The world fractured around Nightborne like shattered glass, each piece reflecting a different version of reality. One moment he'd been wandering the streets on his sixteenth birthday, the next—ripped from existence itself and hurled through the void between worlds.
His atoms screamed. At least, that's what it felt like—as if every molecule in his body had been disassembled, scattered across dimensions, then hastily reconstructed by hands that didn't quite remember how humans were supposed to fit together.
Now he stumbled through unfamiliar streets, desperately trying to steady himself as the ground undulated beneath his feet. His vision swam, colors bleeding into one another like watercolors in the rain. The disorienting effects of his first warp left him nauseated and disoriented, his body rebelling against the fundamental wrongness of interdimensional travel.
"Keep it together," he whispered through gritted teeth, one hand braced against a nearby wall as pedestrians gave him a wide berth. They knew what he was—a freshly warped newcomer, still wearing the telltale pallor of transition sickness. Some looked on with pity, others with the wary gaze reserved for those who might not survive long enough to become a problem.
The Warp Support Agency. He needed to find it. Every city had one—a mandatory first stop for new arrivals. Straightening himself with effort, Nightborne focused on putting one foot in front of the other, each step a small victory against the universe's attempt to unmake him.
It took nearly an hour to cover what should have been a fifteen-minute walk. His legs felt disconnected from his body, responding to his commands with sluggish reluctance. By the time the WSA building came into view, sweat drenched his shirt despite the cool air.
The structure stood out like a sore thumb among the surrounding architecture—a bizarre attempt at cheerfulness amid desperation. Bright blue and yellow paint covered its facade in a garish display of forced optimism, as if cheerful colors could somehow mask the grim reality of what happened inside.
*Welcome to your potential death sentence. We painted it yellow to lift your spirits!*
Nightborne pushed through the glass doors into a reception area that reminded him of a cross between a hospital waiting room and a police station. The familiar scent of antiseptic and despair filled his nostrils. Several other warp-sick individuals huddled in chairs, while staff in crisp uniforms moved between them with clipboards and vacant smiles.
He had barely taken three steps when a figure approached from his peripheral vision. Nightborne's shoulders tensed as recognition dawned.
"Why did it have to be him..." he muttered under his breath, forcing his expression into something resembling neutrality.
The man shuffling toward him was ancient—skin like crumpled parchment, back curved into a permanent question mark, wispy white hair clinging desperately to a spotted scalp. His WSA uniform hung from his skeletal frame like clothes on a scarecrow. Nightborne had seen him during his mandatory pre-warp orientation, where the old man had dozed off mid-presentation.
"New arrival?" the elderly worker wheezed, peering at Nightborne through rheumy eyes that seemed unable to focus properly. "Follow me."
Without waiting for a response, he turned and shambled down a sterile hallway, moving with the determined slowness of the very old. Nightborne suppressed a sigh and followed, wondering if the WSA assigned their worst employee to him deliberately or if his luck was just that bad.
The office they entered was cluttered with decades of bureaucratic detritus—stacks of yellowing papers, outdated equipment, and a collection of dead plants that suggested their caretaker had forgotten the fundamental needs of living things. The nameplate on the desk read "Walter Simms" in faded lettering.
Walter lowered himself into a creaking chair and gestured for Nightborne to sit opposite him. Then, in a voice as dry as autumn leaves, he began reciting what was clearly a rehearsed speech he had delivered thousands of times.
"Welcome to your designated warp world," he droned, eyes half-lidded with boredom. "I am required by WSA regulations to inform you of basic survival protocols."
What followed was a litany of obvious precautions delivered in a tone that practically screamed *I don't give a fuck*. Don't eat strange creatures. Don't touch glowing plants. Don't insult people who can shoot fireballs out of their hands. Don't drink unidentified liquids.
Nightborne fought the urge to interrupt. These were the same warnings given during orientation, the same warnings printed in the pamphlets forced into his hands, the same warnings plastered on posters throughout the building. Anyone with basic survival instincts knew them by heart.
But then, something changed. Walter's rheumy eyes suddenly sharpened, fixing on Nightborne with unexpected intensity. His voice dropped, the bureaucratic drone replaced by something urgent and genuine.
"Most importantly... don't die."
The words hung in the air between them, stark and unadorned. No follow-up. No explanation. Just those three words, delivered with a gravity that made the hair on Nightborne's arms stand on end.
And then, as quickly as it had appeared, the moment of clarity vanished. Walter's face resumed its vacant expression, and with a raspy chuckle that sounded like sandpaper on stone, he rose from his chair.
"Your return point is Room 113. This way."
Nightborne followed him down another corridor, mind racing. That brief change in Walter's demeanor had been unsettling—like watching a glitch in reality, a momentary crack in the facade.
Room 113 was as uninspiring as everything else in the facility. A simple bed with thin sheets. A nightstand supporting a dusty lamp. A plastic bottle of lukewarm water. And a handwritten note propped against the lamp base: *"Good luck. You'll need it."*
"Probably written by that senile old freak," Nightborne muttered after Walter had shuffled away, closing the door behind him.
He settled onto the edge of the bed, suddenly overwhelmed by the reality of his situation. He was about to leave this world—possibly forever. The statistics weren't encouraging; most first-time warpers didn't return. They died in alien landscapes, forgotten by all but a few government statisticians who marked their files with red stamps.
The familiar sensation began again—a heaviness spreading through his limbs, his head becoming too massive for his neck to support, eyelids drooping as if weighted with lead. The room around him began to blur, colors smearing together like wet paint.
