STARLIGHT UNBOUND by Deus Ex Machina - HTML preview

STARLIGHT UNBOUND

breathing in time with something vast and unknowable. Awe tangled with fear, an exhilarating, terrifying tension.

Lucien continued walking, each step silent against the fragile line beneath him.

Then, in the distance, an image began to take shape.

A small house. Simple, peaceful, surrounded by a neat green garden —like the ones from archived images of the ancient world.

The transition was abrupt and surreal, a sudden collision of realities. The vast cosmos ended with a harsh divide, the garden standing in stark contrast, like two puzzle pieces forced together.

Lucien hesitated at the threshold. Something about the house felt too real. Too final. As if stepping forward would mean leaving behind everything he had known.

He glanced to his left—the endless drop. In front, the quiet perfection of the house. But to his right, the landscape changed. Colors pulsed and shifted in impossible hues, vibrating like sound and light fused into one. And beyond them... a shadow moved, slow and deliberate.

Before he could decide, he was suddenly standing in the garden.

The cosmos behind him had vanished, replaced by birdsong and the scent of earth, rich and damp. Warm sunlight brushed against his skin, softer than the sterile artificial glow of the city he had always known.

The house stood ahead of him, its white walls pristine, the wide front porch inviting, the lawn manicured to perfection. It felt foreign and familiar at the same time—something he had never touched but somehow remembered.

The front door creaked open, and figures emerged. About ten of them, their faces unfamiliar yet comforting. Lucien watched as they gathered in the garden, their movements gentle and unhurried. He thought they were one large family, but slowly they separated into two distinct groups, standing apart yet still smiling in quiet contentment.

A dull ache stirred in his heart. It wasn ’t longing, exactly—it was something deeper, something nameless and distant, like a memory buried too deep to reach.

He took a step forward, gravel crunching softly beneath his foot. The figures turned toward him in unison, their eyes kind, their smiles warm and inviting, as if they had been waiting for him all along.

Lucien opened his mouth to speak, to ask who they were, why they felt so familiar—

But before he could say a word, they began to dissolve.

71