Boundead

Endless silence reverberated through the atmosphere as Nur walked aimlessly in the infinitely expanding white void. The sound of his footsteps, echoing throughout the emptiness, began to gnaw at his nerves, each step amplifying the suffocating loneliness around him.

He had been walking for an unknown amount of time, his steps filled with determination to find Taliah. She was caught in this situation because of him. He knew it. He had no time to think about anything else. Rather than sitting around, he wandered aimlessly, leaving everything to the thread of fate that connected them.

He had been walking for hours, maybe even a day. All that walking had started to exhaust him, but he held on for this long.

Panting, his body drenched in sweat, he muttered, "Man, how long has it been? This sudden exhaustion is insane. I've been walking without any break, and this space is eating up my sense of self. Or maybe it's just making me go insane by making me so aware of myself."

"I need water," he added, panting. His throat had dried up, and his heart was beating faster, making his whole body heat up.

"It feels like I'm in a desert," he said, trying to wipe off the sweat with his elbows.

"…"

He opened his eyes to a bright desert.

"Heh?" he muttered, confused. His panting slowly subsided. He stared at the distant mountain of sand. Above it, the sky was a dull white, the usual blue obscured by thick clouds. The sun had its space to shine, but it felt like it was directly above him. Its light and heat weighed down on his face. It was annoying, but the change of scenery made him feel a bit better.

His intuition began to act up. "Is this an illusion?" he wondered. He wasn't unfamiliar with illusions or magical things, but he didn't want to put all his trust in that. "No, maybe I'm just dreaming. A bad dream…" He let out a long sigh.

He walked down the sand dune he had been on to climb the one he had seen earlier. "Maybe I'll find something beyond. Gradually climbing down the mountain of sand, He was sure that, because of thirst and heat, he will see some kind of mirage, like in the old tales about deserts."

In the vast expanse, he was like a grain of sand. Slowly, he climbed in hope of reaching the tallest mountain of sand he had seen earlier. With each step, hope began to grow.

When he reached the top, he was struck in awe at how large the desert was. All the hope he had built up felt like a building of sand collapsing.

In front of him stretched endless sand, with even greater mountains ahead. But he wasn't sure it would get any better. His limit had been reached; he couldn't walk anymore after climbing this mountain. He knew he wouldn't survive in the middle of this crazy desert. He wouldn't last much longer.

Suddenly, a dark idea struck his mind.

His face, once emotionless, cracked into a smile. His tired eyes glimmered with realization. "Haha, what am I thinking?"

"If this is either an illusion or a dream, the only way to get out would be if someone wakes me up from the outside, but that's not possible right now. Or I could inflict pain. For a dream, it's quite vivid, and I can clearly feel the exhaustion and tiredness, so I'm crossing that idea out. It can't be a dream."

His last option was to inflict pain to wake himself up. If it was an illusion, as he thought, that would surely wake him. If not, he'd slowly die here without any help. Miserably.

Without any second thought, he searched around and inside his pockets for something.

While searching, inside his trench coat, he felt something. Taking it out, he found a pen. It looked familiar, but he was struck with confusion as to how it got there. He remembered using the same pen before but had thrown it away. It was the same pen Taliah always used.

He set that thought aside, as it was his least concern, but the sense of mystery gnawed at him.

Not wasting any more time thinking about it, he stabbed the pen into his thigh.

The excruciating pain of stabbing himself was not pleasant. It broke through his senses, his mind filled with agony. He felt his consciousness fading.

"No… I need to… did I make a wrong choice?" he screamed in pain, but no one was there to help him. He was alone.

"…"

Gradually, he opened his eyes. "Huh? Did I…did i make it?" Nur let out a cracked voice.

He woke up and sat still, only to realize that he was sitting in a pool of blood.

He considered the fact that it was his own blood after bleeding from his thigh.

"But this much… I should have died a hundred times over with this much blood loss."

He checked his thighs. To his surprise, there was no sign of bleeding or injury, as though someone or something had healed him. He came to that conclusion because his pants still had a hole from the stab.

Then it struck him—the pen. He searched himself but didn't find it. While searching, he saw the pen right next to his right side. It was covered in blood. He took it and let out a sigh.

Holding it up in front of his face, he said, "Thank God, I didn't lose it."

The black pen had something of an attachment to him after what had happened. Since it was the same pen Taliah used, it held a special connection.

The pen had a black shining body with a silver inlay. It had a twist-to-turn mechanism, and on the twister was a diamond-like stone.

After getting up from the blood pool, he put the pen safely inside his trench coat, exactly where he had found it.

"I'll ask Taliah if she put it there. Yeah, I have to find her and thank her for that. Or I would've been stuck in that damn desert for who knows how long until I die of thirst."

He moved away from the blood pool, leaving a trail of blood from his boots on the ground as it slowly faded. His destination remained unknown, but he now had a clear objective: to find Taliah and return home.

…