Lucian stirred awake to the low hum of silence.
The stone beneath him was cold. Familiar now. The faint mosslight blinked across the cave's uneven walls, its flicker stretching long shadows that warped as he moved. Another day. Or what passed for one.
He drank from the basin. Ate bitter moss. Scratched another tally into the wall. Twenty-three now. Maybe more. Time had stopped making sense.
He stretched. Dropped to the ground. Pushed his body until his arms trembled and his mind went numb.
And when the exhaustion finally overtook him, he collapsed back against the wall, breath slowing, chest heavy.
Sleep took him like a sudden drop.
He was standing again.
But not in the cave.
Not anywhere close.
A blank, boundless white stretched around him—perfect, smooth, sterile. The air was still, the horizon absent. There was no ceiling, no floor—just endless white. Not warm. Not cold. Just infinite.
And silence.
Yet somehow, it hummed.
Lucian didn't hear it. He felt it.
A pulse behind the stillness. A slow vibration that brushed along his ribs, climbed up his spine, settled behind his eyes. Like the entire space was a living frequency, resonating around his skin but never quite touching him.
Then—again—he felt her.
Behind him, He turned.
That woman.
She stood in the white like a shadow that didn't look like it belonged there. Draped in black silk laced with gold, her gown fell like liquid to the plane beneath her, split high at the leg, the fabric morphed as though space itself bent to avoid it. It didn't move with air—there was none.
Her face was obscured by a thin blusher veil, but this time he could see her more clearly.
Snow-white hair fell past her waist, soft and unnaturally still. Icy blue eyes glowed calm and unblinking. Her skin was almost to white like quarts. She said nothing.
But she smiled.
Lucian's breath caught at her sudden expression.
And then she lifted her hand—not to beckon, not to push—but simply raised her palm.
The hum deepened in the plane.
It began to echo—not loud, but infinite. Like droplets falling into water, again and again, echoing limitlessly.
Then—beside her—something appeared into existence.
A mirror.
Freestanding. Tall. Its frame was oval shaped, carved in metal and what looked like bone as the frame, swirling with markings he didn't recognize.
Lucian stepped closer, pulled toward it.
His reflection stared back—pale, haggard, with dark circles under his eyes. Hair wild.
Then the cracks began.
Tiny fractures spiderwebbed from the top of the mirror to bottom.
And from those cracks, his reflection began to fall apart.
Not all at once—piece by piece. Like dust caught in a breeze. His skin flaked away in slow motion. His jawline collapsed into ash. His shoulders disintegrated. Only his eyes remained, wide and flickering with faint purple violet glow.
Behind his dissolving face, her reflection appeared.
Not in the space beside him—but within the same mirror.
Still Ominous. Still beautiful. Still watching.
The silence around him screamed.
Lucian staggered back. The mirror cracked again—louder now. The frame shook. Reality was bending.
And then—
Shatter.
The mirror exploded.
Glass rained in every direction, not falling—but evaporating mid-air into slivers of white particles.
The void cracked around him like the world's edge was breaking under his feet. Every surface cracked in slow, deliberate lines. A single breath of motion turned into collapse.
And just before it all vanished—
He saw her again.
Still standing.
Still watching, Still smiling.
He gasped awake.
The cave. The mosslight. The damp, hard floor.
Lucian's whole body was tense, heart pounding . His hands trembled. Cold sweat dripped along his skin.
But something had followed him back.
The hum was louder now.
He could feel it—in the stone, in the air, beneath his skin.
Lucian pressed his palm to the cave wall and closed his eyes.
"Think," he whispered. "Feel it again."
He focused. Not hard. Not fast. Just… still. Listening.
The memory of the void. The pulse. That woman.
Then—his eyes snapped open.
A patch of moss lifted.
Weightless. Floating.
It twisted in the air in slow, circular motion.
No wind. No force.
Just… something.
A faint glow pulsed from its center—violet and black.
Gravity.
The moss hovered for a breath moment, then
Dropped with a soft thud against his open palm.
Lucian stared at it, stunned.
"I… did that?"
A spike of pressure behind his eyes. Sharp. And Deep. Like someone had stabbed a pin into his eye sockets.
He winced, stumbling back, the pain vanishing just as fast.
The cave was quiet again.
But not still.
Lucian looked down at his hands, breath shallow.
He didn't know how, He couldn't even come up with a logical explanation, maybe he was just going crazy.
But something had awakened in him.
magic, maybe.
Not air.
Not some trick of some sorts.
Just a hum, something that was like a vibration.
Days passed and Lucian was losing track of time somewhat
The drip from the basin echoed louder than usual.
Lucian sat cross-legged in the center of the cave, sweat cooling against his skin. The soft hum was still there—deep in the stone, in the air, under his skin—but today it felt… off. Less like a hum and more like a tremble.
He scratched another tally into the wall.
Was this day twenty-five? Or twenty-six?
He couldn't remember if he tallied yesterday. Or the day before. He stared at the uneven marks for a long while before shaking his head.
"Doesn't matter," he muttered. "Just means I'm alive for the most part."
He stood, knees cracking, and reached toward the glowing moss again. The hum inside his body twitched as he focused. He let his breathing slow, syncing with the internal rhythm—his frequency.
The moss floated, obediently Weightless.
Lucian frowned. "Too easy."
He grabbed a chunk of stone and focused, replicating the same sensation from yesterday—instead transferring weight, adding imagined pressure of rocks weight.
The moss collapsed again.
A smirk of satisfaction passed across his face, but it faded as fast as it came.
"Right. Magic," he said flatly. "Gravity, maybe. Energy… vibration… whatever."
He plopped back onto the floor, fatigue settling into his joints. The cave pressed inward—not physically, but emotionally. The silence here had begun to feel cruel. Like it was mocking him.
He laughed to himself.
"That woman probably isn't real either."
He leaned against the wall, head tilted back.
"Hell, maybe I'm not either."
Lucian dragged his body across the floor.
The ache in his arms wasn't soreness anymore. It was numbing—the kind that started deep and refused to stop. His workouts had stopped being productive days ago, but he couldn't bring himself to stop. If he didn't move, if he didn't do anything, then his thoughts would fill the silence. And the silence in the cave… it hummed now. Not loudly. Not obviously. But beneath everything, like the echo of a droplet stretched into forever.
He scratched another tally into the wall. A trembling vertical mark next to rows of crooked lines.
Weeks? Months? There was no sun, no moon, no sound except his own breath and the occasional drip from the basin. The moss flickered faintly, never quite going out. His sense of time had collapsed. His memories of Earth felt meaningless.
His hand hovered over the wall.
Then scratched another tally.
"That's two for today. Maybe. Or… yesterday?"
His voice cracked. Then laughed. He laughed more than he should have these days.
Lucian sat, legs folded, and stared at the moss on the wall. The glow danced faintly. He focused. Eyes narrowing trying to focus and sense the strange sensation.
"Breathe. Think. Tune in."
He pressed his hand to the stone and tried to remember that hum, the vibration. That soft, almost sickening vibration he'd felt.
The moss twitched.
A flicker of pressure passed over his palm.
He reached out.
The moss lifted—slowly—floating in a slow circle.
A faint shimmer of black and violet clung around it.
The gravity magic, subtle, trembling like a lighter in the wind
Lucian grinned. "Still got it," he muttered. "Still not crazy."
The moss drifted toward him—then suddenly dissolved midair, disintegrating into powder.
Lucian flinched. His smile vanished.
He sat in silence for several seconds, staring at the floating dust, his expression filled with confusion.
Then he laughed again. "Okay, maybe I'm fucking crazy after all."