Arrangements were made to transport us to a so-called safe research facility.
Military convoys, armored and silent, cut through the pallid landscape.
We were sealed in armored vehicles—monoliths of cold steel humming with the quiet promise of protection… and failure.
Inside, each of us wore aprons reinforced with lead-polymer shielding. Designed to block even whispers of radiation.
Ah, radiation.
A beast of physics.
A sculptor of horror.
It dances like a lunatic god—unseen, untouchable—yet it rewrites reality's DNA with each caress.
In its embrace, fish grow hands, trees bleed light, and logic folds into origami forms that dream only of monsters.
Kafka would have smiled at the absurdity.
That from the sterile corpse of science, a new mythology of monsters is born.
Five minutes out. Maybe less. The chatter had died.
At first, the silence was tense—an electric tension that made my shoulders ache.
Now, it was submission.
Fear didn't scream here—it listened.
Every face bore a stamp. Some subtle. Some carved deep across brows and jawlines.
Marks of men and women who'd kissed genius… and flirted with death. I watched them breathe: small, careful pulls of air, each one bracing for something unspoken.
I glanced down—not because the flat metal floor was reassuring.
But because it was the only thing that didn't terrify me.
Our journey had been oddly smooth. Too smooth.
Humans… we pray for safety.
But when things go too well, we start fearing the silence between disasters—like a gambler on a streak, sweating not from joy but from the silent awareness that the house is watching.
Sleep overtook me like a whisper. It came faster than I expected.
A blink—and I wasn't in the vehicle anymore.
The world had changed.
I stood in land where logic refused to walk. The air buzzed with paradox—an electric hum you could feel pressing at the back of your skull.
A vast plain of collapsing space—where shapes weren't shapes, horizons looped like snakes biting their own tails.
Every breath was a question.
Every footstep echoed in infinite regress.
It was as if "everything" and "nothing" merged in eternal embrace, birthing madness.
I had come here before.
And yet comprehension slipped through my fingers like wet sand.
Then I saw it—a throne. A monument hewn of absurdity: impossible angles and gravity folding back upon itself.
He sat upon it.
No face. No body.
Only presence.
An ancient gravity that bent even thought.
I stepped forward and bowed low. His presence sucked the air out of the world.
"Greetings to the Great Existence," I said, voice steady. I'd learned to ration emotion: show only what was required.
But inside—my heart stuttered.
A faint drumbeat in a silent cathedral.
His reply came like rusted chains grinding on stone.
"As I brought you here, I have chosen to bestow protection upon you. No mutant life shall harm you. This favor is mine—not yours to repay. This protection applies to you alone."
A thin veil of relief settled on me. The first time, I'd arrived raw—shaking, panic blazing behind my eyes.
Now? I could speak. Carefully. Strategically.
I didn't raise my head. That would be a mistake I would never repeat.
Still, a sliver of wit escaped my lips.
"Then it seems, once again, I am indebted to the unknown. Shall I repay you in results… or obedience?"
I paused. Because the stakes of that question were more than words.
He replied—slowly, with prehistoric weight:
"You need do nothing. The path has already begun."
His voice folded over itself, carrying power:
"You will arrive in a human-built temple. In the Temple of One Hundred Veils, beneath beds where fear sleeps and towers where arrogance rests, truth waits buried in rusted iron. Unearth what men hid from gods. Beneath one of the beds—or great structures inside a room—a treasure chest is buried. This week, your task is simple: find it."
Just one breath.
Just five words:
"A treasure? It begins already."
A flicker behind my eyes, not fear—calculation trying to outrun implication.
The word "chest" sounded simple.
But when uttered by a being who has never spoken plainly,
simplicity becomes the seed of ruin.
This was no longer a research mission.
This was my stage.
A stage built by forces beyond comprehension, littered with riddles—and wrought with consequences.
I nodded—but only once. Smooth. Silent.
But I wasn't done.
I stepped forward, lingering at the edge of presence and power.
The question rising in me—ancient as ambition.
"If fate decides everything…
then where does ambition go to die?"
The question hovered.
A single candle in infinite darkness.
The pause stretched.
Then, his words came—cold as truth carved into stone:
"It dies in the hearts of those who dream without suffering.
It rots in the minds that survive but do not shatter.
It withers in men who live long… but never become otherworldly."
The words carved themselves into my bones.
Roots of resolve and dread intertwined, deep inside my marrow.
For a moment, time stood still—
not in awe,
but in recognition.
The answer didn't echo.
It landed—like a nail into the coffin of mediocrity.
It dies in the hearts of those who dream without suffering…
Suddenly, I saw it:
the unspoken tax of ambition.
Not paid in gold.
Not in genius.
But in the quiet willingness to be ruined and rebuilt.
The ones who rise—truly rise—
do not resist the fire.
They offer themselves to it.
That was the law. The unwritten scripture.
To reach beyond human, you must betray your comfort.
To touch the divine, you must lose your shape.
I wasn't afraid.
But I understood, in that moment,
that this path would not merely challenge me.
It would erase who I was, and carve something else in my place.
Not a man.
Not a monster.
A necessity.
The throne trembled behind him—almost imperceptibly, as if it breathed with satisfaction.
Then—
I was torn from that realm.
No ceremony. No applause.
Just cosmic indifference.
Like a beggar thrown from a palace.
But just before the transition—
A final whisper echoed across the void, across dimensions:
"Be careful. There is a traitor."