“You’re r-real…I can't…feel my…”

Lucas collapsed.

His eyes fluttered open to the sound of a TOWERING waterfall crashing behind him with a meteoric ROAR.

“Ahh! What? What happened? What's happening?” he gripped his scarf, his legs trembling as if being buzzed by electricity.

Around him was nothing.

The sky was gone. The clouds were gone. The beautiful glittering lake and verdant snow-capped trees:

Erased.

It was just a void.

A swirling, dark blue space with strange floating islands drifting aimlessly.

There was no smell. His skin was covered in goosebumps like a rash of cold fear.

Yet he didn't feel cold at all. Actually, he didn't feel anything.

Lucas got up on his feet, the sandy crimson soil of the alien world crunching under his running shoes as he marched around a floating island. Each step he took caused red dust to float in the air like smoke, unbound by gravity, just like the floating island itself.

He turned around and looked up, his heart engulfed in flames of fear.

“That waterfall…it's flowing upwards! I can't feel my…everything,” he uttered. “What is this place? Why is it so…dead? Am I dead?”

His shaking blue eyes jittered from corner to corner, irrational thoughts poured into his head like a heavy waterfall.

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He ran to the edge of the floating island, hesitantly peeping over the edge but jolting back when he saw what was down there.

A humongous vortex, peering into his heart like a huge eye that threatened to pull him in to meet death, spiralled at the bottom of the bottomless void.

“THIS IS INSANE! Is this still Earth? I think I'm gonna lose my–”

Suddenly, the boy shot into the air as if someone had yanked up by a rope attached to him, crashing into another floating island; A cloud of red dust bursting into the air upon impact.

But for some reason, he was okay? No red dust clinging to his clothes, not a single scratch.

Not physically, at least.

His head spiralled like the world he was in, another crushing headache squeezing his brain.

“AGH! Why does this keep happening to me? AGHHHH!! ” He collapsed on the ground in agony.

Nothing made sense.

Trees with branches made of leaves and leaves made of wood phased in and out of existence like shadows.

Waterfalls that came from nowhere and endlessly streamed upwards into the infinite sky.

Plus: he was sitting on an upside down island. Without falling.

But as he writhed in pain, his eyes flickering as if he was having a seizure, his blurred vision caught sprinkles of the same pink stardust sparkling around him.

“Mesprit? MESPRIT! What is this? What are you doing to me? Did I make you angry? If so, I'm sorrt! I won't come to the lake ever, please let me out of here–”

Thats when he saw it.

A leviathan shadow black as ink materialised out of nowhere, soaring all around the upside down world.

“What is that thing? MESPRIT! Please, HELP! Someone, please help me! I'm scared! I'm…”

Lucas's heart pummelled his ribcage, galloping like a burning rapidash. He felt like he was breathing through the eye of a needle…

It was coming straight for him.

He tried to run, but his legs were moving like he was in a pool of honey. It let out a disgusting roar from the depths of its black soul.

A cry that was drenched in death.

As Lucas screamed for his life, it rocketed through the air, crashed into the island, and swallowed him whole.