Sebas was trying to decide what to do next. The first thing that came to his mind was trying to get out of the liminality, with that in mind, he started to walk back to where they had seen the strange shadow first, with luck they would be able to come back to the normal world.

  “Sebas, would you mind telling me why are we going back instead of continue going forward?” Lys asked confused at what her friend was doing.

  “Lys, do you trust me?” Sebas asked. His movements became faster with each step.

  “You know I do,” Lys said. “now tell me”

  “Let’s just say we are in between worlds, hopefully, we can go back to the normal world when we reach the place where we enter” Sebas answered.

  “What?!” Lys exclaimed. “That makes no sense”

  “Ah,” Sebas let out a sigh. “So, there are these things, called liminalities, they are weird places, where reality seems to bend and mix with different realities, have you noticed the weird places? Like a painting in the middle of a corridor, or that strange store that always seems open but there is no one ever there?”

  “Yeah,” Lys said. “But who pays that much attention to those things?”

  “Well, that’s exactly the point,” Sebas said. “Since no one ever stops there, they are the perfect places for our reality to start breaking apart, and other places to leak in, thus creating a liminality, we are currently in one when we stop at the shadow to take a look we were dragged into one”

  “How is that even possible?” Lys asked.

  “That’s the problem, stumbling by mistake on liminality is rare, extremely strange, most people that stopped in those places, manage to continue as if nothing happened, the only way to go into a liminality is by doing it on purpose,” Sebas said.

  “Has something like this happened before?” Lys asked, increasing her pace.

  Sebas abruptly stopped. “No, not that I know of” Sebas looked up and started to massage his temples.

  “What?” Lys asked getting closer to her friend. Usually, the both of them would stand at a similar height, but that would be because Sebas didn’t usually stand in a straight position, she had always theorized that it was due to Sebas obsession to be low-key. But now, he was a good ten centimeters taller than her.

  “We’ve passed the point of the shadow, at least, 3 times by now” Sebas answered.

  “So we can’t get out?” Lys asked opening her eyes.

  “It looks like whatever dragged us here, won’t let us go,” Sebas said. “Maybe that’s why there are no cases reported of this happening because they never get out”.

  “Wait, there are things here!!?”

  “Yeah, there are”

  “So, what are our options?”

  “Explore the liminality, and maybe find out why we are being kept here”

  “What if we run into one of those things?”

  Sebas looked at his friend, That was a real possibility, one that, in truth worried him, but, there were no other choices. “If it comes to that, I’ll handle it”

  “So…” Lys said while sitting on the floor. “Where do we start?”

  Sebas sat next to his friend. “Well, liminalities are strange places, there is no straightforward way to explore them, usually you need to look for the clues, the clues guide us to where we are supposed to go, and, tell us when to stop”

  “What do you mean tell us when to stop, what happens if we don’t stop?” Lys said getting closer to Sebas' face.

  “Don’t get that close” Sebas said pushing Lys. “If liminalities are places in between this world and another one, what do you think happens when you reach the other end?”

  “You end up in the other world?” Lys said.

  “Yes, you do”

  “That sounds cool,” Lys said. “And scary…”

  Don’t worry too much, we will manage” Sebas said standing up.

  He then extended his hand offering it to her. She grabbed his hand and stood up.

  “I’ll trust you, only because I know I’ve caused you quite a bit of problems” Lys was smiling.

  “Let’s go, the wall that had a different color, let’s find it” Sebas started to walk.

  “So you think that’s the first clue’” Lys started to walk behind Sebas with confidence. “Let’s break that wall down.”

  “You don’t always need to destroy shit to get things done, you know”

  “Then it wouldn’t be fun”

  Sebas and Lys exchanged smiles and continued walking, it didn’t take long for them to find that particular wall.

  “So, now what?” Lys asked.

  Sebas didn’t have an answer for that, the wall looked normal in every way but the color, if you pay close attention you could see the color, but other than that nothing else. Sebas had been taught that the clues on how to explore a liminality were subtle, at least the first one was always the hardest one to catch and understand.

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  Well, they had already caught the first clue, now, it was just a matter of understanding the clue.

  What could the color change mean…

  Sebas was thinking about the different possibilities, but nothing came to mind. Until Lys simply tried kicking the wall. But, her feet went straight through the wall. Causing her to almost fall, Sebas had to reach and grab her and stop her from falling.

  “See, patience is needed.” But even if he said that he had to admit, her act of imprudence had been helpful.

  “This was a fake wall,” He said.

  “Yeah, that’s what it looks like” Lys reached to touch the wall, her fingers seemed to slide like it was water instead of solid mass.

  “Oh well, We’ll die of something someday,” Lys said grabbing Sebas’s hand and pulling him along with her. They cross the wall at the same time. What was on the other side of that wall was nothing short of surreal.

  The first thing they found was another corridor, this one seemed to twist strangely, as they walked the floor seemed to shift positions, now, the floor, was… the wall? That was the best way to describe it, then it became the ceiling, and it continued to change until eventually, they arrived at a large room, and at the center of it, there was a large circle with a smaller circle inside that moved along with them. From the bigger circle, several stairs come out going up, ending in different walls, there were straight stairs, spiral stairs, and even floating stairs that were not attached to anything. Some of the stairs bend midway though, so, if you were to continue walking through those stairs you would be walking upside down, or even, walking right horizontally in some cases. The whole room seemed to be built out of metal which gave it a cold feeling, something that was exacerbated by the blue neon lights that permeated the whole place.

