₊ 𖦹﹕𝗢𝗙𝗙 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗥𝗔𝗜𝗟𝗦！(🐤)

── 𝐀𝐑𝐂 𝐈 . ✦

弧一 . . . 000
@/mxtsuro | AO3 & Wattpad
Myrddin Emrys © 2025

﹒ ◠ OFF THE RAILS ⊹ ﹒
— " to berserk " !
Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! We return.
★ . E. M. Forster » +

೯⠀⁺ ⠀ 𖥻 𝐀𝐑𝐂 𝐈 ⠀ᰋ
── ★ ˙ where the tracks disappear, the train carries us to the heart of oblivion  ̟ !!

Yerushalayim
1st of February 2018, 15:00 PM

            In the winding, ancient streets of Yerushalayim, where the stones themselves seemed to hum with secrets from a thousand ages, Galateya trod carefully, each step echoing a history both foreign and familiar. She was more than a scholar; she was a seeker, drawn to the holy city with a desire not only to study its religious relics but to lose herself in its spiritual depths. For her, this was not a mere academic pursuit but a pilgrimage of the soul, a journey to peel back layers of history in search of hidden truths buried deep within the folds of tradition. Her days bled together in a dreamlike rhythm as she immersed herself in the dusty manuscripts of forgotten libraries, roamed the sacred grounds like the Ha-Kotel Ha-Maaravi, and traced her steps over the same paths walked by countless seekers before her. She was driven by an urgent need to unravel mysteries that seemed both scholarly and intensely personal, each discovery awakening questions she had not even known she harbored.

            Her time in Yerushalayim became a whirl of rituals and relics, of sacred spaces and the weight of countless lives lived before her. It was here, in the midst of her pilgrimage, that Galateya often found herself drawn to Gan Ha-Kevar, an archaeological site that tugged at something deep within her---a sense of connection she could not fully articulate. Day after day, she returned, feeling the pull of an unspoken bond with the ruins, sensing echoes of ancient sorrow and unfulfilled dreams. Her work took on a life of its own, no longer mere study but a profound dialogue with the past, a quest to understand not only history but her place within it. The city had become her confessional, her sanctuary, as she wrestled with the enormity of the forces that shaped her.

          Then came a bitterly cold evening, the first of February, 2018. As darkness draped itself over Yerushalayim and a chill set in, she found herself back at Gan Ha-Kevar, caught in the spell of its mysteries until exhaustion overtook her. She drifted into sleep, seated on the cold stone, and in her dreams, she felt herself tumbling through layers of consciousness until she found herself on a train. But it was not the familiar commuter train that ferried her daily between Yerushalayim and Hevron. No, this was different. This train was a vessel in a strange, looping nightmare, barreling through an endless night that swallowed all light and sound. She awoke with a start, only to find herself in a different kind of silence. There was no hum of life around her---no murmurs, no shifting bodies, no clatter of metal on metal. Only a suffocating, unnatural quiet that pressed down on her chest.

            Peering into the void outside, Galateya’s heart began to race as she realized there was nothing but a deep, impenetrable darkness beyond the window, a darkness so thick it seemed to obliterate the very earth itself. The familiar world was gone, leaving only the eerie stillness of the train moving through an abyss. Every fiber of her being screamed that something was wrong, that this was not simply a nightmare but a bridge into a place that defied the very laws of existence. Panic clawed at her chest as she scanned the train car for any semblance of normalcy, her mind frantically searching for an explanation. But reality twisted around her, making it impossible to tell where the dream ended and the darkness began.

            Then, she felt it---a presence, close, too close. Turning, she saw him: A shadowed figure seated beside her, draped in darkness, with a hood obscuring his face. Yet even through the murk, her eyes were drawn to one chilling detail that seemed to rise from him like an omen---antlers. They grew from his head like the branches of some ancient, withered tree, casting twisted shadows across the dim interior of the train. Galateya felt a shiver crawl up her spine as her mind tried to grasp the impossible. No human bore antlers like that. He was something else, something beyond her understanding, a being that seemed to have stepped straight out of myth and into her reality. She sat frozen, her body caught between the instinct to flee and the realization that there was nowhere to go, trapped on this spectral train with a stranger who seemed carved from the very night itself.

            She looked desperately around, hoping for a sign, a way out, anything---but the other passengers were frozen in place, their forms blurred, swallowed by the shadows. It was as though they, too, had been taken by the void, leaving her alone with the antlered figure whose silence was a dark, waiting thing. She could feel his gaze on her, penetrating, as if seeing through her and beyond, into something more ancient, more primal. She sensed a flicker of energy in the air around him, a presence older than words, an enigma that seemed to pulse with a dark, slumbering life. Her mind reeled, caught between fear and a strange, inexplicable sense that this was not simply a dream. This was something more, something elemental that had come to meet her on the very edge of reality.

           And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the spell broke. Galateya snapped awake, her body shivering in the cold, stone seat at Gan Ha-Kevar. The daylight was slipping away, and the world around her was silent and still. The dream left a chill in her bones, a lingering feeling of dread. She glanced at the time; it was late, time to head home. But as she walked back through the winding streets of Yerushalayim, the memory of the antlered figure haunted her, like a whisper from the shadows, a reminder that some mysteries were not meant to be uncovered, yet had found her all the same.

𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ 𓈈 off the rails