They didn’t land. They lurched their bodies snapping from weight to weightlessness, from motion to stillness like the universe forgot to decide what gravity meant. Jenna’s knees buckled, she caught herself on cold stone.Denilson staggered into a wall, clutching Lio tight enough to bruise. The archway sealed behind them with a soft, chilling click. Silence dropped like a curtain, Not peace, not safety, A silence that listened.A long corridor stretched ahead narrow, dim, endless. Its walls were formed from countless smooth stone slabs, arranged with flawless precision, each engraved with faint lines of text she couldn’t make out. The ceiling hung impossibly high, shrouded in shadow.The air was cool and still like the moment before someone whispers your name. Lio shivered in Denilson’s arms. “Where are we?”Jenna rose slowly, brushing dust from her palms. “I don’t know.”The First Memory stumbled through behind them, gasping, veil half burned away. Cracks glowed blue white across her

The three paths yawned open like choices given weight and teeth, Left a corridor dipped in shadow, its floor cracked, symbols flickering like dying embers. A cold wind seeped from it, carrying whispers Jenna couldn’t decipher.Right a path lined with harsh white light, sharp enough to sting. Its slabs were smooth, spotless, almost sterile like a world that demanded perfection and punished anything less. Forward the dimmest of the three. Not dark, not bright.Just a steady, quiet glow, soft as breath caught between hope and terror. Denilson exhaled slowly. “That doesn’t look promising.”The First Memory pressed a hand to her chest, cracks spreading like lightning through her form. She was barely holding together threads of her essence leaking out like smoke. “None of the paths here promise anything,”she whispered. “They simply lead somewhere. Which is more mercy than most realms offer.”Jenna held Lio close, her pulse thrumming hard against the child’s small frame. Lio’s heartbeat flu

The figure continued to solidify in the archway slowly, delicately, like a sculpture remembering it had once been flesh. Light dripped from its form in strands that resembled fabric more than energy.Its outline stayed soft, its features only half carved, as if the world hadn’t finished deciding who or what it was supposed to be. Jenna took an involuntary step back.Denilson stepped forward, shielding her and Lio with his body, “Stop right there,” he warned, voice low, ready to swing even if the enemy was made of air and possibility.The figure paused, then dipped its head in an unmistakable gesture of respect. “My apologies,” it said, voice resonant, layered, as if several tones were trying to align into one. “I did not intend fear.”Lio squeezed Jenna’s hand. “They’re not dangerous.”Denilson shot them a look. “You don’t know that yet.”Lio shook their head. “I can feel it. They’re soft.”Soft, A strange word to describe a being that looked like a half dreamed deity, but Jenna felt

The shadow at the horizon didn’t simply move it unfolded, as if the darkness itself were peeling away to reveal something beneath, something ancient, something that had waited far too long to be seen.A shape pushed forward, not a beast, not a person, not anything the world had a name for. It was made of absence. A silhouette carved from everything the newborn world had not yet become a yawning hollow stitched together by jagged threads of light.Jenna felt Denilson’s arm instinctively lock around her and Lio, pulling them behind him. The being guiding them faltered, dimming further.“It is early,” it whispered. “This creature should not awaken until your world is older. Until its form is fixed. It should not exist now.”Denilson’s jaw clenched. “So why does it?”The being’s reply was barely a flicker in the air. “Because it was already awake inside one of you.”Jenna’s stomach turned. Her pulse roared in her ears. “That thing came from us?”“Not from you,” the being corrected softly.

The sky cracked, Not like glass Like bone. A thin, gleaming fracture split the pale blue above them quiet, precise, wrong in a way that made the newborn world shudder beneath their feet. The being already dim and trembling lifted its fading face toward the rift with something close to terror.Jenna stepped closer, shielding Lio behind her. “Future?” she echoed. “How can something from the future be here? We haven’t even lived it yet.”The being shook its head weakly. “Time in this world is not linear. It is shaped by intent. By fear. By longing. By what you carry forward.”A pause, its light flickering like a dying pulse. “Your world began unformed but it does not stay young when your thoughts race ahead of it.”Denilson’s eyes narrowed. “So you’re saying something from the future exists because we thought of it?”“No,” the being whispered. “Something from your future exists because it has already been written.”Jenna felt the ground drop inside her. Her pulse quickened, breaths shal