He was warping. The true journey was beginning.
Nightborne surrendered to the pull, allowing the darkness to claim him.
---
Consciousness returned slowly, like swimming up from the depths of a black ocean.
When Nightborne finally opened his eyes, he found himself engulfed in darkness so profound it seemed solid. For one terrifying moment, he wondered if he'd gone blind—if the warp had taken his sight as payment for passage. Then he noticed a faint glow in the distance, illuminating what appeared to be the end of a narrow hallway.
He remained motionless, allowing his other senses to gather information. The air was cold and damp against his skin, carrying a musty scent of earth and stone. Beneath him, he felt rough, uneven flooring—not concrete or tile, but some kind of natural stone. The silence was absolute, broken only by the soft sound of his own breathing.
Instinct screamed that nothing good waited behind that glowing door at the hallway's end. Everything about it felt wrong—a trap designed to lure the desperate and unwary. Instead of rising to investigate, Nightborne slumped deeper into the corner where he'd materialized, his body still trying to recover from the trauma of interdimensional travel.
The sensation of warping had been worse than anything he could have imagined—like being strapped to a rocket and launched into hell, his consciousness stretched thin across realities before being violently snapped back into his physical form. His head throbbed with each heartbeat, stomach churning with nausea.
"Holy fuck, my head hurts," he muttered, pressing his palms against his temples as if he could physically hold his skull together. "I hope I don't pass out. But I don't have time to be laying around like this. I need to find water, or I'm dead."
The old man's words echoed in his mind: *Most importantly... don't die.*
Simple advice. Impossible to follow for most warpers.
That glowing door at the end of the hallway continued to beckon, but approaching it now, while barely able to stand, seemed like suicide. Better to wait, to let his vision clear and his strength return. He stayed low, focusing on steady breaths as his eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness.
Life had trained him well for seeing in the shadows. Years of navigating poorly lit apartment buildings with burned-out bulbs, moving through the city's forgotten corners after sunset—darkness had been his constant companion long before this warp.
Slowly, details emerged from the gloom. The space around him wasn't empty as he'd first thought. Along the ground were multiple trapdoors, their metal handles barely visible in the faint light bleeding from the distant doorway.
"Why did I have to be warped into a fucking horror movie basement?" he whispered to himself, a humorless smile twisting his lips. "Most people get sent to towns or forests. I get the dungeon from a serial killer's wet dream. Lovely stuff, isn't it?"
Frustration and fear churned inside him, building until it burst forth in a sudden shout that echoed through the darkness:
"HEY, fate—you're a fucking bitch, you know that?!"
His voice bounced back at him, mocking in its repetition. No answer came. Just the hollow silence of a world indifferent to his suffering.
After a few deep breaths to steady himself, Nightborne rose shakily to his feet. The mysterious glowing door still felt wrong, but the alternative was to remain trapped in this stone prison. At least the trapdoors offered the possibility of another way out.
He approached the nearest one, testing the handle—locked tight. The second yielded the same result. But when he reached the third, the handle turned with a satisfying click.
The trapdoor swung open, revealing a rusted ladder descending into even deeper darkness. For a moment, he hesitated. Going down seemed counterintuitive when escape usually meant going up. But something about that glowing doorway at the hall's end continued to repel him, an instinctive warning he couldn't ignore.
Decision made, Nightborne lowered himself onto the ladder. The metal rungs were cold and slick with moisture, forcing him to descend with agonizing slowness, testing each step before committing his weight. The darkness below seemed to swallow him whole, until the open trapdoor above was nothing more than a dim square barely visible when he looked up.
At the ladder's end, his feet found solid ground once more. Hands outstretched, he felt his way along a rough wall until his fingers encountered the outline of a door. Unlike the trapdoors above, this one wasn't locked. A moment of hesitation, then he pushed it open.
Light spilled into the passage—cold, bluish light that didn't feel natural. It cast long shadows across the stone floor, revealing the texture of the walls around him: not worked stone as he'd assumed, but natural rock, as if the passage had been carved through a mountain.
Nightborne stepped through the doorway and found himself at the edge of an island, standing on a narrow outcropping of black rock. The sight that greeted him stole the breath from his lungs.
The sky above was a swirling canvas of dark purple and ash gray clouds, lit from within by strange constellations that formed patterns he didn't recognize. The air carried the tang of salt and ozone, crisp and electric against his skin. Before him stretched a vast, black ocean—its surface like liquid obsidian, rippling with unnatural slowness, as if time itself was hesitating.
The island was small and desolate. Jagged rocks jutted from barren soil like the teeth of some primordial beast. A few twisted, dead trees stood in silent vigil, their bare branches clawing at the alien sky. No birds called. No insects buzzed. The silence was profound, broken only by the gentle lapping of those too-still waves against the shore.
Nightborne stood transfixed in the doorway, staring into the abyss that stretched before him in all directions. This wasn't a world. It was a nightmare given form, a place where the normal rules of existence seemed tenuous at best.
"...What the hell kind of world is this?" he whispered, the words immediately snatched away by a wind that howled across the barren landscape.
That wind carried something else—a whisper so faint he couldn't be sure he'd heard it at all. Words in a language he couldn't understand, spoken by a voice that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
Nightborne shivered, not entirely from the cold. Whatever this place was, whatever rules governed it, he would have to learn them quickly.
Or die trying.