It was an empty space, vast and endless, bathed in a dim and eerie light. As far as his eyes could see, acres upon acres of land sprawling in every direction, without any discernible boundaries. The sky was a total darkness, an abyss, a nihility.
He felt himself walking through this nothingness, aware that he had been traversing for millions of years. But time held no meaning in this void, for there was no limits to both time and space.
Finally, a glimmer of change appeared in the sky. Amidst the obsidian black, tiny pinpricks of light dotted the canvas. This scenery made him so agitated that countless doppelgangers of himself appeared, and lined up in the direction time drifted away. He raised his hands, only to see a jumble of shaking black curves.
In the meantime, a head popped out from a cupboard under a staircase in the library. The head belonged to the young man who detected abnormal fluctuations of electromagnetic waves earlier that afternoon. He sneaked into the library before it closed and slept in the cupboard in the company of a mop, a bucket and one 256-year -old mouse's skeletons. He was about to come out of his hiding place when he heard a shrieking voice shouted, “Ah! How could this nightmare haunt me...why!” It was a girl. He was surprised to find he was not alone in this late hour.
Elara joilted upright, realizing she had dozed off while reorganizing books. This nightmare of walking endlessly in a void began when she was a little kid in the orphanage and repeated itself countless times since she grew up. Actually, it was the only kind of dreams she ever had. She was astonished when she first discovered other kids’ dreams should be pleasant and colourful. She tried to seek a cure from all the books she had, but only to find herself in an even more complicated maze of puzzles. It was a curse, they said, like yourself. Yes, she was weird. Apart from those inexplicable dreams, she could also see beyond normal people's visual spectrum. She had spent most of her life wandering between pity comments and judging looks before she finally settled down in this library. As frightening a haunted castle might be, especially for a girl like her who could actually spot ghosts, these spiritual co-workers would never mock her peculiar qualities. They would only scare the hell out of her. And she was still not used to that.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The “party” started at midnight. Sudden gusts of cold winds came from nowhere, along with the deep moans of an invisible crowd. Ghastly shadows climbed upon the walls. Lights flashed in a frenzy of exaltation to the rhythm of a silent singer. Elara heard a cry right in front of her. She let out a squeak of fear and froze between the bookshelves, feeling a shiver run down her spine.
A pair of bleeding eyes were looking at her through the gaps between storeys. “Oh, you can see me? Fascinating!” a chilling voice pierced the silence. “It's been a rather lonely 300 years of wandering these halls.”
Books tumbled from Elara's arms as she hurried back to the staircase, only to collide unexpectedly with something—or rather, someone—alive.
A strange young man with a beige coat and a genial smile met her gaze. Elara screamed and took a few steps back, still panting violently.
“Who...who are you?” she mumbled. “Are you...are you...a ghost?”
“A ghost?” the young man pondered for a while, as if checking a dictionary in his mind, and then replied. “No. As far as I understand, I'm not a ghost. Are you alright, though? You seem frightened.”
Strangely enough, Elara felt relieved to have a living companion, even though he was clearly an illegal intruder. “I just saw a...Never mind...I'm...I'm fine. Who are you then? What are you doing here? I didn't see you when I closed the gate this evening.”
“Oh! I'm Kairos Dimension,” the man answered with delight. “I came in here to seek shelter from the rainstorm.”
Elara looked out of the window. “There is no rainstorm outside.”
“There will be,” Kairos smiled when he glanced at a small gadget in his hand. “in about twenty minutes.”
“Are you an unemployed weatherman doing door-to-door forecasting right now?” Elara asked, quite bewildered.
“No, I'm an interstellar personal detective,” Kairos replied sincerely.
“An interstellar what?”
“Personal detective, you know, solving crimes and such.”
“What kind of crimes do you solve?”
Kairos smirked, settling into a very nice rococo chair. “Have you heard the Murders of Oneself in Multipul Timelines?”
“Eh...No.”
“How about the Pan Galactic Explosions of Supernovas?”
“Should I...”
“Then you must have heard of this -- Time Theft of the Eagle Nebula. What? No? That’s like the most famous theft in the whole universe! Every civilization in this nebula lost 200 general years overnight! Just imagine the chaos...It took the Universal Time Planning Bureau ages to arrest--”
“And you solved all those cases?” Elara couldn’t help but interrupted with great interest.
“No,” Kairos answered. “but they are amazing.”
Twenty minutes later, the rainstorm started to pour on the plain.