Chapter Text
The heavy, clinging scent of decay hung thick in the air, rich with the rot of flesh, the slow collapse of trees, and the quiet death of plants returning to the soil. To anything else, the constant display of wither and death would be repulsive.
Not to Rumi, though.
It reminded her that everything living was only passing through, that existence was a brief flicker before being folded back into something new. Nothing was wasted, that even in death there was purpose. That even when something ended, it would inevitably bring fertile ground for something new to rise from its remains.
She deeply breathed in the smell of dead flesh, letting it settle in her chest. She could feel the tingle of the toxic air inside her chest, and it made her feel warm and fuzzy.
She was the harbinger of life.
A carrier of decay.
Her kingdom stretched endlessly, an immense swamp with trees reaching into the bright green sky, where life and death existed in constant motion. The ground was soft beneath her feet, damp with the remnants of countless cycles. Insects buzzed in thick clouds, their bodies swollen with disease. Reptiles slithered through the undergrowth, their scales slick and glistening with infection, small plants growing between their scales.
She walked along the familiar path that circled the great lake at the center of her realm. Its surface churned slowly, thick and viscous, more resembling sludge than water. Tangled plants spread across its bank in dense clusters, their roots’ carnivorous mouths feeding on what lay beneath. Deep below the surface, massive shapes moved through the darkness. Leviathans in different forms tearing into one another in slow, brutal cycles, their bodies breaking apart only to nourish the next generation of life.
Nothing here truly died. It simply changed its shape, carcasses feeding the next generation.
Even Rumi was part of this cycle; only one embodiment of decay could exist at a time. That was the law of this realm. That was the structure that kept everything else intact.
She watched a cloud of flies pass by, doing a small circle around her before flying away towards the great zelkova tree that stood at the edge of the lake, its bark thick and ancient. Its branches were empty and dead, like thin fingers reaching up into the sky, an oddity amongst the vibrant green around it. It was older than anything else in her realm, its hollow core serving a singular purpose.
When the cycle came to its end, when her current form had run its course and she was destined to die, she would walk into that hollow and allow the wood to claim her. The tree would consume her slowly, its bark growing around her and trapping her inside it, where it would strip her down until nothing remained.
In time, something new would emerge.
A new form. A new mind. A new version of the same unchanging concept.
Rebirth without continuity.
She had stood before that tree many times, wondering what parts of her would survive the next cycle, if any at all. She could sometimes feel them: memories that weren‘t her own, experiences she‘d never had, knowledge she‘d never learned.
And here she was once more, another version starting the cycle anew.
She was simply part of the system, a necessary function in something far greater than herself. A cog in the machinery of existence. Yet unlike the others, she turned alone, her motion never aligning with theirs, her purpose kept at a distance so her rusted teeth would never interlink with the others.
Rumi paused to watch a cluster of horned toads perched on writhing lily pads. Their many eyes blinked out of sync as their tongues snapped forward, catching bloated flies midair. They croaked at her, loud and demanding as a couple of them hopped after her like a group of children.
They didn’t run from her or display any hostility. They relished in her presence, even seeking it to rub their scales and leathery skin against hers to receive her blessing. In a way, they were companions.
Her only companions.
The trees around her groaned softly, their branches shifting as if aware of her presence. Twigs brushed against her skin in acknowledgment and adoration as she passed, their touches leaving thin scratches on her blistered skin. Leaves and bark twisted into shapes that resembled glowing orange eyes, observing her in silence.
One branch extended towards her, and she reached up to pluck a piece of fruit from a low-hanging branch. It creaked as it bent down to accompany her desire, and she heard the branch start to break from the strain like it was about to snap. Her fingers closed around the fruit, its skin mottled and soft beneath her fingers. With a quiet snap, she took it off the branch, which promptly bent back into its original position with more breaking and creaking. Rumi sunk her teeth into the fruit as she walked, a squelch echoing across her lands among the countless wet noises.
The taste was rich and sweet, almost intoxicating. It would have been deadly to anyone else, but to her it was nourishment. She swallowed slowly, the sweetness fading into something more bitter as the realization settled in once more.
There was no one to share it with.
There were no other demons like her.
The pests and diseases that made up her being were not things she commanded, but extensions of what she was. They spread out across her kingdom through soil and water, through flesh and bone, touching everything around her indiscriminately.