  “Is that musty smell?” Lys asked while covering her nose with her hands.

  “But I don’t see any water…” Sebas answered. He was already walking to explore the room. He walked all over the place, taking a detailed look at every crook and cranny in that room. It wasn’t until he finally looked at that strange circle at the center of the room that he noticed it, the bottom of it was filled with pristine white water that contrasted in a strange but beautiful way with the dark metal that the rest of the room was made of.

  Lys walked over to where Sebas was, she took a look at that place. unlike Sebas who had been taught about Liminalities, all of this was new to her, she had never seen something like this, much less ever taught about the fact that she would see floating stairs, that, well, were actually floating.

  “It looks like an eye,” Lys said looking at the strange structure Sebas was said. “The white liquid seems like the sclera of the eye, the circle in the middle like a pupil”

  “And whenever we moved it followed us, like your eyes move when you track someone” Sebas answered while kneeling to take a better look.

  “At least it only looks like an eye and is not an actual eye, right?” Lys asked turning her head to look at Sebas

  Sebas stood up and did some light stretches. “It could be an eye” He answered Lys's question. “I’ve seen some pretty strange, scary, and fucked things inside Liminalities, who knows, we may be inside something too”

  Lys opened her mind, she tried to answer, but nothing came out, all of her body was tense, the concept of being inside something or that structure was some kind of an eye following them. She decided to start looking around, she didn’t want to stay there for much longer.

  Sebas noticed Lys starting to explore the room, a curve on his lips began to form, and he couldn’t waste any more time either.

  “So, the clue should be the same until proven otherwise, let’s look for a different color wall, or, an overall different wall, and let’s go from there,” Sebas said while he started to walk up the stairs.

  Soon enough he noticed, the difficulty of going up the different stairs, the issue was not even the stairs per se, but that with each step pressure seemed to increase and weighed him down, so, the act of going up those stairs was proving to be something harder than he would have liked.

  “Mahvyr, can you help us?” Sebas asked the entity that had become his conduit.

  “I can, but I won’t” Mahvyr answered. “It’s been years, we need to start looking for the other forgotten more seriously, and for that, you need experience on liminalities, and even if this one has something odd in it, it’s a great experience for you”

  “Yeah, you are probably right.” Sebas let out a long breath, the deal he had made with The Archivist all those years back, he had not worked towards looking for the forgotten, he had focused on understanding and dominating the abilities and dangers that Mahvyr had brought along when becoming his conduit.

  “Hey” Lys screamed “I Found one”

  Sebas turned to look at her. Lys stood upside down on the spiral staircase, looking directly at a wall. At first glance, there was little difference in its appearance, it seemed to mimic rusted metal, almost perfectly, at least from where Sebas was looking. But when looking closer, it wasn’t metal at all. The surface was crafted from a strange, curated wood.

  Curious and slowly, Lys reached out to touch it.

  The moment her fingers touched the surface, the entire room began to tremble. The water surrounding the small circle at the room’s center darkened, shifting to a deep, unsettling red. The circle itself started to move violently, spinning in erratic, uncontrolled movements.

  Then came the smell.

  The sharp tang of iron filled the air, thick and unmistakable. It clung to every breath, saturating the space as an unnatural chill swept through the room. The temperature plummeted, and it plummeted fast.

  "What’s going on?" Lys asked.

  The moment the words left her mouth, everything stopped.

  Sebas, just as confused, turned to her. Her hand was no longer touching the wall.

  "Lys, touch the wall again. Please," he said.

  She arched an eyebrow but didn’t hesitate. She trusted him. Slowly, she reached out once more.

  The instant her fingers made contact, the chaos resumed.

  Her first instinct was to pull away.

  "Wait," Sebas urged. "Try pushing. Maybe you can get through."

  Lys did as Sebas asked her to. She started to push and her hand, began to slip into the wall like it had happened before, but as it did, from the center of the room, hands started to rise, long, skinny hands.

  Boom after boom echoed through the room. Sebas and Lys watched as countless hands clawed at the floor, pulling themselves out of the structure.

  “I really think I should stop,” Lys said with a trembling voice and the color draining from her face and shaking.

  “No”

  Sebas jumped as he answered, and he landed right in front of that structure. He could see them now, the figures crawling out of that structure, more and more emerged with each passing second.

  They were wearing academy uniforms. Strips of flesh were missing, exposing bone, yet, their insides were hollow. Their faces lacked any features, smooth, blank voids that gave them a disturbing look. And yet, somehow, blood seeped from the features that weren’t there.

  “Run!” Lys screamed. She tried to pull her hand from the wall, but it wouldn’t budge. She felt like something was grabbing her from the other side.

  She felt panic run through her body. She grabbed her wrist with her free hand, pulling hard. But, that also failed, so, she braced herself and pushed with her feet, still… Nothing.

  And things got worse since her feet started to sink too.

  Her breath became faster, shallow, and erratic. She started to pull harder, but whatever force was grabbing her seemed to increase and start to drag her with overwhelming strength. She turned to look at Sebas, and she saw her friend surrounded.

  Her stomach dropped.

  She wanted to scream, but, she noticed that Sebas was relaxed.

  He was cracking his fingers. His neck. His back.

  As she was being swallowed by the wall, the last image she saw was of Sebas smiling.