Cliff was your normal, average man. Not even worth describing.

He was what people would call, dedicated to his hobbies. Games, books, videos. Anything that would keep him entertained.

One of the things he really enjoyed was predicting how far characters would go, how high they could reach. It was something he could never lose from his childhood.

This is why it shouldn’t come across as surprising that he was the type to read on his phone while walking…

…Which is why he had no clue how he ended up on a floating island in the middle of the void.

----------------------------------------

“…Yup, I’m probably doomed.”

A bunch of trees I don’t recognise. A river that keeps on flowing into the void without losing pressure. Oh, and said void being pitch black, probably stretching to… nowhere I’m going to be anytime soon.

In short, I’m probably screwed.

I couldn’t really help but raise my head and let out a pent out sigh, just so I wouldn’t be screaming my head off in the middle of nowhere, where there could be a bear or something. Or maybe some kind of eldritch tentacle monster for all I knew.

So yeah, I had to do something to keep my mind off of my probable imminent demise. Knowing the land seemed like it would help, so I slowly crept to the edge of the island, hoping to god it didn’t just collapse and plunge me into the deep dark abyss.

I felt something in me break when I saw underneath the island. Yup, pretty much all void.

If it was just a cliff, there might have been hope. Maybe I could have made a really long rope to climb down or something. Maybe a helicopter or plane or something could have come by.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

That wasn’t going to happen.

I crept back and sat beneath a tree. I had to process. I had to unfreeze my brain.

Looking up, I actually took note this time that there was something like a moon. It… kind of helped me calm down.

It was enough to make me think back to a bunch of videos people getting lost.

One of the most important rules was staying still and waiting for help. If I somehow got here, someone else should be able to too.

That’s what I could have done… if I didn’t notice the edge of the island. I wasn’t a genius but I could still guess how big a circle should be depending on the curve.

The island shouldn’t have been too big.

I left a circle were I first found myself and started following the edge. Turns out, it really was just an island in the middle of nowhere.

----------------------------------------

“So, good news and bad news.”

I don’t know how long I spent, could have been minutes, could have been hours. But I had at least made progress.

”Figured out that there really isn’t anything loving around here. Also kind of developing a habit of talking to myself though.”

There wasn’t going to be anything chasing me down. There wasn’t going to be anything to talk to either.

“Found a house in the middle of island. A magical portal too. Problem is, pretty sure it does less teleporting and more vaporising.”

A double story log cabin, fully furnished with everything a man could need, just not a functional portal. Tossed in a rock and out came powder.

There was a shelf in the master bedroom, with books marked in Roman numerals. I hoped that there was a clue in there so I started with the first one.

It was a picture book.

It mostly had drawings. The first page had Roman numerals with some crossed out. Probably shouldn’t open the crossed out books.

The second page had a diagram of a human body. The brain was marked with a hourglass with a question mark next to it. The stomach was marked with a crossed out hourglass.

My most magical and supernatural interpretation of this would be that time moves for the brain but we don’t get hungry here.

My most mundane interpretation is that the guy had constipation.

Flipping through the book, what stuck out to me was a page with a diagram of circles being layered over each other. One of them had what looked to be an island inside. The problem was that the other circles had arrows pointing to it.

This may have been a one way trip.