And I am elsewhere.

It takes me a moment to realize the connection has even been made, as somatic transfer is not typically an instant endeavor. Even in the ideal scenarios, with perfect synchronicity between operator and receiver, there is at least a brief sensation of movement. Of the mind shifting intangible positions and expanding or contracting to fit its new form.

Yet here I felt...nothing.

I take a moment to perceive what I can. When shifting to a form with altered sensory perception or lack thereof, it is not uncommon to initially perceive nothing but darkness. And, as I expected, darkness extends as far as I can 'see' from my vantage. But then I realize there is more. A faint sensation. A disturbance of air in a sealed room. I extend the fingers of my mind's reach, searching for a beacon in the dark. Clumsily, I alter my frame of perception and behold the source.

A towering, golden edifice stands behind my initial orientation, casting warm, inviting light. I turn to regard it fully in thoughtless wonder, and realize that I am in fact, turning. And with far more ease than I had initially.

Shocked, I shift my perception towards my origin and regard...myself. My WAKING self. I am not an interloper in some new unfamiliar vessel.

I am here. I am me.

Sickness rises in my throat. Sense suddenly returns and a cold sweat dews across my semblance skin. A rational voyager may have theorized this was merely some mental defense mechanism to account for sudden and complete sensory severance, but my panicked mind offers no such solace. I am gripped with a singular, overwhelming fear.

Something is wrong.

When sailing the solar rails on an academic's budget, I was often forced to resort to atypical methods of transport. Once, my transit of choice was a freelance cargo freighter, selling passage to whatever or whomever could stow aboard. As we jumped between stations, the coupling and decoupling process would always create a sudden, terrifying vacuum in the freight chamber. Though much of that time in my life has faded with the decades, the sound of this vacuum remains with me still. The great rush of air being pulled from the hold into nothing. The metal leviathan exhaling into the dark, turning its lungs to void.

And from behind me in the darkness, I hear the same breath.

I turn, terrified, expecting some unfathomable nightmare to assault me.

Instead, I regard only a small figure looming silently a distance away upon the black.

Cautiously I approach. As the distance closes, I see it is a statue of a person, or at least something resembling one. It is androgynous, with no gendered features I can discern. It appears as if half-hewn from smooth, pale marble, with some features melting into the unfinished slab it emerges from. Upon its skin and at points near the edges of the slab are trace spiraling patterns, like the soft edges of a cloud emerging from beneath light smoker's mantle.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Whatever form this statue once aspired to, it resembles it no longer. Its arms and legs, cloven cleanly and suspended in satellite to the main mass hover in approximation of limbs. The face bears no eyes, instead flowing from clear defined features into a solid unrefined pillar above the cheekbones, severed cleanly at its termination point a distance above where the head would crown. In one hand, a scepter of gnarled silver, tipped with flat spade that resembles ripples or waves, meeting in tighter formation as the blade reaches its edge.

I hold the shadows of the light cast by the edifice within the folds of my robes, yet this figure is illuminated perfectly by nothing, as if its entire figure is formed of gentle light. Though my heart still threatens to burst from my chest, I find some strange solace in the form.

Then it speaks.

"Trespasser upon the threshold, who comes seeking answers from the mouth of sleepers. I offer no threat, but only warning. Below lie older things, full of hate, and formed of teeth. Their jaws unhinged, promise shelter in the storm, and await interlopers to stumble in half-waking to be their prize.

Yet I stand as a way-point. A guidepost. I am the shore upon which the waves of waking break. I am the dross that dreams leave in passing.

I am the last barrier upon the threshold.

And I will be the first to fall."

The figure points its scepter further into the nothingness, away from the pillar of light.

"From whence light flows, the waking world, governed by reason. Beyond, only madness and dreams. Continue thus if drawn by desire, but I offer no ferry. And know that even should one return to the waking world, to cross the threshold is to pay a toll. Not in flesh nor blood, but in something unknowable. The prism of the soul shall darken, and a color taken evermore from its light.

None can know the name of it, only that it has been forever lost."

Dumbfounded, I pause for a moment. Briefly I contemplate a litany of questions, but before the words can escape my throat, they falter and the thoughts die upon my lips.

I feel with every fiber of my dream flesh that I am no longer an architect of my own fate. By taking the dive I have invited the regard of something grander. These silent rapids have already swallowed me whole, and I have no choice but to give myself unto the current.

No choice but to proceed.

Beckoned by something in the dark, I stumble forward. In a stupor I make the few halting steps and pass by the figure. From behind me, the leviathan sighs once more.

A deep primal fear screams at me to flee, and for a moment, it even supersedes the deafening silence of the nothing I have entered. I turn, hoping to find some help in the shattered figure's half features, but alas.

I behold the nothing all around me.

No figure. No beacon of light. Not even my own trembling form. I am suspended, truly without tether, in a crushing ocean of senseless black.

And yet, the same primal fear that urged me to return insists upon me that which I already know.

I am not alone.

VOME [https://i.imgur.com/vH99uW4.png]