endless.
And Erasmus welcomed it.