Apparently, whatever that vapor was, it most probably listened to my rambling. It stirred, as if my words had rippled through it, and then it stopped engulfing the five-legged beasts entirely.
It hesitated. Its form shivered, wavered, and then just like that it turned and fled.
"It actually ran away?" I muttered, blinking in disbelief. "Even this vapor ran away? What kind of presence exists here that makes them feel such an overwhelming sense of danger?"
That question dug into like a thorn. For beings with no physical bodies what could possibly pose a threat? What could force sothing incorporeal to recoil in instinctive fear?
The thought left uneasy, yet strangely thrilled.
"I should look around too... maybe I’ll find the reason," I murmured to myself. "Perhaps I’ll even stumble upon a way to get back. Or well, maybe staying here wouldn’t be so bad either. If there’s a civilization sowhere in this strange land, I could try to live among them. Yeah... yeah, that might work. Let’s find a civilization first, then decide."
Having given myself a concrete task, I finally started moving.
The land stretched out endlessly in every direction, a plain of tall grasses, tall enough to brush my waist, and though they seed normal at first glance, there was sothing uncanny in their uniformity.
Just a great expanse of grass, that was what existed here entirely.
I picked a direction at random, south, and began walking.
Hours must have passed, yet the world refused to change. The sa endless grass. The sa breath of wind brushing past. The sa blazing heat pressing against my skin. But that was the strangest part—the heat.
It finally struck that the intensity of the light hadn’t shifted at all. The brightness was the sa as when I had first begun walking. The warmth pressing on my body hadn’t softened, hadn’t dimd.
Normally, the sun should have begun to slide across the horizon. But nothing had changed.
That was when I noticed it.
There was no sun.
And yet, sohow, the land was illuminated as though it were noon. The air burned faintly on my skin as though the sun hung directly overhead.
"...There’s no sun," I whispered, my voice catching. "Yet the light and heat perate the land without pause. That ans there’s so kind of chanism sustaining it... or soone."
The more I thought about it, the more fascinating this place beca.
But fascination did not erase the emptiness gnawing at . Despite walking for so long, I had yet to see the faintest trace of real life. Except that lizard, and those five-legged horrors, and the tall grass that stretched on and on.
"Could it be that trees haven’t evolved here yet?" I speculated aloud. "If this is so kind of primordial land, maybe it’s still in an age before forests. But... without trees, how could the cycle of life exist?"
It was a reasonable line of thought if I compared it to Earth’s biology. Trees provided oxygen, shelter, sustenance—without them, higher lifeforms shouldn’t exist. But then again, who said this place followed Earth’s rules at all?
The soil, the grasses, the beasts I’d seen—everything might function on principles entirely alien to . Maybe their bodies didn’t need oxygen. Maybe "photosynthesis" didn’t even exist here. Maybe light and life had another source altogether.
I couldn’t say. My knowledge faltered, leaving with only questions.
And then, at last, sothing broke the monotony.
I froze in my tracks.
It was impossible to miss. A massive structure lood ahead, a crystalline shard rising from the flat plain. At least thirty ters tall, maybe more, its shape jagged and sharp.
But what held spellbound was not its sheer size. It was the light.
The entire shard pulsed with a green radiance. Not simply glowing, but breathing. The light coursed in waves, flowing downward into the earth beneath it, spilling outward in faint streams that disappeared beneath the plains. And when I followed the glow with my eyes, I realized sothing staggering.
The grasses.
All of them, every blade swaying around , was bathed in that light. It was being fed by it, sustained by it, nourished like a child tethered to its mother.
"Could it be..." I whispered, a spark of awe creeping into my tone. "Is this shard the reason? The reason this land has grasses, the reason life even exists here at all?"
I didn’t know why, but the thought lodged itself firmly in my mind. The green reminded of healing mana, that soothing radiance ant for restoration. Healing ant life. Life ant growth. And this shard was giving its essence to the entire plain.
I found myself straightening my posture, placing my hands behind my back, as I approached the shard. The crystal lood taller and taller the closer I ca, its erald light reflecting in my eyes.
When I finally reached it, I raised a hand without hesitation, almost compelled.
My palm just inches away from its surface.
"Hey!! Stop!!"
The shout cracked through the silence, snapping my attention away. My fingers froze, just inches from curling around the shard. Slowly, I turned my head toward the source of the interruption.
