Light and dark. Light and dark.
Not an alternation,but fragmented, intermittent sensory afterimages,blindly floating in the depths of consciousness.
A distant light—tiny, yet unnaturally sharp and distinct,like the point of a needle piercing the chaos.
Accompanying these fragments of light and shadowwas a sense of vertigo.
No—more than a feeling.It felt factual.
Everything before his eyes was upside-down,flipped side-to-side.
No beginning.No end.
No solid ground to touch.No fixed reference of sky.
Everything was in motion.
Only that distant point of lightstubbornly existed.
Yet within his rotating field of vision,it drifted nearer and farther, elusive.
Impossible to judge direction.No way to know direction.
Perhaps, in this purely rotational space,devoid of all reference points,"direction" itself was a long-abandoned joke.
Strangely, there was no dizziness.No nausea.No physiological revulsion from imbalance.
Only a cold, pure cognition:
I am spinning.I have always been spinning.
Then, the light began to grow brighter.
Not merely expanding from a "pinpoint"to a "speck,"to a blurred halo.
The light began to carry a trace of warmth.
Incredibly faint—like the residual heat of a firefelt through thick frosted glass—yet undeniably real.
That warmth stood in jarring contrastto the eternal cold rotation.
Almost instinctively,Erika wanted to reach out.
To touch it.To feel that warmth more tangibly.To confirm whether it was a signalfrom the "outside."
The thought had barely formed—
Fall!
Without warning,the spinning world was torn apartby a brutal, vertical downward force!
A sensation of weightlessness—like a cold giant's hand—instantly seized all his perception,violently yanking him awayfrom the eternal rotation.
Plummeting!
Wind screeched in his ears!
"Ugh—ah!"
A short cry was forced from his throat.
In utter shock,Erika's eyes snapped open.
Blinding, glaring white lightinstantly flooded his vision,searing his eyeballs,forcing tears to well up at once.
He instinctively squeezed his eyes shut,then forced them open again to narrow slits.
Vision blurred.Then gradually focused.
The first thing he sawwas his own left hand,raised high in the air,fingers slightly splayed,blocking something.
His arm was numb,as if it had been held in this positionfor a long time.
Scorching light streamedthrough the gaps between his fingers.
Sunlight.
Midday sunlight, unobstructed, fiercely intense.
The heat truly bakedthe skin of his exposed hand and forearm,bringing a faint, stinging pain.
He turned his stiff neck,his gaze moving past his raised arm.
No spinning.No darkness.No tiny light.
The sky was a faded, sickly pale blue,hanging beneath a sunradiating excessive heat and light.
The air was dry,carrying the smell of dustand the bitter scorchof things baked by the sun.
His left hand remained raised,futilely shielding himselffrom the blazing sun.
Erika blinked.
Tears from the glareslid from the corners of his eyesinto his hair.
His heart pounded like a drum.
The spot on the back of his headwhere he had been struckthrobbed with a faint, dull ache—a reminder that what came beforehad not been an illusion.
Where was Cole?
He slowly lowered his aching, numb left armand used it to push himself upright.
He sat on the scalding ground,staring around in confusion.
Above him,the sun burned silently,as if coldly watching him.
The oppressive weight of midday heatpressed down on him.
The light was so blindingit bordered on dizziness.
But the sensation beneath himwas not the expectedcoarse hardness of wasteland earth.
Instead—
It was something strangely soft,with a slight elasticity,accompanied by the dry rustling frictionand faint fragrance of plants.
Moreover, this "ground"occasionally gave a small, gentle jolt,like the breathing of a living thing,or the bump of an uneven road.
Cautiously,Erika used his functional left handto push himself up further.
His palm sank into the softness.
He looked down—
and froze.
Beneath him was not dirt or gravel,but a large pile of straw—golden mixed with brown,packed fairly tight.
He was lyingright at the center of this straw pile.
Raising his gaze,he saw Cole lying beside him,likewise sunken deep in the straw.
Only—
Cole's head was gone.
Completely buried and coveredby a thick layer of scattered straw.
Only his neckand the body below—clad in a dirty white robe—were visible,rising and falling slightlywith the underlying jolting,like a headless scarecrow.
What made Erika freeze even morewas the edge of his vision—
this pile of straw was moving.
Not the movement of wind-blown chaff.
The entire "straw ground"was floating on something unseen,smoothly, steadily gliding forward.
Looking farther out—
All around them stretcheda seemingly endless sea of grass,shimmering with blinding golden lightbeneath the fierce sun.
The wind rolled itinto slow, undulating golden waves.
Their straw pilewas like a tiny island,adrift upon this sea.
No road.No buildings.No landmarks—
Only sky, land, grass, blazing sun,and this moving straw pile.
A… prairie?
Erika swallowed.His throat was painfully dry.
He hesitated,then shifted closer to Cole.
He reached out with his left hand,gently—with hesitation—
and began to part the dry strawcovering Cole's head.
The straw separated,revealing Cole's face beneath.
Cole's eyes were open.
