The dreams began before dawn.
Not images.
Distances.
He slept beneath the roots of a fallen tree, yet in his mind he stood somewhere impossibly far—on a plain without horizon, beneath a sky that bent inward like a closing eye. There were no stars. Only depth. Layer upon layer of awareness stacked so tightly it felt like pressure against his thoughts.
Something vast regarded him.
Not directly.
As one might notice a fracture spreading through stone.
YOU ARE DRIFTING OUT OF TOLERANCE, the thing inside him said, its presence louder here, closer to the surface.
THIS ATTRACTS ATTENTION.
His throat tightened. "Whose?"
There was no immediate answer.
When it came, it was slower. Heavier.
ENTITIES THAT PRECEDE LANGUAGE.
He woke choking.
The forest was wrong.
Not hostile—alert.
Mist clung low to the ground, unnaturally still. The morning birds did not sing. Even the insects held their silence as if waiting for permission.
He stood, brushing soil from his clothes, and felt it again—that subtle tenderness in the land. Like skin stretched too tight.
Every step sent a faint distortion outward. Not visible. Perceptible.
The thing inside him was no longer dormant. It observed continuously now, its awareness brushing against his own like cold water against skin.
YOU ARE BEING CATALOGUED.
"By who," he asked, already knowing the answer would be insufficient.
BY WHAT EXISTS WHERE RULES FAIL.
He reached the outskirts of a settlement by midday.
Not a village—too scattered for that. A crossing point. Traders' huts. A shrine hammered together from bone and driftwood. Smoke curled lazily from cookfires.
Life.
Normal, fragile life.
The smell of food made his stomach tighten—not with hunger, but memory. He slowed, heart pounding.
He did not want to be seen.
Unfortunately, the world had begun to disagree.
A child saw him first.
The boy froze mid-step, wooden toy slipping from his fingers. His eyes widened—not in fear at first, but confusion. As though his mind couldn't quite agree on what it was seeing.
Then the confusion broke.
He screamed.
The sound cut through the settlement like a blade.
People turned. Hands reached for tools, charms, half-remembered prayers. A woman pulled the child behind her. Someone dropped a basket of grain.
No one approached.
They stared.
The boy felt it then—dozens of gazes colliding with him, scraping against his shape. The air thickened, pressure building behind his eyes.
The thing inside him stirred.
THEY ARE REACTING CORRECTLY.
"Don't," he whispered. "Please don't—"
A man stepped forward despite himself, clutching a talisman carved with warding marks. His voice shook.
"What are you?"
The question struck harder than any weapon.
The boy opened his mouth—
—and felt the wrong answer rising effortlessly to his lips. Something vast and elegant. Something that would end the exchange immediately.
He swallowed it down.
"I'm just passing through," he said instead.
The words came out layered. Human tone wrapped around something deeper, something that bent the sound as it traveled. A few people flinched as if struck.
The talisman cracked.
A thin fracture ran straight through its center.
The man dropped it, staring in horror.
COMMUNICATION ATTEMPT: PARTIALLY FAILED, the thing observed.
YOUR PRESENCE IS DEGRADING SYMBOLIC DEFENSES.
Panic broke.
Someone shouted. Another prayed. A third ran.
The boy felt the pressure spike—fear cascading outward, feeding back into him in a nauseating loop.
His body reacted.
Shadows deepened around his feet, stretching wrong, clinging upward. The charms beneath his skin burned, lines of old intent flaring as they struggled to contain what they were never meant to host.
He staggered, clutching his head.
"No—stop—stop looking at me—"
The world listened.
The ground groaned.
Not an earthquake. Something subtler. As if reality itself had momentarily lost confidence in its own structure.
People fell to their knees.
Some screamed.
Some simply stared, eyes unfocused, minds brushing against something too large to process.
The boy realized then—too late—that he was no longer just in the world.
He was interacting with it.
With effort bordering on agony, he turned and fled.
He did not look back.
He did not need to.
The settlement would remember him.
Not as a traveler.
Not as a boy.
But as a wrongness that passed too close and left cracks behind.
Miles away, deep beneath stone and scripture, something old shifted its attention.
Not with urgency.
With interest.
A new variable had entered the system.
And it was learning faster than expected.