The river was silent.
Not completely silent—water never truly is—but the sound it made was soft enough to feel like breathing rather than movement. The current slid slowly past the rocks, carrying fragments of leaves and pale reflections of the sky.
Karma lay on the cold ground beside the riverbank.
His arms rested beside him, his fingers loosely curled in the grass. The earth felt damp beneath his back. Above him, the sky stretched wide and empty, washed in the faint color of evening.
He stared upward without blinking.
For a long time, he didn't move.
His face looked calm.
Too calm.
A thin line of dried tears marked the path from the corner of his eyes to his temples, but his expression remained strangely neutral, as if the storm that had passed through him had left no visible damage.
The wind brushed gently across the river.
The grass shifted.
But Karma remained still.
His mind felt hollow, like a room that had been emptied of everything important. Thoughts tried to form, but they collapsed before they could fully exist.
Then something strange happened.
The sky blurred.
At first it was subtle—almost like his vision had grown tired. The clouds lost their edges, dissolving into pale shapes that slowly merged together.
Karma frowned slightly.
The air thickened.
Mist began to spread across the river.
It crept quietly over the surface of the water, then drifted onto the riverbank, rolling forward like a slow wave made of smoke.
Within seconds, the world around him began to fade.
Trees softened into vague silhouettes.
The opposite bank disappeared completely.
The sky above him turned colorless.
Karma slowly pushed himself up.
The fog surrounded him now.
Thick.
Endless.
It swallowed sound, distance, and direction until the entire world felt unfinished, as if reality itself had paused in the middle of being created.
He stood there, unsure whether he was awake or still dreaming.
Then he looked up.
The sky was no longer empty.
High above the fog, a single moon hung in the darkness.
Purple.
Not bright like a normal moon, but softly glowing, as if its light had been filtered through water.
The strange color spread across the fog beneath it, painting the mist with faint violet shadows.
Karma stared at it.
Something about it felt familiar.
Like a memory he couldn't quite reach.
Then he noticed movement.
At first he thought the fog itself was shifting.
But when he focused his eyes, he realized something else was drifting through the air.
Books.
They floated slowly through the mist.
Some moved lazily above the ground. Others turned gently in the air as if carried by an invisible current.
Their pages opened and closed by themselves.
Flipping.
Stopping.
Flipping again.
Yet no sound came from them.
Hundreds of silent books drifting through an endless sea of fog.
Karma felt no fear.
Only a strange heaviness pressing against his chest.
He watched the books for a long moment.
Then one of them slowly drifted closer.
It hovered in front of him.
The cover opened.
A blank page waited inside.
Karma stared at it.
And somewhere deep in the fog, something unseen began to move.
A memory.
Or perhaps something far worse.
The purple moon watched silently above.