I woke up to the sensation of stillness.
A stillness so absolute it felt wrong.
For what felt like an eternity, my world had been nothing but motion—the constant rolling of waves, the creaking of wood, the never-ending pull of a voyage without a destination. But now, there was nothing. No water. No wind. No hum of the tides beneath .
Just sand.
A vast, endless stretch of it, burning under the strange sky, shifting like a restless beast beneath my fingers.
I didn't know where I was. I didn't even know why I was awake. Had I fallen asleep? Had I drowned? Had I simply… stopped existing for a mont?
I sat up, brushing the dry grains from my skin, and stared across the horizon.
A desert.
A land of nothingness.
That was funny, in a way. I had spent so long drifting across an infinite sea, only to end up in a place that was the complete opposite. It was almost poetic.
But there was no poetry in the way my body ached. No grand aning in the way my mind remained clouded, as if pieces of myself had been lost sowhere along the journey.
I exhaled, pressing a hand against my forehead.
"What am I even doing here?"
The words left my lips, but they held no weight. I had no answer.
I barely even knew who I was anymore.
There was a na—one that clung to my thoughts like a whisper on the tide.
Ishmael.
That was who I was, right?
That was who I had always been.
And yet, the more I thought about it, the more uncertain I beca.
The sun burned high above, yet the heat never truly touched . The air was dry, but my lungs didn't struggle. The world around felt distant, like a mirage painted across an endless canvas.
"... I should be moving."
Where should I move? There is nothing of interest in sight.
So I walked, and dragged my feet.
Even if my muscles ache from the sudden stress of movents after a long ti nothing happens.
Even if my mind was so bogged down from the unstable inertia that was my sudden arrival in this place.
Or maybe the lack of indication of who I am, what is the aning of my existence…
"Did I just sll sothing? Wait, I can sll sothing from far away??"
And then—sothing changed.
A scent.
Sothing foreign. Sothing unnatural. Sothing that didn't belong to this wasteland of sand and silence.
It was like a paradox—rustic, yet advanced. Ancient, yet full of new life.
I'm sure that I'm not part of the beastfolk, but sohow I possess this innate ability.
I turned my head, and there, far in the distance, I saw it.
A structure. A great, moving construct of steel and unknown technology, carrying the weight of civilization inside it.
There were also so sort of defensive weaponry, like so sort of automated rotating ballista, but with a barrel of steel or sothing along the line.
"Huh, my eyesight is much better than I thought."
Hope surged through like a spark in a deadened lantern.
A bastion.
A city on the move.
A place where people lived, where voices carried aning, where the world wasn't just an empty stretch of nothing.
I pushed myself to my feet, barely aware of the grin that stretched across my face.
My legs moved before my mind could catch up. I ran.
I ran as fast as I could, the sand shifting beneath , my breath coming in short gasps that weren't from exhaustion but from sothing far greater—relief.
A place to belong.
A place to exist.
People should exist there, and if there are people, it ans that I can interact with them.
Interacting with them should give a bigger clarity on what I should do and what I should not do.
"My proverbial compass…"
But then—
The air shifted.
The world cracked.
I stumbled, nearly falling as an invisible pressure surged through the landscape, forcing the very fabric of reality to twist and fracture.
Thin, jagged lines splintered across the sky like shattered glass, expanding in every direction, branching outward with unnatural precision.
A dinsional distortion.
A sight I had seen before—or sowhat rembered in my current rugged state.
The sa ruptures had appeared on my voyage, breaking apart the sky, the water, the very concept of direction itself. They were wounds in reality—windows into sothing else.
And when I looked into them
I saw.
Countless reflections.
Countless realities.
So were distorted, vague images of places I could not recognize, shifting and flickering like half-ford dreams. Others were clearer, more defined—windows into events that had already passed or had yet to happen.
And among them—
A face.
My face.
A woman stood within the fractured glass, her reflection staring back at with those pale, otherworldly eyes.
White pupils, circular in shape, surrounded by a sea of black sclera. Skin paler than most, though not sickly—more like sothing untouched by the sun, because of the constant storm that covered the sea like a constant plague
Hair of a jaded blonde, ssy, uneven, the bangs falling carelessly over her forehead as if she had never bothered to fix them. This individual, wearing a ragtag coat and pants made out of the hideous skins of the abyssal depths, was watching with an expression of anger and pain.
A familiar stranger.
The cracks expanded, branching further apart.
And within one of them—
A battle.
