Chapter 2 A World of Eternal Twilight

For three days, Arthur did nothing but stare at it. He’d bring a folding chair, his lunch, and simply sit, watching the colors in the portal churn and swirl. The fear was a constant companion, a cold knot in his stomach, but it was slowly being eclipsed by a burning, all-consuming curiosity. He was a man who dealt in the tangible, the cataloged, the known. This was the antithesis of everything he knew. It was the unknown, made manifest.

Finally, on the fourth day, armed not with a weapon but with a notebook, a pencil, and a ball of twine he planned to use as a tether, he decided to step through. He tied one end of the twine to a sturdy shelving unit and the other around his waist. It was a flimsy, pathetic anchor against the infinite, but it was all he had.

He took a deep breath, the air around the mirror tasting of ozone and ancient dust, and stepped into the swirling canvas. There was no sensation of transition, no falling or flying. One moment he was in the dusty silence of his warehouse, the next he was standing on a hilltop under a sky of deep violet.

The air was crisp and clean, tasting of wet stone and pine. He looked up. There was no sun. Instead, the entire sky was a soft, diffused glow, as if the light came from everywhere and nowhere at once. It was an eternal, gentle twilight. He turned and felt a tug at his waist. The twine stretched back, vanishing into a shimmering, vertical slit in the air, through which he could see the blurred shape of his mannequins and stacked boxes. It worked. He was tethered.

He took a tentative step forward. The hill was covered in a soft, spongy moss that glowed with a faint bioluminescence. In the distance, he saw a forest of trees with silver bark and leaves of deep copper, which rustled with a sound like distant chimes. He pulled out his notebook, his hand trembling with a mixture of fear and exhilaration. He began to sketch: the violet sky, the silver trees, the glowing moss. He wrote: No sun. Ambient light. Flora: bioluminescent moss, copper-leafed trees. Atmosphere: breathable.

He walked for what felt like an hour, the twine playing out behind him. He saw creatures: small, six-legged things that scurried through the undergrowth, their hides a shifting pattern of colours, and a flock of bird-like animals with translucent wings that soared silently overhead. He felt a profound sense of peace here, a quiet that was not empty, but full. It was a world in a state of perpetual, beautiful dusk.

Suddenly, a sound broke the silence. A low, resonant hum, like a giant cello note, vibrated through the ground and up into his bones. It came from the direction of the forest. It was too large, too powerful a sound for such a tranquil place. A primal fear, deeper than the one he felt in the warehouse, seized him. This was not his world. He was an intruder.

He turned and ran back towards the shimmering slit, his lungs burning. He didn’t stop until he tumbled through the portal and landed hard on the cold concrete of his warehouse, the twine snapping behind him. He lay there, gasping, the taste of that alien world still on his tongue and the image of the copper-leafed forest seared into his mind. He had found a world of peace, but something else lived there too, and it had sung him a warning.