An invisible viscous shroud covered my body as it seeped through my skin and deep into my bones. Discomfort swept over me as I felt bonds chaining every single cell of my body. A mix of mana and unknown essences took residence inside my beings and laid there waiting. For the moment they were inactive and didn’t cause me anything besides annoyance. This had to be the Veil, the actualization of the constraints placed upon the Merchants who ventured to the Otherlands, a limit to their strength and freedom.

Once I got used to it, what remained was an unnatural sense of silence. The deafening noise of the plutonium explosion spread through the entirety of the ship, filling the void before disappearing into nothingness. Every sound and vibration disappeared when it crossed the wall and reached the outer layer which was in direct contact with the “outside”; if it could be called like that.

I couldn’t see or hear anything coming from beyond the vessel, as it completely enclosed me in a dark cocoon, lit up only by my own body heat. Nevertheless, an innate sense of what I didn’t know I possessed gave me an understanding of what was surrounding me.

An immense nothing containing everything. Truths and lies, indistinguishable from each other, mixed together to give foundation to reality. Silent whispers of what could be, what should have been and what was. And innumerable eyes fixed on me.

For the first time in my whole life I felt terrified. It wasn’t fear what I was feeling, as it was not an emotion but an awareness. I was cognizant of my position. The eternity I was crossing was not void. Things much larger than me inhabited it. I knew I was their kin, even if I didn’t understand what it implied, but I was not comparable to them. I was, for now, inconsequential.

Nevertheless, I remained in control of myself. Many gazes were prickling my skin, but an abysmal number of them were the cause of my sentiment, and they shot just a brief glance to me before disappearing as suddenly as they had appeared. Of those that lingered, most held no awareness and the few that did carried many things within them, including alarm.

Moreover, even if it was inexplicable, I knew I didn’t need to let my worries dominate me. The pressure of those eyes weighed on my mind, but every fibre of my being and mostly my blood fiercely rejected them. I couldn’t touch them, and they wouldn’t touch me. If it was because they couldn’t or because they didn’t want to, I couldn’t tell.

The journey carried on without anything noteworthy happening. At regular intervals I placed a new charge inside the propulsive apparatus, exploded it via the piston and remained standing without any acceleration impacting me, as the conservation of momentum seemed not to hold anymore. In the meantime, I kept my mind fixed on my intentions.

Among the instructions I had been given before departing, I was told I needed to concentrate on my destination. It didn’t matter if I knew what my destination was or even how it was, what mattered was that I kept myself focused on my aim of reaching the destination itself. In a pathless world of concepts and abstractions, only a strong conviction would suffice to find the way.

A long time went by in the desolate darkness and silence. Curiously enough, even if I was in a situation in which I couldn’t perceive anything concrete beyond the reality within the vessel, I still held a strong grasp on the passage of time. My personal clock was still marking the hours and the Veil resting within me kept me connected to the real world. A second here corresponded to a second where I had departed.

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I got up, after resting for hours on end with my back against the sides of the vessel. It was almost automatic. I started walking towards the other side of the ship, away from the propulsive apparatus and towards my destination.

The colours were the first to disappear. Only the contours of the insides of the vessel remained. With every step reality became more blurry. My ears became unable to capture any sound, even my own heartbeat. My nostrils became useless decorations. The weight resting on my feet faded.

The walls of the vessel became more a suggestion than a constraint and my body traversed them unimpeded. For a brief moment, I felt a tugging force and something being left behind, but I still continued on. A glimpse of infinite stars and galaxies impressed itself on my retinas for an instant, before I continued walking through the contoured darkened tunnel.

I had found it, the way to a district of the Otherlands. As I had been taught, I had fixed my mind on a single thought, and that had been to “find an opening to a near place”, and here I was walking through it.

Time had stopped once I had traversed the walls of the vessel, but it was slowly returning to normal. My body regained consistency and the impediments of the Veil became more and more perceivable. I could feel their weight more clearly than before, even if they had yet to be triggered. For the moment, they were manifest but not active, as no contract was yet established.

The tunnel around me changed and the darkness gave way to a blurry environment. It appeared to be a rocky expanse, but it was too hazy for even my eyes to capture. I felt the growing heat brush my skin. Even if I had been deprived of my senses for mere instants, it felt good to regain them, more than I would have imagined.

Two entities came up in the middle of the hazy environment, standing in stark contrast to the background. The first one was a floating construct of crimson light, made up of an outer circle made of several different symbols which surrounded a five-pointed star.

The second one was a humanoid with ashen skin. Its head was covered in pale hair and two antler horns grew from its sides. Crimson irises gazed at me as I walked towards it.

It moved its body between me and the arcane circle floating behind it. It bared its fangs and started to shout at me in an unknown language. By recalling all that I had learned the previous weeks and by comparing the sound it was emitting to the languages I had learned, I managed to broadly piece together what it was saying.

It was asking me who I was and how I had come there. It was commanding me to go away, or else he would “make-me-live-not”, was the literal translation of its words. It also introduced itself, although I didn’t manage to capture it.

The only relevant piece of information was that, like me, it intended to make use of the arcane circle behind it to reach the destination lying on the other side of it. It was clear at a glance that the bloody star of light was the “opening to a near place” I had been looking for.

I couldn’t let the humanoid in front of me use it before me, as it seemed too flimsy to let two different beings traverse it. I opened my mouth and tried to replicate its language, telling it to “put-body-its-place-different” and let me pass.

It laughed at my broken imitation of its language and insulted me by calling me a puny human. Dark energy raised from its body and darted towards me. The shadow wind brushed over my skin, leaving it untouched.

Its laugh immediately disappeared and its eyes focused. It focussed the energy around the fingers of its right hand, as they became razor-sharp claws tens of centimetres in length. It jumped at me, aiming for my jugular.

Annoyed by its presence, I grabbed its claws and crushed them in my grasp. I tugged its body toward me, took hold of its horns and, after planting my foot in its abdomen, tore its head from its body. It went limp and stopped on a permanent basis trying to attack me.

Stepping over the corpse, I neared the circle of light and finally reached a different world, one I did not make.