A radiant figure, golden and untouchable, moved with impossible grace, weaving through an onslaught of grotesque, veined creatures.
Pallid rmaids.
I knew what they were.
To think that soone other than our crew were fighting them outside the 'Unloving Sea'.
I took a step closer, but the mont my foot touched the ground—
The distortion pulsed.
The pressure surged outward, an unseen force slamming into with the weight of an ocean storm.
I barely had ti to react before I was thrown backward, tumbling through the sand like a stray piece of driftwood caught in a violent current. My vision blurred, the world spinning out of control, the scent of steel and rust growing stronger with each passing mont.
"Urgh…"
Not the stillness of peace, nor the gentle quiet that cos before dawn.
This was the heavy, disorienting kind—the eerie kind of absence left behind in the wake of sothing imnse. The air, which had monts ago been thick with pressure, now felt unnervingly vacant, as if sothing had been ripped away too quickly, leaving behind a space that had yet to correct itself.
I sucked in a sharp breath, my chest tightening as my senses struggled to reorient themselves. My limbs ached, but not from exertion—from sothing far deeper, as though my entire being had been compressed and stretched all at once before being carelessly discarded.
I pressed my palms against the ground beneath , expecting to feel the familiar instability of shifting sand. But what I felt was not sand at all.
It was solid. Smooth. Cool. Unfamiliar.
Man-made.
That realization sent a cold jolt through my spine. My fingers curled against the surface, tracing the faint ridges of tal beneath my touch. It wasn't just solid—it was structured. Engineered. Built.
Slowly, I lifted my gaze, and my breath hitched.
The desert was gone. The vast wasteland that had stretched endlessly before only monts ago had been replaced with sothing entirely different. Geotrical structures. Massive cables and veins of unknown energy. Machines humming with unseen power.
Enjoy new chapters from My Virtual Library Empire
And then, as my mind caught up with what my eyes were seeing, the truth struck all at once.
I was on the Landship that I saw before.
The very place I had been running toward. The distant silhouette of civilization that had given hope. The moving bastion of steel and technology, resting far beyond the dunes.
Sohow, I made it here.
"Oh dear."
But not by my own doing, nor any kind of permissions of who owned this piece of behemoth..
The distortion—that unnatural rupture in reality—had thrown forward, not into oblivion, not into another fracture of ti, but straight into the heart of a place I did not belong.
I swallowed, but my throat was dry.
This wasn't an arrival.
This was a violation.
A bloody trespass.
"Is soone there!?"
Panic started to creep in, curling its fingers around my ribs, tightening with every passing second. My breaths ca quicker, shallower, as the weight of the situation pressed down on .
I wasn't supposed to be here.
I hadn't been granted entry. I hadn't been invited. I hadn't even been seen approaching from the outside like any normal traveler.
I had just… appeared.
Unexplained. Unaccounted for.
And soon, soone would notice.
What if they struck down imdiately? What if they mistook as so sort of an assassin or an ill-mannered vagabond??
"I'm not ready for this…!"
I heard voices—faint, distant, but unmistakably human.
Footsteps, the low murmur of conversation, the shifting of machinery and tal. The quiet bustle of an active site, alive with people who lived and worked here, people who would have every right to question why a stranger had suddenly materialized aboard their bastion.
I had no answers to their questions.
No plan.
I clenched my fists, forcing myself to breathe, forcing my staggered body to move.
If I stayed frozen like this, the mont soone found , I'd already be at a disadvantage. I needed to act, now, before I lost control of this situation.
But how?
Cold sweat shimring. My mind raced through possibilities, searching for sothing—anything—that would give an edge, an excuse, a ans of survival, or a reason to feel and actually act upon sothing
"I could run…"
But where? This was a Landship, not so open desert where I could disappear into the dunes. There were walls, corridors, paths that I knew nothing about. I could escape into the structure, but without knowledge of where to go, I'd only corner myself further.
I could try to blend in.
Act like I belonged, walk with purpose, keep my head down. If this was a true bastion, there would be travelers, refugees, workers—people moving in and out all the ti. Maybe, just maybe, I could slip into the crowd.
Or—
I could surrender.
Raise my hands, kneels on the ground.
Reveal myself, let them take in, explain—
Explain what, exactly?
That I had been running toward them and a random fracture in space teleported onto their deck? That I had no idea where I had co from or why I was even here?
That I was nobody, with nothing, in a place I didn't belong?
A lump ford in my throat.
Whatever happened next… I wasn't ready.
But there was no turning back now.
Reviews
All reviews (0)