Whenever she wandered too close to other domains, the gates to their palaces would close. Creatures would scatter, entire regions would go silent as word spread of her approach. Some realms refused her entry outright, their rulers unwilling to risk even the slightest brush with her presence.
She didn't resent them for it. She understood. She had seen some of their worlds from a distance, or heard whispers about them.
Forests so lush and impossibly green that they seemed to glow with vitality. Creatures that moved with grace and beauty, their forms untouched by age. Beings whose very existence radiated something she could never touch without unraveling it. If she stepped into those places, the balance would break. Leaves would blacken, flesh would weaken, and life would begin its inevitable descent earlier than it was supposed to.
So she stayed where she belonged.
She continued wandering along the path, her thoughts drifting to the other realms she had only ever heard about.
The Pyrefields burned endlessly somewhere beyond a place she could enter, a land of fire that consumed and renewed itself in equal measure. Its glowing inhabitants were in a constant cycle of burning and being burned and delighted in the sensation of their bodies melting and bubbling, reforming over and over again, an endless embodiment of destruction.
Deep beneath distant mountains lay Ashara’s Net, where vast webs held the threads of fate, each strand representing a life or a possibility. Their arachnid architects observed fates from various realms, categorizing each fate and change of it, as they spun destinies into tight lines of purpose.
There was also the Infinite Archive of Imurah, a city of knowledge so vast that even demons could not hope to comprehend it in full. It was a city of gargantuan proportions, stretching endlessly into the horizon. The archivists moved through the narrow shelves and gaping lecture halls in all shapes and sizes, flying or skittering across the floor inscribed with the names of their greatest archivists.
There were countless others. Realms of faith, of desire, of reflection. Each one a manifestation of something fundamental, something that was inadvertently linked with reality itself.
Some of them even had the ability to travel between different realms. Not only their own realm, but… something different.
She didn‘t exactly know what this “different” was, but it sounded exciting!
And above them all stood their ruler, their father.
Gwi-Ma.
It was said he had existed before time itself, that he had witnessed the birth of existence itself and would remain long after its end. None of them really knew what he was, just that he was holding them all together. He had created the islands and distant stars all of them resided on and had woven the bridges that bound their realms together.
He was also one of the few beings who could walk through her domain without fear, his form untouchable by the decay and plague of her home.
Rumi didn‘t know why, because even the demons from the Pyrefields didn‘t dare to enter her domain, their flames burning out almost immediately.
She had once witnessed one of them come too close to her. Its multi-jointed long limbs had moved erratically as it ran across the bridge towards her, covered in thick scales and perpetual flames of various colours that never extinguished. Yet as soon as it had passed her gates, the flames had died. Its skin turned into dust within seconds as it had fallen forward, its form exploding in a cloud of flakes that had been absorbed by the ecosystem around it.
The few plants its fire touched regrew almost immediatly, some even more vibrant than before.
And yet despite this, something about the demon king was different. Whether it was what he embodied or something else, Rumi didn‘t know. What she did know is that despite being able to come to her as often as he pleased, he did so rarely.
Not because of what she was, he made sure to tell her that when she was born.
She remembered that day like it was yesterday, despite the undoubtedly long amount of time that had already passed since then.
She had not fully formed yet. Her body had been tearing itself free from the tree it had grown in, bone pushing through bark, muscle knitting itself together in slow, agonizing motion. Before her eyes had even grown, she had heard his voice.
“Welcome, my child.”
When her vision had finally appeared, she had seen nothing but a vast silhouette of violet flame. It had filled her entire world, its presence overwhelming and impossible to comprehend, yet it had radiated a warmth that pushed away any sense of fear or discomfort.
He had talked to her like a parent teaching a child about the world they were born in, even though she had not known at the time what those concepts even meant. He had sat patiently with her, explaining and answering any of her questions about the world she was born into, about what she was, and about what her purpose would be.
He had told her that she was not an accident or something that slipped through creation‘s grasp, but a necessity to keep the whole system intact. She was supposed to ensure that life wouldn‘t choke on its own abundance, and that nothing lingered beyond its time.
When she had asked him why she was alone, he had answered that there could only ever be one manifestation of her purpose due to the power she held, but also the responsibility she carried. Such an important duty could only be bestowed upon one set of shoulders, and Rumi had been determined to carry it.
He had told her that others would reject her for what she was because she reminded them that one day, they too would die. They would ostracize her for it, barring her from interacting with them because of her destructive nature.
