The sound of the train remained constant, a hollow hum of steel slicing through nothingness. Claine stood in the middle of his carriage,
the faint rhythm of wheels over tracks crawling up through his feet, deeper into his bones. His breath had become a companion, his silence a barrier. But loneliness was louder than fear.
Driven by equal parts dread and desperation, he moved toward the sliding door at the end of his carriage. It hissed open like a sleeping creature disturbed, revealing another dimly lit compartment beyond. Claine hesitated, hand still resting on the handle. The air that greeted him felt thicker, dense with the scent of old parchment and something... coppery, faint, but unmistakable.
He stepped through.
The next carriage was quiet, the lighting sickly yellow like bruised skin. Unlike his own carriage, this one was occupied. The presence of others should have brought relief—but instead, it unsettled him further.
There were three.
The first sat to the left, hunched over a thick leather-bound book with a cracked spine. He was middle-aged, maybe older, his face gaunt, cheekbones sharp enough to threaten the fabric of reality itself. His eyes never looked up; they were fixed to the pages. The man muttered softly, voice a dry rasp like sandpaper rubbing bone. At first Claine thought it was Latin, or maybe another language entirely—but no, some syllables were nonsense, loops of sound that repeated or reversed mid-word. Occasionally, a coherent phrase clawed its way through:
"March through ash... fire rains... wheels will turn again..."
Claine didn't dare interrupt. He simply stood and stared, spellbound, until the man's tongue lolled out mid-sentence as if something had cut him off from within. He swallowed the silence.
Across from him, on the opposite side of the carriage, sat a woman. Her clothes were pristine—too pristine. A cream-colored dress with fine embroidery, not a single wrinkle. She sat unnaturally still, legs crossed, hands resting on her lap like waxwork. Her eyes were locked on the window.
Claine approached carefully. "Ma'am?" he said. No response.
He cleared his throat. "Hey, do you know where this train is headed?"
Still nothing.
He moved closer. The air near her felt frigid, like someone had turned winter into a breath. As he reached her side, she made a low, almost mechanical sound. "Uhh."
It wasn't a groan, not a sigh—more like a confirmation. Aware. She knew he was there. The stillness made his skin crawl.
Claine's eyes drifted to the window she stared through. Outside was another impossible vision: a vast desert of shattered glass stretching to the horizon. In the middle stood a single tower made of melting clocks, their faces warped and bending. Lightning cracked in slow motion across a bleeding sky.
But it wasn't the scenery that froze him. It was the reflection.
In the window's gleam, her face stared back. But the eyes... oh God, the eyes. Fiery red, glowing—not with heat, but hunger. Wide, unblinking, stretched taut as if someone had peeled back her lids with hooks. She wasn't looking at the desert. She was scanning. Searching. Watching something—or someone—beyond even the reflection.
Claine stepped back involuntarily, hitting the opposite seat. The woman didn't flinch.
He moved down the aisle, past them both, heart pounding like thunder behind his ribs.
There was one more.
At the far end sat a boy—maybe sixteen, maybe not. Dressed in a tattered school uniform, his shoes were untied and scuffed. He was sitting cross-legged on the seat, facing the ceiling, eyes closed, but lips moving. Claine leaned closer.
"Five. Six. Seven. Eight. One. Two. Three."
The counting was out of order. Not random, but circular. Every so often, the numbers reset. Claine was about to ask a question when the boy snapped his head toward him without opening his eyes.
"You're on the wrong seat," the boy said.
Claine blinked. "What?"
"You were supposed to be in Car 7. This is 6. You skipped one. Don't skip. It doesn't like that."
"It?"
"He," the boy corrected. "He's the Conductor."
"There was no one in Car 5 either," Claine whispered, realization dawning.
The boy tilted his head, still blindfolded by closed lids. "Then you've already passed Him once. If He let you."
A loud creak rolled through the train like a groan of an ancient beast. Lights flickered. The boy's voice dropped to a whisper.
"Find your name. Before He does."
Then he resumed counting, as if the interruption had never happened. Claine stumbled back toward the center of the carriage, mind reeling. Who were these people? Ghosts? Echoes? Were they trapped like him—or worse, did they belong here?
He thought again of the landscapes outside. Each one had pressed into his brain like a hot coin into soft wax: the reversed ocean folding on itself in defiance of gravity; children walking backwards, mouths open in silent screams; the white void with a red sun-dot, oppressive and constant, like an unblinking eye.
He thought of the woman's reflection.
And the boy's words: "Find your name. Before He does."
The carriage seemed to grow colder, the dim yellow lights overhead twitching in agony. Claine didn't know where this train was going—but he knew it wasn't good.
And worse than not knowing where you're headed... is not knowing if you're the one who boarded.