Seris Velan found himself drifting in an endless expanse. The only solid ground beneath him was a stretch of black, velvety earth, while every other direction was engulfed in a surreal, shimmering haze of silver and white. Confusion washed over him as he attempted to make sense of his surroundings.
"Am I dead?" he wondered aloud. "Where... where is this place? Is this what the afterlife looks like?"
He reached out instinctively, trying to pinch his own arm, but his hand passed through his body like smoke. Startled, he tried again, this time with his chest, his head—each time with the same result. His fingers slipped through his form as if it were made of mist, and when he pulled back, his body seemed to solidify once more.
"It seems I really did die," Seris muttered, his voice trembling with a strange blend of discomfort and acceptance. "Not torn apart by some cosmic predator, but undone by my own folly."
For years, he had struggled, scraping by in the unforgiving world he once called home, his days consumed with the never-ending hunt for sustenance. Twelve long years of existence, and yet, he'd never truly lived. His whole life had been about survival, nothing more.
Every day had been an exhausting battle to secure a meager portion of food, only to face the same struggle again the next day. The endless cycle left him hollow.
"Even if I had lived for another few decades, what would it have mattered?" Seris thought bitterly. "If I could do it over again... if I had the chance, I'd explore the astral planes, seek out new worlds, experience what life truly has to offer." He chuckled darkly at his own wishful thinking. There was no 'if.' There was no second chance.
A fleeting thought crossed his mind. "But my brother… what will happen to him now?" The weight of responsibility briefly pressed on his chest before he shrugged it off.
"What's done is done. I can't change the course of fate now. Let life and death run their course."
His gaze drifted back to his surroundings. "So, this is the afterlife?" he mused aloud, scanning the barren, ethereal landscape.
"No spectral gates, no great halls of judgment—just me, alone in this strange limbo. I guess the legends were wrong."
Seris began to experiment with his newfound state. To his surprise, he found that with a mere thought, he could move through the air at will, gliding effortlessly or teleporting short distances in an instant. After a while, he let himself float back down, landing gently on the black soil beneath him.
The ground felt odd beneath his feet—firm yet somehow not entirely real. "It's fertile," he noticed, crouching down to inspect the earth.
"Rich, even... though there's hardly enough of it. Just one acre, maybe a little more." He sighed.
"Perfect for growing crops, if I still needed food. But I'm dead now. There are no seeds, no harvests waiting for me. Everything has an end, and so does this."
Seris lingered in the quiet, the silence of the astral void stretching out before him. Though the weight of his mortal struggles had lifted, the emptiness of this new reality brought its own kind of burden. "Is this it?" he wondered, his thoughts drifting once more.
"Or is there something more waiting beyond the edge of this place?"
Seris Velan lingered in the void for what felt like an eternity. Time was meaningless in this strange space. It could have been a day, maybe three or five, or perhaps much longer. The initial curiosity and wonder had long since faded, replaced by a deep, gnawing boredom.
There was nothing here but the black soil beneath his feet. No other life, no sound to break the silence. The surrounding mist, thick and impenetrable, walled him in like a prison with no exit. No matter how hard he tried, there was no pushing through it.
The isolation was maddening, worse than anything he'd experienced before. Even in the bleakest prisons, at least there were others around—other voices, faces, even if all they offered was cruelty. This place, this void, was devoid of even that. He didn't know how much longer he could endure it.
"Is anyone there?" Seris called out into the vast silence, his voice swallowed by the mist.
"Anyone at all? Just to talk, even for a moment?"
He chuckled bitterly, and then, out of sheer desperation, began telling himself stories to pass the time.
"There was once a wealthy man," he began, his voice echoing hollowly, "who bought a magnificent horse. It could run eight hundred miles in a day. The man was proud of it, but soon realized the horse ate fifty pounds of fodder daily. Not exactly a bargain, right? So, the man thought he'd save some money.
The next day, he cut the horse's food down to forty-eight pounds, then forty-six the day after, and so on. A month later, the horse died. The man sighed and said, 'What terrible luck! It had just learned to live without eating, and now it's dead.'"
He laughed at the absurdity of his own joke. "Hahaha! How about another one? Once there was a monkey..." Seris rambled on, telling stories, singing aloud, anything to break the overwhelming silence.
But eventually, the stories and laughter stopped. The weight of the emptiness pressed on him again, suffocating his spirit.
"I want to get out!" he shouted, the desperation thick in his voice.
"Let me out! Let me out!"
Suddenly, the air around him rippled. His vision blurred, and in an instant, he felt himself pulled out of the void.
When his eyes opened again, Seris was back in the forest, lying on the very ground where he had fought the wild wolves. Not far away, the wolf's body lay still, blood pooling beneath it—fresh, not yet fully congealed. It was as if no time had passed at all.
"What... what just happened?" he murmured, blinking in confusion.
"Was it all just a dream?"
Yet, the vividness of the experience still clung to him. It didn't feel like a dream at all. The strange void, the silence, the suffocating mist—it had been real.
His thoughts drifted back to the strange space, and in an instant, he was back inside it.
"Let me out!" he shouted again, and just as quickly, he was back in the forest.
"In… and out…" he muttered to himself. With a thought, he willed himself back into the mysterious realm, then pulled himself out again. He repeated the process several times.
