The void was not empty.
It was a living absence — an endless, starless expanse where light itself had been judged unworthy and banished like a peasant who'd dared speak out of turn.
No horizon, no up, no down, only the slow, deliberate pulse of something older than creation breathing in a rhythm that predated the concept of rhythm and would outlast it by several eternities.
Less lively since Phei was here.
In the centre of that boundless dark floated a single, colossal structure: a door.
It was red.
This red was deeper, heavier than Phei would remember if he saw it again — the colour of a wound that had never been allowed to heal, that had been kept open deliberately, fed, maintained, because whatever lived behind it wanted the wound.
Wanted the rawness.
Wanted to be reminded of something that had happened so long ago the memory had outlived the universe it was born in and was now just waiting for the next one to fuck up so it could laugh again.