Those brown eyes stared straight upward,utterly unfocused,at the blazing white skypartially blocked by Erika's silhouette.
His pupils were pinpricks in the harsh light.
His expression—
terrifyingly calm.
He lay there, eyes open,letting himself be buried in straw,like a corpse not yet stiff.
"Hhk!"
Erika gasped in fright,his body jerking backward,nearly tumbling off the straw pile.
The hand that had parted the strawfroze midair.
Those hollow eyesslowly turned.
The pupils shifted,focusing on Erika.
Then, Cole blinked—perfectly naturally.
The calm drained from his face,replaced by a familiar,slightly weary expression,as if merely disturbed from a brief nap.
"We're here."
Cole's voice came, somewhat hoarse,yet utterly calm,as natural as statingthe sky is blue.
"Darenz."
Having said that,he propped himself up with his elbows.
Straw slid from him with a soft rustle.
He brushed bits of strawfrom his hair and shoulders,his gaze sweeping overthe boundless golden grassland.
His face showed no surprise.No tension.
Only a plainso this is it—
and perhaps…a barely perceptible traceof relief?
Erika remained frozen,his left hand still poisedmid-parting of the straw.
He looked from Coleto the surrounding sea of grass,silently flowing beneath the blazing sun.
Here?
On this slowly moving straw pile,in the middle of nowhere?
He opened his mouth—but no sound came out.
Every imagined sense of "wrong"felt pale and powerlessbefore this vast, silent,overwhelmingly normalyet profoundly unnatural golden scene.
Only the soft, constant joltingof the straw pile beneath him,and Cole's unsettlingly calm"we're here,"hung in the scorching air—
both unquestionably realand utterly unreal.
Cole glanced around again—more a perfunctory confirmationthan true observation—
then lay back down.
His back sank into the strawwith a soft rustle.
He raised his right hand,extended his index finger,and lazily pointedin the directiontheir straw pile was drifting.
His fingertip traceda vague afterimagein the blinding light.
Erika stared blanklyat Cole's finger,still reeling from the shockof his "corpse-like stare"and casual we're here.
Cole's hand lingered for a few seconds.
Then he casually let it drop,scooped up a handful of straw,and loosely covered his face again,leaving only the lower half visible—
that same calm mouth.
He resumed his postureof being buried in straw,as if merging with the golden wilderness itself.
This time,his eyes were presumably closed.
Erika followed the directionCole had pointed.
On the distant horizon,where the golden grass metthe faded pale-blue sky,the boundary was no longera simple meeting of colors.
A new, intrusive huewas blooming there.
Instinctively,Erika adjusted the position of his left hand,bringing his fingers togetherto form a narrow visor.
He subtly altered the anglefor a clearer view.
That blur of colorbegan to condense and separate.
First—a touch of green.
Not the green hidden within the yellowed grass,but a deeper, denser green,like stubborn mossclinging to the seambetween earth and sky.
Then,a thread of purple seeped out,entwined with the green—
vivid, almost garishly so,jarringly out of placeagainst the wilderness palette.
As his vision adjusted,the colors finally resolved—
a flag.
Tall.
Its pole anchoredto some unseen foundation.
A wide piece of fabricat its peaksnapped and billowedin the dry, hot wind.
The green was part of the banner.
The purple formed some intertwined pattern or emblem,its details blurred in the blazing sun.
Yet those colors—vivid, even aggressively alive—stood against the monotony of gold and bluelike a loud, unnatural proclamation.
The sharp crack of the flagwhipping in the windseemed to reach him faintly,mixed with the whisper of grass.
And now,the horizon itselfseemed like a giant mouth,beginning to "exhale"more colors and shapes.
First—the silhouettes of tall, slowly turning windmills,rusted, with tattered canvas sails,like the skeletons of stranded leviathanson golden waves.
Then—the shadow of a low, sprawling town emerged—earth-toned walls,uneven rooftops,some pierced by thin, straight plumesof blue-gray smoke.
Closer still—the outlines of scattered shacks or huts.
And—
many moving specksof varied shapes and colors.
Too small to tellif they were people, animals, or something else.
But they moved—along unseen paths,or in irregular patterns—injecting blurred vitalityinto the once-static scene.
Color.Sound.Shape.Motion.
All the elements lumped togetheras "civilization,"as "settlement,"poured over the horizon,drawing nearer, growing clearer.
The motion of the straw pile beneath themsmoothed into an almost effortless glide.
The jolting became negligible,as if the straw itself sensedits destination drawing closeand had grown docile.
The wind brought new smells—
dust,cooking smoke,animal waste,the sour tang of fermentation,and the murky, lived-in odorunique to human gatherings.
These scents gradually overwhelmedthe wild grass and dry straw.
Erika lowered his shielding hand,letting the blazing lightscorch his face.
He opened his eyes wide,watching the scene approach—slightly warped by heat haze,yet undeniably real.
Cole remained lying in the straw,face covered, motionless.
As if he had expected all of this.
Or simply did not care.
But Erika knew.
They were here.
Darenz.