The rain fell like rusty needles, piercing Vinxi's school uniform jacket at an angle. He clutched a half-melted chocolate bar, standing beneath the dome of the abandoned observatory, watching the rain seep into the cracked cement ground, forming dark spider webs. At 15, his joints ached in the damp air. The old MP3 player in his pocket was playing out-of-tune electronic music—a treasure he had scavenged from a flea market with three months' worth of pocket money, now sounding like a dying cicada, emitting intermittent, raspy chirps.
"Skip evening study again?" The iron gate creaked loudly as it was pushed open. Greg, dressed in a security uniform, shone his flashlight over, the beam lingering for three seconds on Vinxi's canvas shoes covered in mud spots. "Your mum came to school again yesterday, her eyes red like a rabbit's."
Vinxi crumpled the chocolate bar wrapper into a ball and stuffed it into his pocket, the metal foil pricking his palm with a sharp pain. He said nothing, turning to climb the rusted iron stairs of the observatory. The wind carried rain droplets into his collar. The neon lights of the distant city shattered into a blur of light spots in the clouds, like an overturned palette. This was the secret base he had discovered—a forgotten metal dome on the edge of the city, with a cracked glass pane at its centre, through which he could see the night sky sliced into fragments by light pollution.
Just then, a crack opened in the clouds.
It wasn't the usual moonlight piercing through the clouds, but a warm silver-blue glow, like molten liquid metal spilling over the horizon. Spiral-shaped symbols floated in the light, their lines seeming alive, unfolding and twisting in the void, emitting a low-frequency hum. Vinxi's eardrums began to tingle, and the electronic music in his MP3 player suddenly turned into a sharp noise. He instinctively covered his ears, but saw the hairs on his palms standing on end, as if pulled by an invisible magnetic field.
The light expanded at a visible speed, dyeing the entire night sky a liquid silver-blue. The metal supports of the observatory began to tremble, and rusty iron filings fell off, dancing eerily in the beam of light. Vinxi felt a force gripping the back of his neck, not a physical pull, but more like a resonance of some frequency — like the tingling resonance that arises in the chest when you scrape your fingernails across glass.
He tried to step back, but found his feet already sunk into a viscous light mist. The fabric of his school uniform jacket began to grow transparent, and his skin could feel symbols moving through the light mist, like cold snakes slithering into his pores. The city lights in the distance suddenly went out, leaving only this silver-blue glow stretching endlessly. Glass shards from the dome floated in the beams of light, refracting into millions of distorted shadows.
"Hey!" Greg's shout came from far away, as if through a layer of water-filled glass, "What the hell is that —"
The last memory lingered on the moment the light mist flooded into his nostrils, carrying the scent of ozone mixed with rust. He felt his body being disassembled into countless tiny light points, then reassembled in rotation. As consciousness sank into darkness, Vinxi heard the MP3 emit its final explosive sound, followed by complete, endless silence.
*** When he opened his eyes again, his eyelashes were not covered in rainwater, but in dewdrops.
The decaying leaves beneath him emitted a damp groan. Vinxi sat up abruptly and found himself lying in a forest he had never seen before. The trunks of ancient trees required three people to encircle them, their grey-brown bark covered in emerald-green moss. Droplets of dew rolled off the edges of the leaves and fell to the ground, shattering with a crisp sound like broken pearls. The air was filled with the scent of pine needles and decomposing soil, mingled with the sweet fragrance of an unknown flower, as crisp as water freshly drawn from an ice cellar.
He looked down at his hands, his fingernails filled with dark brown soil. The elbows of his school uniform jacket were worn through, exposing skin covered in shiny resin. The old MP3 player was gone, leaving only a crumpled chocolate wrapper in his pocket, glinting faintly in the morning light.
In the distance, the dull thud of a stone axe chopping wood mingled with a deep, throaty shout. Vinxi crouched low, slipping into the shadow of the fern plants, his heart pounding in his chest like a drum. The leaves of those plants were larger than his face, their veins forming a network like jade carvings. Dewdrops glistened on the tips, falling to the ground and creating tiny splashes.
Three figures appeared in the clearing. They were barefoot, their calves caked in mud, their waists wrapped in tanned animal skins. The exposed arms bore spiral patterns dyed with indigo blue pigment—strikingly similar to the symbols in last night's sky. The tallest man held a stone axe with a polished handle, its blade still stained with dark red blood. He was running his rough fingers over the trunk of an ancient tree, murmuring obscure syllables.
Vinxi's breath caught in his throat. When the man turned around, he saw a necklace made of teeth hanging from his collarbone, the yellowish-white tips glinting coldly in the morning light. What sent a chill down his spine was the man's left eye, a cloudy greyish-white mass, as if gnawed away by something, leaving only an empty socket encrusted with dried blood.
