I opened my eyes to darkness — no light, no shadows, not even the faintest outline of a shape. Just a vast emptiness stretching infinitely outward in all directions.
It was not the benign blackness of a moonless night or the gentle obscurity behind closed eyelids; it was a void, an empty nothingness, wide and still. It was almost as if I were floating, but I couldn't feel my body. I reached out instinctively, but it was as if my hands were hitting empty air.
It's a weightless stillness that enveloped me like the absence of pressure when you're submerged in deep water. There was no cold nor warm air — no thick nor thin air, whatever it was that surrounded me. It simply existed. But in that blackened void, I did feel something. No, someone. Watching. Not in a hostile way, in an unsettling way, as if they'd been waiting for me, going through the eternal dark, feeling where I was.
"Matte."
My name echoed from the blackness, sharp and resounding. It wasn't sound so much as presence, a sensation as if the void itself had spoken. The voice was melismatic, tender in a way that felt personal but had an authority that was unavoidable. If I could feel my arms at all, the hairs on them would have stood up.
"Who's there?" I asked. My own voice seemed so flat, absorbed by that space.
"I've been waiting."
Her voice was silky, unhurried, and somehow familiar, like a half-remembered song or a murmur in a dream. It permeated me, filled the hollow, yet I still couldn't see her. I attempted to turn, to find the source, but the emptiness gave no orientation. Up and down, left and right — all meaningless. The voice enveloped me, held me, but it came from nowhere at all.
"Waiting for what?" I demanded. What is this complaint about again, I heard my voice this time firmer, driven by the tension that started from my chest.
There was a pause — just long enough to make me question if she would respond. Then she responded slowly, lovingly, like the Euphrates in deep flow.
"You'll understand soon. But first, you must return."
Return? But where? Before I had even finished the question, my chest locked up. I felt an intense, crushing tightness and gasped, gasping for air.
A force unseen, pulling breath from lungs, like the void itself had come to claim me. I was paralyzed, couldn't think. I saw despite my vision blurring and then, just as quickly, everything made way for darkness again.
There was blackness all around me, but it wasn't the weightless stasis of the void. No, this was something much more painful.
I attempted to scream, yet not a sound came. The weight on my chest was crushing, and I couldn't breathe. My body reacted nonverbally before my mind did. I struggled, pushing against whatever binds me. I was surrounded by the feel of dense sediment, tightly packed in and unmoving. Earth caked my mouth, suffocating me.
I was buried.
Panic flooded through me, and adrenaline pumped through my blood. With an abject power, I clawed at the ground, my fingertips ripping through the choking pounds of debris and earth. I pulled away inch by inch, my arms shaking. The pressure surrounding me felt like it had no limits, kind of like the air all around me was being squeezed inwards. And now my breath was coming in shorter and shorter bursts.
My chest screamed for air. I was about to lose my sight, but everything that remained was concentrated on one last push.
Then, I saw it — a faint glow.
The soft, cool moonlight sliced through the strata of dirt, a beacon in the choking blackness. It was still a long way off, but just its presence brought me a sliver of hope.
The light was above me, and I clawed at the darkness, clawed harder, clawed with every last ounce of strength I had.
At last, my hand broke the surface. The crisp night air was like a slap of life itself against my skin. I dragged myself up, struggling to breathe, pulling my body from the grave of suffocation.
When I finally broke the surface, I staggered, chest heaving, heart racing. When I raised my head, the panorama revealed itself.
A low moon cast this glow over a wide formless wasteland in every direction. Pine trees stood tall on the horizon, and their green feathery canopy was a stark contrast to the dry, cracked soil under my feet. Farther away, I saw water blurring faintly in the moonlight, patches of greenery beyond it that suggested life.
I was home.
Somehow, miraculously, there was Earth below me.
And then, with the barest sheen of a tear in my eye, I was trying to make sense of the hurricane in my head. I had been buried under the rubble of a world I hardly recognized before clawing my way back to life. But why? Why did I get this second chance? Why had my life been taken away from me in the first place?
My memories were still out of my reach, and I was still haunted by the woman from the void. Her voice was still there, repeating in the shadows, barely visible, like she was whispering the answers to me, answers I wasn't ready yet to hear.
I was kneeling there, knees pressed into the cracked earth, the cool night air brushing against my skin. Nothing but ruins lay out in front of me, and my desperate eyes saw no sign of civilization.
Just the desolate stretch, interrupted only by distant clumps of trees and the promise of water up ahead. I took a deep, shuddering breath, brushed the grit off my face, and stood shakily to my feet. If I was going to find any answers, I'd have to move — toward those trees, toward the faint possibility of shelter or life.
The wasteland told its tale of ruin with every step.
The buildings had twisted and crumbled around them as the unforgiving sands buried their proud facades. Shattered monuments, half-buried and worn by time, jutted out like headstones for a lost civilization. Rusted metal, shattered glass, and scattered debris gave way to a scene of destruction so expansive it left me nearly speechless.
Whatever had happened here had not only destroyed this world — it had remade it into a graveyard of memories.
I carried on, through the blazing light of day, the persistent heat draining my power. My mind whirred with questions, helplessly spinning. Had there been a war? A cataclysm?
There we found no answers, only the weighty silence of an ancient history. That silence pressed down on me, forcing me toward the only beacon of hope I could still see: the trees on the horizon.
The cool air that arrived as night fell was a comfort, but nothing more. I continued on, legs sore, mouth dry, fueled by a basic, animalistic need for water and rest. The trees came closer, their dark outlines cutting across the giving-in light. And then I heard it: a soft, gentle sound of flowing water. It sounded like music, slicing through the heavy silence of the wasteland. I hurried, my heart racing at the prospect of sating my mighty thirst.
At last, I came to the edge of the forest. The thick roof of green offered the prospect of shade and an escape from the stifling emptiness. The cool, moist air of the forest struck my face, a glad respite from the heat and the stuffiness. I staggered forward, one foot, another, pulled by the sound of that sacred stream.
But my body had hit the wall. My legs buckled, the world whirled, and I fell into darkness before I made it to the water.
As I slipped away into unconsciousness, the questions came back, more frantic than before. Why was I brought back? Why now, when the world appeared broken beyond recognition?
The answers seemed nearer, just out of reach of memory. And so now lying in an embrace of the forest, my journey truly began: a journey to discover why I was back on Earth and what purpose there was for me in this fractured, oncoming strange new world.