Salem hit the ground hard, the impact jarring every bone in his body. For a moment, there was only darkness—thick, suffocating, endless. He pushed himself up slowly, palms scraping against something that felt more like rough paper than stone.
The air here didn’t move. It clung to his skin, dry and stale, smelling faintly of burnt ink.
Where… am I?
A single light blinked above him, far too bright for the void. It wasn’t a sun or a lamp—more like the cursor of an old computer screen, pulsing slowly, waiting for input.
“Another draft,” Salem muttered, voice hoarse. “Always another draft.”
He looked around, and for the first time noticed the edges of his surroundings weren’t solid. They bled into nothingness, corners unraveling into drifting strings of letters and half-formed sentences th
