the night broke without warning.
no dawn, no slow brightening of the sky only a sudden shift. one moment the world was cold, breath crystallizing into white ribbons, the next it was flat, like someone had pressed reality between panes of glass.
lewis woke first. he couldn't move at first; everything felt heavy and thin at the same time, as if gravity had forgotten which direction to pull. hendrick's face beside him looked painted his skin rendered in strange, clean strokes, outlines shimmering faintly. even the ice beneath them was now… drawn, each crystal defined by smooth, deliberate lines.
daniel floated nearby, perfectly still. his fur looked less like fur and more like ink each hair a separate line, vibrating faintly. his three eyes were open, wide, glimmering with impossible calm.
"daniel… what— what's happening?" lewis whispered, his voice coming out wrong too clear, like the air had no resistance.
daniel tilted his head, pretending to look puzzled. "towlin… she must be restless again."
hendrick pushed himself up slowly. "restless? the mountain?"
"it happens," daniel said lightly, though there was a note beneath his tone a restrained amusement, the kind that belongs to someone watching a lie unfold perfectly. "sometimes she folds herself inward. dreams, perhaps. you'll see soon enough."
the air shimmered again.
their tent collapsed inward, not because it was falling but because space itself bent like soft fabric. the snow below them liquefied into pale watercolor swirls. the horizon rippled outward, like a page turning.
lewis gasped his breath became visible words, dissolving into the air as glowing letters that faded before they hit the ground.
hendrick reached for him, but his arm stretched impossibly far, like the space between them was longer than it looked.
daniel remained centered, serene, tail curling like smoke.
the entire world bent inwards, folding into itself like origami. their surroundings shifted into a two-dimensional valley the mountains flattened into painted waves of blue and gray. trees were mere silhouettes, fluttering in wind that sounded like distant music.
saumon's container wobbled, his water now glowing faintly gold. "ah," he murmured. "the first layer."
"the first what?" hendrick barked, panicked.
"shh," saumon said softly. "you'll make the folds unstable."
they drifted, walking though their feet no longer made contact with anything solid. each step echoed with a faint chime. daniel moved ahead, pretending to scan the distorted horizon.
"towlin is old," daniel said, his tone airy. "she remembers too much. sometimes she slips. sometimes the boundaries blur between what she remembers and what she is."
"you're saying… this is a memory?" lewis asked, his voice breaking.
daniel smiled faintly. "in a way."
the world fractured again the sky cracking like glass.
they fell.
not down, but through.
they landed in a place made entirely of sound a dimension composed of harmonic resonance. the ground vibrated like the surface of a drum, every step sending ripples of color through the air. their bodies shimmered as frequencies; lewis's outline was a trembling violet hum, hendrick's was deep green, and daniel's an impossible, oscillating spectrum that hurt to look at directly.
"what— what is this?" lewis stammered, voice disintegrating into visible waves.
"a frequency domain," daniel replied. "most of reality hums between notes. you just never listen long enough to hear it."
hendrick's voice fractured. "we— we shouldn't be here."
"no one ever should," saumon whispered from his vessel, now vibrating softly with each tone. "but towlin wishes to see you here."
"see us?" lewis asked.
the air pulsed as if answering.
forms emerged: vast shapes without mass, silhouettes of creatures that might have been mountains or thoughts. they sang in deep, subsonic tones that bypassed the ear and went straight into the bone.
hendrick dropped to his knees, hands clutching his head. "it's too much. i can hear colors"
daniel floated closer, placing a paw on his shoulder. "breathe, hendrick. you're still yourself. remember your form."
and for a brief instant, his voice carried something else authority. power. the kind of tone that bends existence to obey.
space trembled.
and then everything shifted again.
the sound collapsed into silence, the colors drained.
they found themselves standing in what looked like a corridor made of glass stretching endlessly in every direction, reflecting versions of themselves walking backward, upside down, sideways. each reflection moved slightly differently one laughing, one crying, one screaming without sound.
lewis turned in circles. "what is this place?"
"possibilities," daniel said. "each pane a version of what could have been. towlin is… testing consistency."
"consistency?" hendrick asked.
"you," daniel said softly, his gaze resting on both men. "she wants to see if your minds remain intact when faced with contradiction."
saumon swam lazily in his flask. "most don't."
hendrick turned sharply. "what do you mean"
but his reflection cut him off the mirrored hendrick slammed his fist against the glass, shouting words that no one could hear. cracks spidered through the pane.
the real hendrick stepped back. the glass shattered.
immediately the world inverted sky became ground, and ground became liquid geometry. the reflections poured out like ink, merging into the air. for a moment, there were hundreds of hendricks, each overlapping, each flickering between faces and forms.
lewis screamed, reaching for him but daniel simply blinked, and all but one disappeared.
silence again.
hendrick stood there, breathing hard, eyes wild. "what— what did you do?"
"kept you coherent," daniel said simply.
and then, under his breath, almost inaudible: "towlin isn't cruel. just thorough."
the sky began folding again, edges curling like paper burning in reverse. the colors around them twisted into a deep, impossible violet. fractal snow fell upward.
they were no longer standing on anything only within something vast and breathing.
it was towlin not as a mountain, but as a consciousness.
the world pulsed once, like a slow heartbeat.
saumon's eyes glowed faintly. "she sees you now."
and in that instant, both lewis and hendrick saw not with eyes, but with understanding that the mountain was not stone, not ice, not space. it was attention. an intelligence that stretched through dimensions, folding reality into questions.
their bodies began to dissolve into outlines of thought.
"daniel," lewis whispered, barely audible, "what is she asking?"
daniel's third eye opened fully, burning like a small sun.
"she's asking," he said softly, "if you're ready to see what's underneath everything."
and before either could respond, the world inverted one last time not breaking, but turning inside out.
light became memory. sound became structure. matter became concept.
and in the void between it all, towlin whispered:
truth is not seen. it is survived.