Chapter 212: The Shroud of Silence
The ground beneath my feet... was no longer really ground.
It held neither familiar consistency nor reassuring weight. It was neither stone, nor earth, nor metal. It was a textured absence.
Something between void and matter.
Each step met with a resistance, light, almost dreamy, as if I were walking on the memory of a ground, on a collective memory of what walking means. There was a vague density, like condensed breath, a fabric of thick and silent air.
No friction. No sound. No trace.
But with every step, I felt that I was being carried. Not supported. Just... tolerated.
As if this ground did not impose itself, but allowed me. That sensation alone... was enough to make me question my actual weight.
It was a membrane.
Nervous. Pulsating.
Not a ground. An organism. A skin stretched between two dimensions, quivering under my steps, as if each of them triggered a wave, a response, a breath.
It reacted.