Erah floated.

Not upward.
Not downward.
Just unbound.

The world below him was a broken mosaic—shattered patches of land drifting apart like islands of memory. Each piece spun slowly in midair, connected by thin threads of light. The sky had become an ocean with no surface, only endless ripples of black and silver.

And at the center of it all:
A hole.
A perfect sphere of nothing. Not darkness. Not emptiness.

Absence.

It pulled on everything—not just matter, but sound, color, meaning.
Even gravity obeyed it.
Even language lost shape near it.

Erah could not name it.
But his bones did.
They ached with recognition.

The Gravity Well.

He reached out—slowly, weightlessly.

Around him, pieces of the world floated:
– A shattered doorframe
– A child’s shoe
– A cracked hourglass still bleeding sand upward

Each object pulsed with faint memory. He brushed his fingers across the hourglass, and a vision struck him like lightning:

A woman in a red cloak, standing at a frozen waterfall, whispering:
“Don’t let it choose you.”

Then silence again.

The Gravity Well pulsed. Its rhythm matched his heartbeat. No… it led it.
Each thump was a command.
Each silence, a permission.

Erah felt a pressure inside his chest—not pain, not fear, but something older.
Something inherited.

“I was born for this,” he whispered.

The moment he said it, the Well heard him.

It turned.

Not physically—conceptually. Like an idea shifting direction.

And suddenly, everything that was Erah began to fall inward.

Not his body.
His