Standing behind was... well, sothing that shouldn’t exist. Nothing new, of course.
Its body was human—at least from the neck down, with arms, legs, a torso. But instead of a head, it had a bulky, old-fashioned speaker. The sheer absurdity of it pulled a laugh out of .
’A speaker?’ I thought, brows furrowed. ’Even if by so deranged, improbable, evolutionary accident you could graft a speaker into flesh... how the hell does that explain a human torso attached to it? No, this isn’t evolution. This isn’t even possible.’
My suspicions spiked imdiately. My instincts told not to take this thing lightly. Narrowing my eyes, I addressed it directly.
"Who the hell are you? And why did you stop ? Is this shard dangerous or sothing?"
The speaker crackled once, then gave a long, distorted sigh, like static. "Ahhh, finally you listened. Do you have any idea how long I’ve been shouting at you to stop? You really don’t, do you? Hushhh..."
The sound of that artificial exhale was... Sothing.
I tilted my head, my tone sharp. "For a long ti? Don’t ss with . This is the first ti I’ve heard your voice."
The speaker-head actually scratched at its own sh, like a man scratching his scalp. "Ah, about that... you couldn’t hear before. The decibels of my voice didn’t match the frequency range of your hearing. I’ve been trying for a while now—adjusting, shifting, recalibrating. It takes ti to find the exact wave that resonates with soone."
That ant it had been there all along, whispering, screaming, shrieking, while I stood oblivious. The thought made suspicious of the entity even more.
I narrowed my eyes further. "Did you read my mind? Or my mories? Is that how you figured out how to communicate with ? Matching sound frequencies and language are two different thing."
The speaker shook side to side in what looked like a very human gesture. "No! No, no. I could, yes. I can. But I usually don’t. My acquaintances—they get... really, really angry when I pry like that. I learned my lesson." The voice fuzzed, dipped, then snapped back. "But forget that! What you were about to do—don’t try it again! Ever!"
I ignored its frantic, almost desperate tone. My voice stayed flat, casual. "What about it?"
The speaker let out another drawn-out sigh, but this ti its posture shifted. The intensity drained, replaced by sothing that almost felt... tired.
"That shard," it said, voice now deeper, resonant, serious. "That shard is the source of ether for this ground. For this very land you’re standing on. If you touch it, the ether within will assimilate into your body. And in doing so... you’ll destroy the very source of life here. Everything will wither. Everything will die."
A faint smirk tugged at my lips. I had suspected sothing along those lines already. And I was right. But knowing the shard was a "source of life" only made the questions pile higher in my head.
I pressed further. "And if I do assimilate with ether? What happens to ?"
The speaker paused, then gave an unsettling shrug of its human shoulders. "I’m not too sure. It ranges. Maybe you die instantly. Maybe you survive but twist into sothing else. A mindless beast, a shell driven only by instinct, running from place to place, devouring or being devoured. A nomad, cursed to wander endlessly. Believe —it’s not a good existence."
My mind imdiately flashed to the abominations I’d seen before—the lizard-like monster, the five-legged freaks. Were those the results of touching shards like this one? Did they all begin as people or sothing else that fell to assimilation?
That raised another thought. A darker one.
"Wait..." I muttered under my breath. "Does that an existence itself was created from these shards? Are they the origin points of life? If so... then who created them?"
I turned my eyes sharply back on the Entity. "And more importantly... what is ether? Exactly. Not vague nonsense. What is it?"
The speaker crackled, the static flaring briefly before fading. It buzzed, then took a slow step closer to , closing the distance. Its hand flesh and blood, disturbingly normal, reached out and patted my shoulder.
"You ask too many questions," it said, voice dipping into a lower, almost chiding register. "Just because I’ve humored you with answers doesn’t an I’ll continue doing so. You shouldn’t expect that."
Then, after a pause, its tone shifted, oddly casual, almost mischievous. "Aren’t you from the future? Why don’t you tell sothing about it, instead?"
So it knew.
Well, it wasn’t exactly rocket science. It had copied my language perfectly, after all, molding itself to communicate with . Of course it would pick up on where I ca from. Still, the casualness with which it said it sent a strange chill through .
I exhaled slowly, narrowing my eyes. "Then I’ll ask you again. Who are you?"
This ti, the reply ca without hesitation.
"Sound."
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