He had asked her to endure, to make sure that nothing lingered beyond its time, and that the cycle of life would continue with the remains of what once was fueling the growth.
The memory faded, but the weight of his words remained. Rumi stood at the edge of the lake again, watching the slow churn of life and death before her.
She was alone.
And whether she understood it or not, she was exactly what she was meant to be.
The loneliness weighed heavy on her some days, but that didn’t mean she didn’t understand why she had to be what she was. At the start of her life, she had cherished it, really. She was a part of something great, and she ensured that life would continue to exist.
But the ever-present isolation and the constant rejection of companionship had made it harder and harder to keep going. Why couldn‘t she be with anyone else? She was the reason they could come to be in the first place.
Rumi turned away from the lake and headed towards the edge of her world. The landscape bent to her will, pathways shortening to traverse what would take days for others in a heartbeat. She could pass forests the size of continents in the blink of an eye and cross enormous lakes with no more than a single step. This way, she quickly reached the edge of her realm.
A high wall of grey bricks reached up into the sky, the stones worn smooth from millenia of being exposed to her world‘s elements. Small mushrooms with glowing hats of various colours grew from the ridges between the bricks, and vines curled up the wall, twisting and turning like worms, their star-shaped orange flowers emitting heat and seeming to track their surroundings by turning towards movement. Before Rumi was an archway in the wall. There was no door or any other kind of obstruction barring someone entrance into her domain. It was unguarded and left open, because no one would enter willingly.
Beyond the wall, the landscape abruptly cut off as if someone had used a sword to carve open the area to make space for her home.
Beyond it was nothing. Not a barren landscape, or the remnants of something else. An enormous void opened up before Rumi, its darkness stretching into incomprehensible distances. Hundreds of small bright dots littered the void before her, lighting it up like the night's sky. Those were the other realms, concepts inhabited by demons like her.
A long white pathway glowed before her, the little light it gave off being swallowed by the darkness. The edges seemed loose and frayed, like the bridge was made of millions of thin threads bound loosely together into a singular long string. If she looked closely, she could see countless paths stretching between the dots closer to her. They were all connected with each other like a giant spider web, making an interconnected net of kingdoms.
Some concepts required passage through another realm in order to reach their destination, allowing for compatible concepts to exchange knowledge, wisdom and sometimes assistance, between each other. This made her wonder why none even tried to have a connection with her. She was compatible with a lot of concepts. Wasn’t she the one that waited at the end of their every path? That their forms, bodies and plants would all eventually return to her?
Despite this, no one ever passed through hers. Far away it sat from anyone needing to pass through, for entering her domain would mean certain death to them. Or rather, almost no one passed through.
There was at least one companion she had that wasn‘t her insects, her reptiles, or the monsters beneath the lake that clawed at each other's throats.
It was Jinu, or the Traveller, as many referred to him. He was the only demon beside Gwi-Ma himself who willingly spent time with her.
He was the embodiment of time and its relentless march. He observed the myriad of ways in which consciousness and matter manifested across different timespans. He was like her, responsible for death and rebirth, but in a different way. And like her, he was alone. There could only be one manifestation of time and its unstoppable pilgrimage towards the future, just as there could only be one embodiment of rot and decay.
He was male, though his appearance always changed whenever she saw him. A part of the effects of being connected to time itself was his body aging visibly. Yet it didn't age linearly with the flow of time. He wasn't born young and died old.
The first time Rumi had seen him, he had been young, roughly similar to her in age and appearance. Then when she had seen him a second time, he had been an old man with a long beard. And when he left and came back an hour later, he had been a young boy who hadn’t even reached adolescence yet. It was a part of his duty to experience the signs of his manifestation, just like her.
Her body was riddled with bright red rashes and small clusters of blisters filled with pus. Maggots crawled in her veins and flies buzzed endlessly inside her lungs. Yet she enjoyed the feeling, just like Jinu enjoyed his aging. It was a reminder of who they were and what their purpose was, similar to how demons from the Pyrefields loved the fire's warm embrace licking against their skin, slowly leading them to the slumber of death.
Rumi's and Jinu's choice of clothing was a reflection of their duties.
Rumi's outfit seemed like a stark contrast to the elegant robes he wore. She had a tunic that was once white, but had taken on a greyish tone, same as the loincloth around her waist. A maroon spider lily was embroidered on the lower fabric, a aymbol of her purpose. Chains were wrapped tightly around her forearms, some of them dangling loosely. They were as much of a symbol to her duty as the flower depicted on her cloth.
