You arrive at the summit as the sun bleeds into the sky and the wind whips your bare skin. The clouds absorb the last traces of sunlight and exude colors like smoldering embers as the mist below obscures all view of the land itself. It becomes disorienting; the thick fog appears as the clouds should, and the burning horizon above appears closer to the flames and cinders of hell itself. You think to yourself: it's almost as if I've been walking down this whole time.
At first, the search for a vantage point seems a wasted endeavor with the fog burying the land below. But at the edge of the far western shore, something shimmers, something juts into the water. A dock.
You prepare yourself to walk until the sunlight leaves you and the island with only the moon. As you descend from the peak, your feet find a trail in the bare rock. It's a deep rut, one that could only be carved from hundreds of men and women—or something very large.
YOU ARE READING
The Second Stage
HorrorA world unseen dies over and over. It shrieks at a pitch that you cannot hear. It rots with a stench that you will never quite know. It isn't a place meant for you and I, it is merely a bank for the dead and dying; a vault of visceral agony. I...
