The world on the other side had no name.
Not yet.
It wasn't barren or broken—but *blank*. Untouched by memory, free of history. The sky shimmered in colors not found in any known spectrum, and the wind smelled of ink before it dries.
This was not the Elsewhere they had known.
This was the *origin* of it.
A beginning.
---
Rin touched the ground first. It held him—not as earth does, but like an idea remembering how to become real.
He looked around. "It's waiting for us."
"For what?" Kael asked.
Elara answered, "To shape it."
---
Sira tossed a stone into a pool of still water.
The ripples formed shapes—fragments of old dreams: a village that could never burn, a sword that refused blood, a child never abandoned.
"It reflects what we carry," she said softly.
"Then we must be careful what we bring in," Thalen said.
He knelt and drew a line in the earth with one finger. The line glowed, then bloomed—small blue flowers rising from it like memories forgiven.
"Creation without intent is chaos," Maris said.
"Then let's give it meaning," Elara replied.
---
They walked for days that felt like moments, crossing landscapes that formed around them—archways grown from sound, mountains singing lullabies, forests that shifted depending on what story was being told.
Kael recorded it all with trembling hands. "It's a living story," he muttered, "but it doesn't want to be *written*. It wants to be *lived*."
---
One night, beneath a sky swirling with newborn constellations, the group made a circle around a campfire that burned with no fuel.
They told stories—not of wars or victories.
But of silences they survived.
Of questions they still carried.
Of hopes too soft for old worlds.
And the land listened.
The next morning, where their fire had been, a tower had grown.
Not tall. Not grand.
Just enough to be seen from the distance.
Inside was a single room—with six chairs, and one empty journal.
---
"We're not the only ones," Elara whispered. "Others will come."
"Then let's leave them something," Rin said.
They each wrote a page.
Not instructions.
Not rules.
But *beginnings*.
Threads.
And when they left, the tower stayed behind—watching, waiting, and *welcoming*.
---
In the distance, more lights were appearing. Not stars.
Doors.
Elsewhere had opened *inward*.
Now it was opening *outward*.
---
And they walked on—into the place beyond prophecy, beyond endings.
Into the place where stories *begin again*.