The chains bound her to death, because one day she too would die and take on a new form. This new version of her would also be bound by those same chains, destined to die and be reborn again and again until the end.
She was chained to this place.
And so forever lonely.
Jinu was chained in a different way. He would have conversations with people one day and forget them the next because he aged backwards days, weeks, or even years. She found that when she told his younger self something, the older versions would remember, but it didn’t apply the other way around. The older versions seemed to know her better than herself, while the younger ones seemed to barely remember anything about her at all. She didn‘t really mind repeating herself though. If it wasn‘t for Jinu, she might‘ve broken already.
The chains clinked softly against each other as she shifted her weight at the gateway towards the abyss. She found herself shifting a lot when she came to the edge of her world, waiting for Jinu to appear.
When she saw his faint silhouette in the distance, she let out a noise that could only be described as an excited shriek, and jumped across the threshold of her home.
The moment her feet touched the bridge, the glow around them began to dull slightly. When she quickly made her way towards Jinu to meet him half way, she left behind grey footprints on the bridge that slowly started to brighten again, as if her presence had cut off their bloodstream and the absence of her was allowing it back in.
“Jinu!” Rumi called, her voice lifting as she waved at him in the distance, a wide smile already spreading across her face.
He spotted her immediately and waved back, quickening his pace until he reached her. Right now he was of a similar age to her, but contrary to her skin bearing wounds, his was smooth, untouched by age. He wore a simple long hanbok in a dark blue that was embroidered with golden threads aligned in a complex and ever-shifting pattern. The silk moved with each heartbeat, forming wonderful symbols and displaying stories within them. She saw decades of history pass within the blink of an eye, the threads snaking through the fabric as it told the sagas of a dozen lifetimes.
The two of them came to a stop a couple of steps apart, close enough to speak easily but not quite close enough to touch.
For a moment, Jinu just looked at her, his expression softening in a way that she couldn‘t really place. “Hey, spider flower. How are you doing this fine… evening? I honestly don‘t know what time it is.”
Rumi let out a chuckle. “As if time was relevant in this place. I‘m doing fine, thanks for asking. How about you? Is everything alright? You look like you haven‘t slept for quite some time.”
“Yeah, I haven‘t really slept as much as I‘d wa— did you just call me irrelevant?”
“What? No!” Rumi frantically traced back the last couple of seconds. When did she say that? “I just remarked how you looked sleepy, and that time wasn‘t—” She caught on. “Oh, you little—”
Rumi drew back her fist as if trying to punch him, causing Jinu to quickly stumble back, raising his hands in mock-surrender.
“Woah, woah, I was joking,” he said, laughing. Rumi‘s own laugh followed suit, their playful banter being swallowed by the vastness around them.
Once their laughter subsided, Rumi asked, “So, what brings you here? If I remember correctly, our next meeting isn‘t due just yet.”
“I know,” Jinu replied. “Gwi-Ma sent me. He asked me to bring you to his palace.”
“Really? He wants to see me, at his palace, and not here?”
“Yes.”
That was strange. Normally, Gwi-Ma visited those he wanted to see personally instead of summoning them to his domain. He rarely asked for someone to come to him, which made whatever occasion this was even more interesting.
“Do you know what he wants?” Rumi asked.
“I know that he has something prepared for you,” Jinu said. “Something he intends to give or show you. Beyond that, I have no idea.”
Rumi exhaled, her eyes drifting across the vast expanse around them for a moment before returning to him. She took a step closer, just a bit, her eyes narrowing on him.
“Are you sure you don’t know anything else?” she asked. “He must’ve given you at least some sort of clue."
“I would tell you if I could do so without risking something,” he said. “Some things require… more thought before I voice them out loud. This is one of them.”
She accepted that with a small nod and a hum, remembering a conversation they had shared long ago. Jinu had once tried to explain what it meant to exist the way he did, to stand within the flow of time while also being carried by it in fragments.
He had told her that he could glimpse things that had yet to unfold, especially in the versions of himself that had lived further along his own timeline. Those older selves often behaved differently around her, as if they carried knowledge they could not fully share. There were moments where they would hesitate mid-sentence, weighing words that had not yet been spoken against consequences that had not yet occurred.