"Go in!" he commanded, and he was there.
"Come out!" and the forest returned.
A slow smile spread across his face. Whatever this space was, it was his to control. And it changed everything.
Staring at the black soil beneath him, Seris Velan no longer felt the fear or confusion he once did. Now that he knew he could freely move in and out of this mysterious space with a mere thought, his heart soared.
He couldn't contain his excitement. Dancing through the air, Seris flipped and somersaulted, laughing as he did. He even bowed to all the deities he had ever heard of, offering thanks for this strange gift.
Earlier, he had tested something crucial—he could bring things into this space from the outside, and take them back out as well. Now, his backpack, hunting knife, hoe, and the massive kamote Root he had gathered lay neatly on the dark soil in front of him.
"Haha! I finally have my own piece of land!" Seris exclaimed, his joy overflowing. "I can grow crops—sweet potatoes, wheat. If only I had water, I could even try rice!"
As someone born into a long line of farmers, Seris felt a deep connection to the soil. The idea of cultivating his own land, even in this strange space, thrilled him. For the first time in a long while, he felt like he had something to look forward to.
"It's getting late, though. I should head back before more wild wolves show up," he reminded himself. He quickly bandaged his wounds, tossed the wolf carcass into the space, and grabbed a sturdier stick, sharpening one end for protection.
As he made his way home, he didn't encounter any more dangers, though the pain from his wounds still nagged at him. When he was close to the village, he ducked back into the space to retrieve the wolf and slipped it into his backpack before stepping back out.
"Hey! Seris! What happened? Why are you covered in blood?" a voice called out.
It was Daerith, a man from the village, returning from the fields with a hoe slung over his shoulder. The sight of Seris, bloodied but alive, startled him.
"Did you come across a wild beast? It's a miracle you made it back alive! The ancestors must have been watching over you," Daerith said with wide eyes.
"When you get home, be sure to burn some incense and thank them properly."
As Daerith shouted, people from the village began to gather around. It wasn't until they got closer that they noticed the wolf's head sticking out of Seris' pack. A collective gasp rippled through the crowd. Even the strongest hunters hesitated to take on a wolf, and here was Seris—just a boy—who had faced one alone.
Some of the women grabbed their sons by the ear, scolding them. "Look at Seris!" one woman exclaimed. "Just twelve years old, and he's fighting wolves in the forest, catching fish in the river, and taking care of his brother! Meanwhile, all you do is eat! I asked you to gather some wild vegetables, and you ended up playing in the stream. Yesterday, I told you to get firewood, and you came back with torn clothes after robbing bird nests. Useless!"
The villagers whispered among themselves in amazement. Usually, hunting in the mountains required a group of seasoned men, and even then, they would avoid wild wolves. To see a boy like Seris return with one was unheard of.
Seeing the exhaustion on Seris' face and the fresh wounds on his body, Daerith didn't say much more. Instead, he grabbed the backpack, now heavier with the weight of the wolf, and helped carry it home.
As they walked, the murmurs of awe and admiration from the crowd followed Seris, but his mind was already somewhere else—back in that strange space, where a new world of possibilities awaited him.
After two days of rest and the use of medicinal herbs, Seris Velan's wounds from the wolf attack were beginning to heal. The deep claw marks were closing up nicely, but the bite on his left arm, where a chunk of flesh had been torn away, would take at least another ten days to fully recover.
During these two days, Seris had entered the mysterious space several times, transplanting the Astragalus plants he had found. Though they were only three to five years old in medicinal age, he carefully placed them in a corner of the black soil, hoping they would thrive.
Through trial and error, Seris discovered a limitation—living creatures, other than plants, couldn't be brought into the space. Even a simple toad he had tried to transport vanished upon entry.
More importantly, he noticed something remarkable about the time within the space. After conducting a test using two identical incense sticks, lighting one inside and one outside at the same time, he realized the one inside burned much faster.
When it had fully burned out, the one outside had barely consumed a small portion. Time inside the space flowed at twenty to thirty times the speed of the outside world.
"I need to get seeds as soon as possible," Seris muttered to himself. "Every day in here is like nearly a month outside. It's too wasteful not to use this to my advantage."
Despite the dangers he had faced in the mountains, his efforts had paid off. Over a dozen Astragalus plants, several pounds of Kudzu Root, and a wolf carcass—his haul was impressive. He decided that he would sell these in town and use the money to buy seeds for his newfound land.
However, Seris chose not to tell his little brother about the space. It wasn't a matter of trust, but the strangeness of it all. It was too bizarre, too risky to share with anyone. He knew that if the secret got out, someone would surely come after him, seeking to discover the source of his power—possibly by cutting open his head in search of some mysterious artifact.
Whether or not they would find anything didn't matter. Seris knew all too well that in their world, no one would think twice about the death of a poor, powerless boy with no connections.
It wasn't that he doubted his brother's loyalty. Seris understood that the best way to keep a secret was to let it die with you. No matter how much he loved or trusted someone, it was a risk he couldn't take. If his brother knew, then what if one day his future wife found out? And what about her family, or her siblings? Everyone has someone they trust. Eventually, the secret would spread until it was no secret at all.
No, Seris thought, as he kept his plans to himself. Better to carry this alone than risk everything.