Just then, the grey-white eyeball turned toward the fern plants.
Vinxi clamped his hand over his mouth, feeling cold sweat trickling down his spine. The man raised his stone axe and whistled sharply. The other two hunters immediately spread out in a fan formation, their movements as agile as cheetahs, their feet making almost no sound as they stepped on the thick layer of decaying leaves.
As they drew closer, Vinxi could even smell the leathery scent on their bodies. He curled up at the base of the fern, watching the mud-covered bare feet stop before him. The edges of the animal-skin skirt hung with a few eagle feathers, trembling gently in the wind.
Suddenly, a chestnut-coloured wild rabbit darted out of the bushes.
The little creature collided with the hunter's calf in panic. The man cursed and swung his stone axe, but the rabbit used the momentum to leap into the dense forest. The three hunters immediately gave chase, the sound of the stone axe hacking through branches fading into the distance. Vinxi collapsed onto the ground, discovering that his fingers were deeply embedded in the soil. The cool, decomposing earth seeped into the crevices of his nails, imparting an odd sense of grounding.
As he pushed aside the fern-like plants to stand up, sunlight filtered through the layered branches, weaving a golden net on the ground. From the distant valley came the lingering sound of a cowhorn, like some ancient call echoing endlessly through the endless forest. Vinxi touched the candy wrapper in his pocket; the imprint of the metal foil on his palm had not yet faded, and the silver-blue light rain of last night seemed like a memory from a past life.
He walked toward the direction of the horn's sound, the fallen leaves beneath his feet crunching softly. After walking for about half an hour, the forest suddenly opened up — a village surrounded by wooden fences appeared before his eyes. Dozens of round thatched houses resembled dormant mushrooms, their roofs smoked to a deep brown by fire, and the smoke rising from the chimneys stretched into long ribbons in the morning mist. People clad in animal skins bustled about the open space. Women drew water from clay pots adorned with spiral patterns identical to those on the hunters' arms; men bound bundles of sharpened wooden spears, their tips embedded with polished flint.
A young boy carrying a bundle of firewood suddenly stopped in his tracks. His flaxen hair was dotted with pine needles, and his amber eyes narrowed sharply the moment he saw Vinxi. The boy dropped the bundle of firewood, picked up a stone hammer from the ground, and let out a muffled cry. The entire village fell silent, and all eyes, like needles heated to a red-hot glow, pierced Vinxi. His name was Taran, the son of the tribal chieftain.
He instinctively took a half-step back, but heard the crisp sound of branches snapping behind him. Three men wielding wooden spears blocked his retreat. Their animal-skin skirts were stained with fresh blood, and their necks were adorned with strings of dried animal teeth. Vinxi's throat tightened as he suddenly recalled the images of primitive tribes he had seen in biology class—those stone axes and clay pots displayed in museum glass cases now seemed to take on a vivid warmth, unfolding before his eyes.
"Stranger?" A hoarse voice echoed from behind the crowd. People parted to make way for an old man clad in a bearskin cloak, leaning on a snake-headed staff. His beard resembled a tangled mass of snow-white hair, and his right eye was covered by a copper eyepatch, its edge inlaid with a dark red gemstone that glowed eerily in the morning light. He was Merlin, the tribe's shaman.
Vinxi opened his mouth but found he couldn't utter a sound. The familiar words stuck in his throat, turning into a series of meaningless gasps. Merlin's copper eye patch turned toward him, and the gem's reflection danced across his face like a watching eye.
"On nights when the moon falls into the sea, lost souls always wash ashore. ' Merlin tapped the ground with his staff, the black obsidian embedded in the snake-headed carving's eyes glinting coldly in the shadows. 'Take him to the water house. Before the campfire rises, do not let him see the sun set."
Two burly men lifted Vinxi's arms, his canvas shoes dragging two shallow tracks in the mud. As they passed the altar on the clearing, he saw a stone tablet half-buried in the ground, engraved with spiral symbols. At the centre of the symbols was an irregular crystal, and deep within it, a silver-blue light seemed to flow—just like the glow that had swallowed him last night.
The door to the water house was blocked by wooden planks bound with vines, and the damp air was filled with the scent of seaweed and copper rust. As the planks were being nailed back into place, Vinxi peered through the cracks and saw Merlin raising his serpent-headed staff, chanting towards the bonfire at the village centre. The golden glow of the setting sun filtered through the gaps in the wooden fence, casting tiny patches of light on his wrist. Those patches gradually lengthened and distorted, eventually transforming into swirling spirals in the twilight.