According to him, even a single misplaced sentence could shift the course of a life. If he revealed too much, or spoke at the wrong moment, it could alter not only the future of the one listening, but also his own perception of events. He wouldn‘t simply witness a change, but he would remember it twice. One memory would belong to the path that had been, and the other to the path that had replaced it.
He once described it as standing in two realities at once, both equally real, both refusing to fade. The strain of it was difficult to endure, he admitted. It left him disoriented, caught between outcomes that should never have existed together.
When that happened, he would try to correct it. He would retrace his steps, searching for the moment where things had diverged, attempting to guide events back into alignment. If the secondary memory disappeared, it meant he had succeeded, and the timeline had settled into something singular again.
If it didn't, he had never explained what followed.
Rumi never asked.
“Is it something I should be worried about?”
“I don‘t think he‘s mad at you or anything like that,” Jinu answered carefully. “But I do believe it is important.”
She was quiet for a moment, then allowed a faint smile to return.
“Then I suppose I should get going,” she said. “If he wants me to go to him, it must be worth the journey.”
Jinu met her gaze, something calm in his expression. “Then let's not keep him waiting.”
He extended his palm before him, flat against the air and Rumi heard a sharp crack. It sounded like someone breaking a piece of glass, and she saw a crack form before Jinu‘s palm.
It looked like someone had taken a rock and thrown it against glass. Only that the glass in question was the space before them. The cracking continued, and she saw deep lines expand from the center. Small pieces that reflected the space around them broke and drifted away, still carrying the image of what they‘d shown. Some of the pieces were sucked into the slowly forming hole in the center, and Rumi could see a purple glow emanating from the other side.
The cracking continued to grow sharper and louder, until with a loud and final echo, the pieces broke apart. It looked like Jinu had smashed the illusion of their surroundings, creating a pathway for them to step through. Rumi couldn‘t see beyond the light emanating from the gaping hole, but she knew it must lead to Gwi-Ma‘s palace.
She waited for Jinu to step through and follow after him, but he just turned to her with a smile and stepped aside. “This moment is just for you.”
“Wait, you‘re not coming with me?”
“No.”
“Why not?” Rumi’s voice lowered, squinting her amber eyes at him with a conspicuous grin. “Is he about to unveil some grand secret that you are not allowed to hear?”
“You could phrase it like that,” he laughed. “But no. If I could tell you I would, believe me.”
“Fine, be that way,” Rumi replied, waving her hand at him as she stepped through the portal. “I‘ll see you around. I’ll tell you what he wanted when I get back.”
“I‘m sure you will. Until next time,” Jinu replied with a slight smile, waving back at her as she crossed the threshold.
One moment, she felt the threads of the bridge beneath her feet, the next they were replaced with rough stone. She instinctively closed her eyes to avoid the light from blinding her, which did very little considering it managed to shine through her eyelids. The loud crackling of fire all around her filled her skull for a moment, before it dulled to nothing more than ambient noise. She heard the glass break behind her again, but the noise sounded reversed, an indicator that the portal behind her had closed.
Slowly, the light began to dim its unbearable brilliance aswell, softening enough for her to cautiously open her eyes.
She found herself standing upon a vast stone platform suspended in the middle of an endless sea of fire. Towering pillars surrounded her in a great circle, ancient and weathered, their surfaces carved with winding patterns that looked as though they had been etched there over thousands of years. There were frescos of demons in varying shapes and sizes carved into the pillars, making them seem like they were entirely made out of heads. The center of the pillars were smooth, symbols carved into them in wide arcs and jagged shapes. Massive archways connected the pillars overhead, each adorned with enormous faces chiseled into the stone. Some bared snarling teeth, others stretched into wide, unnatural grins, while a few wore expressions so calm and gentle that they unsettled her far more than the monstrous ones.
Beneath her feet, intricate symbols and glyphs spread across the platform in perfect symmetry, forming a ritual circle. Lines of glowing script crossed through one another to form a massive cross, and at its very center stood Rumi, as though the entire structure had been built around this singular point.
The platform wasn’t very large. It would take her about thirty steps to reach the edge. She saw a couple other platforms of jagged rock float around, some of them being adorned with similar temple-like structures, while others were completely barren. And beyond that, there was nothing except fire.
Purple flames stretched endlessly in every direction, rolling and shifting like a boundless ocean made of heat and embers. Sparks drifted lazily through the air around her, glowing like distant stars before vanishing back into the inferno below. Though the fire appeared to completely surround her, it also felt impossibly distant, as if she stood inside some gigantic invisible sphere that kept the flames just out of reach.
She saw movement stir within the inferno. Rumi watched as something vaguely humanoid started peeling itself free from the fire. It was a long and slender body, manifesting right before the island so closely she could feel the ground beneath her slightly tremor through the shift of the air.
Gwi-Ma.
He had four long, slender arms covered in jagged purple patterns forming an intricate web of symmetrical lines on his pink biceps and forearms. They slid together into a pentagon in the middle of his slender chest. Its center was hollow, and an ever-burning purple flame sat right between his blackened ribs, pulsing with ethereal light.
His face held the same smile his usual fiery appearance bore, but now it was made of flesh and bone with golden teeth grinning back at her. If Rumi looked closely, she could see glowing red letters shifting and forming on them faster than she could read them, never quite once staying the same. She found her head starting to hurt the longer she looked at his wide grin.
His eyes were covered by long, slender fingers belonging to a set of hands that seemed to grow from his temple. Above the fingers, a set of four horns curved back over his ridged head.
He was so large he could swallow the island Rumi was standing on in a single bite. The realization brushed briefly against Rumi’s mind like an instinct, but she forced it aside before it could fully settle.
Gwi-Ma wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t evil. He was a kind and benevolent being, a presence that guided and nurtured those who belonged to him. He was not merely a ruler, but something greater, something older than words could properly describe. He was existence itself given form, the beginning and the end intertwined into a single eternal being.
Before him, there had been nothing.
And when all things finally faded and he had drawn his last breath, there would be nothing again.
“Hello Rumi.”
His mouth didn‘t move. It stayed in the same, wide grin as it had ever since he arrived, teeth welded shut. She heard his voice inside her head.
“Gwi-Ma,” Rumi replied, bowing slightly.
When she looked up, silence followed the gesture as she felt his divine gaze linger upon her. Something felt… off. It seemed like he was studying her, which wasn‘t really out of the ordinary considering he took interest in every one of his spawn.
But this time his gaze felt… different.
“How are you doing, Rumi?” he asked warmly.
This certainly was one way to open up a conversation, Rumi thought.
It wasn‘t really out of the ordinary for Gwi-Ma to ask how they were doing, what they had done recently, or how they felt. Still, Gwi-Ma asking her how she was doing despite having called for her was… odd.
Did he want to prod her a little to see if he could reveal the information to her in a different way? Or withhold it based on her answer?
Rumi decided to be honest.
“I‘m doing okay,” she answered truthfully.
“I am glad to hear that,” he said warmly, his voice brushing through her thoughts with the softness of a hand through hair. “You seemed troubled the last time we spoke.”
Rumi lowered her gaze for a moment. She had been a bit stand-off-ish with him the last time they spoke because Jinu had failed to show up for one of their scheduled hangouts. Of course, she wouldn’t say this out loud to him, so she settled on something neutral. “I was thinking too much again.”
“Yes, some of us do tend to do that,” Gwi-Ma replied with what sounded suspiciously like amusement. “Our minds move in circles until they exhaust themselves.”
Rumi let out a small breath through her nose. “You make it sound like I do it on purpose.”
“I don’t think you do anything on purpose when it comes to your worries. They simply gather around you like the creatures inside your realm that refuse to leave your side.”
Despite herself, Rumi smiled faintly. The enormous face hovering before her tilted ever so slightly, as though observing her reaction.
“What did you do today?” he asked.
“Today?”
“Yes. Some of us tend to ask each other this often. And I found out it encourages conversation.”
“You could also just say you’re curious about what I did.”
“I am ancient beyond your comprehension, Rumi. I am able to multitask.”
That earned a quiet laugh out of her. It was small and brief, but genuine nonetheless.
“I trained some of the toads,” she answered after a moment. “Some of them can do handstands and flips now. But one of them fell over while doing so, and then acted like it had broken something. Turns out a pet on the head was all she needed.”
“That sounds like a dramatic toad.”
“She really is.”
“And after that?”
Rumi thought for a moment. “I sat by the cliffs overlooking one of the lakes.”
“The quiet one or the one with the fly clouds?”
“The latter,” she nodded. “I like listening to the buzzing there.”
“I believe you told me once about it, yes.”
Something about the way he said it settled warmly in her chest. It had been some time since she had brought up that place, but the fact he still remembered it made her feel seen. His face shifted again, billowing up lazily drifting sparks through the vast emptiness surrounding the platform. Rumi watched the small fires dance for a moment before speaking again.
“Can I ask something?”
“You may ask whatever you wish.”
“Why did you call me here?”
Gwi-Ma was silent for a few seconds.
“I wished to speak with you,” he finally said. “You spend much of your time alone.”
Rumi straightened slightly. “I don‘t mind being alone.”
“That was not what I said.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again.
Gwi-Ma’s grin remained unchanged, but she could feel his attention settle more fully onto her.
“Do you feel lonely, Rumi?”
The question landed softer than she expected, which somehow made it harder to answer.
Rumi glanced away toward the sea of fire surrounding the platform, thinking about her answer. “Sometimes,” she admitted quietly. “Not always. Just…” She struggled for the words. “It feels difficult to belong anywhere.”
“And why do you believe that is?”
Rumi hesitated. She was something that could unravel someone else‘s being by a single touch. Everything she passed outside of her realm would wither and die. Others feared her for the power she had and what she embodied.
“Because of what I am,” she said softly, looking down at the stone beneath her feet.
Gwi-Ma hummed in thought. “You remind me of stars,” he said.
That made her look back up at him in confusion. “Stars?”
“They spend their entire lives surrounded by others and still exist impossibly far apart.”
Rumi frowned slightly. “You make it sound depressing.”
“It is,” Gwi-Ma replied casually. “But they are still beautiful.”
“You always say strange things.”
“And yet you keep listening.”
“That’s because you’re difficult to ignore.”
“I should hope so. I am very large.”
Rumi chuckled again, more openly this time, and the flames around them flickered brighter in response. Gwi-Ma watched her quietly before speaking once more.
“Would you like to see other dimensions?”
The question caught her off guard enough that she stared at him for several seconds.
“Other realms you mean?”
“Not realms, Rumi. Dimensions. There are many places beyond this one,” he explained. “Worlds layered atop worlds, some born from dreams, others from memory, others from things we no longer remember existing at all.”
Rumi’s curiosity immediately stirred. “You can travel to them?”
“Of course. The portal with which Jinu brought you here can be used for that.”
“And you never mentioned this before?”
“You never asked.”
“That is a terrible excuse.”
Gwi-Ma paused, momentarily turning his giant head away from her. After a moment, he turned back before answering. “Point taken.”
Rumi crossed her arms, though the gesture lacked any real annoyance. It seemed more like she was trying to hug herself. “What are they like?”
“Some are beautiful. Some are terrible. Some are both simultaneously. There are cities suspended upside down above oceans of clouds. Forests where the trees whisper stories to travelers. Dimensions where music becomes physical matter. Places where time moves differently depending on how lonely you are.”
Rumi listened intently, completely drawn in despite herself.
“And I could actually go there?” she asked quietly.
“Yes.”
This didn‘t make any sense. Rumi would destroy whatever place she went to that wasn‘t her own. She would… right? And if she did, why would he let her go there in the first place?
“Why would you let me?”
“Because I think you have spent too long trapped in one place.”
Before she could respond, the flames beneath the platform began to move.
They spiraled upward around the platform in slow ribbons of violet fire, braiding together. At the same time, the symbols etched into the ground Rumi was standing on began to glow so brightly that it was hard to look at them. Long cracking ropes slowly rose out of them and crawled on the ground towards her.
Rumi looked down in alarm. “Gwi-Ma?”
“Don‘t be afraid,” he assured her gently. “I am merely giving you a gift. It will not hurt you.”
The fiery lines crawled towards her, climbing over her feet without hesitation and coiling themselves upwards. It was an unfamiliar sensation making its way across her skin. Some of them headed for her wrists, a couple others for her throat. The lines around her throat wrapped around themselves, burning an intricate pattern of black tattoos into her skin. She could feel the lines form, and it reminded her of her vines back home. She felt something shifting inside her, not painful, but immense, as though a door somewhere deep within her soul had begun to open. The others headed for her wrists, crawling down her arms in mesmerizing symmetry, before they coiled around her hands. They spun wristbands adorned with small flowerheads, the biggest one forming on the inside of her palm.
“What kind of gift is this?” she asked breathlessly.
“The ability to walk between dimensions. And the ability to speak their tongue.”
The flames reflected in her eyes as she stared at him. “You mean…”
“You will no longer be confined to a single space,” Gwi-Ma said softly. “When your heart longs to wander, the paths will reveal themselves to you.”
The warmth spread through her chest, blooming outward until it filled every inch of her body with tingling light. Images flashed through her mind in fragmented glimpses. Endless skies. Strange cities. Oceans glowing beneath white stars. Countless distant places waiting beyond the edges of reality.
Wonder slowly overtook the shock on her face.
“You’re really giving this to me?”
“I am.”
“Why?”
This time, when Gwi-Ma answered, there was something unmistakably fond in his voice.
“Because every child deserves the chance to find new friends."
The fire started to dim now, some of the flames extinguishing, while others simply slid off her skin, falling to the ground and vanishing.
“The patterns on your wrists will allow you to create a portal to the other dimensions, or traverse in the space between other concepts. But for now, I am limiting you to one dimension. It is similar to ours, their occupants having a similar anatomy like you. Now I do understand that their way of communication might be different compared to ours, which is what the marking on your throat will circumvent. It will allow you to understand and converse in whatever manner the beings in the other dimensions do. Communication is very important, after all.”
Rumi admired her new markings for a moment, before looking back at Gwi-Ma. “How do I use them?”
“It is simple. You‘ve seen the images inside your mind. Where they lead and what they contain. I want you to concentrate on the emotions they invoked in you. Then you stretch out your palms and focus on it, creating a gateway for you to pass through.”
Rumi looked back down at her hands, taking a deep breath. She stretched her arms out before her, palms facing front, creating a triangular symbol with her fingers. She thought about the images, the cities and landscapes, what all might reside within them.
“You‘re doing well, Rumi,” Gwi-Ma praised, causing a small sense of pride to swell in Rumi.
She felt something. A tingle of… longing.
She honed in on that feeling, wishing to go there, to be there, to not having to be alone. The new markings on her wrists started to warm, and she focused even harder. She heard the grinding of stone and bubbling of water, then a stretching of something wet, like a stressed rope which was slowly giving way.
A green light started piercing her eyelids, and when she opened them, she saw an archway made of stone before her. Its surface was riddled in plants and vines, and the doorway was filled with green light. It kind reminded her of the one at the edge of her realm.
“You did it!” Gwi-Ma exclaimed, letting out a deep rumbling laugh. “I‘m proud of you.”
Rumi turned her head to him, flashing him a smile as she lowered her hands. She took a slow, careful step towards it.
“So, what now?”
“You step through it.”
“Will it hurt?”
“Did Jinu‘s portal hurt?”
“No.”
“Then this won‘t hurt, either.”
Rumi took another step and now was directly before the portal. She slowly reached out with her hand, the chains on her arms clinking. The surface felt warm and thick like mud. When she withdrew her hand, small drops of the liquid followed, before they were sucked back into the portal, leaving the air empty again.
Rumi hesitated, wondering if she might be as dangerous there as she was here.
Gwi-Ma seemed to sense her doubts.
“One more thing, Rumi. The laws of our world still apply in others. Whatever you touch there will suffer the same fate as anything you touch here. Please, be careful.”
I knew it was too good to be true, she thought.
Regardless, Rumi nodded, turning back towards the portal. This was a chance for her, and she wanted to take it. She took a deep breath before taking the final step and crossing the threshold.
Walking through a portal for the first time sure was… an experience.
Instead of instantaneously reaching her destination like with Jinu‘s portal, she was dragged along an invisible current as various shades of green moved past her open eyes. She didn‘t feel any wetness on her skin despite being submerged in water, and she was able to breathe in and out as if she was on land. A constant bubbling noise followed her like someone exhaling underwater, and the crashing of waves accompanied it like a second half, all muffled like she was deep in the ocean. There wasn’t really an exact smell to it all. She felt air fill her nostrils, but it felt… empty. There was supposed to be smell, temperature or wetness. Which was in total contrast to her surroundings.
The current carried her onward without pause, and immense shapes swept past her at speeds that felt impossible to comprehend. Their forms were vast and swollen, marked by elongated fins, trailing tentacles, and clusters of glowing eyes that shimmered in the surrounding dark. She floated among them too quickly to fully understand what she was seeing, catching only fleeting impressions as each presence slipped away.
Some resembled enormous blobs with tentacles, their bodies pulsing gently as they moved, their suction cups lined with curved, claw-like edges that opened and closed in slow, deliberate motions, like mouths chewing on nothing. Others seemed like giant worms, though their bodies bore hundreds of fins that propelled them forward with surprising swiftness, far greater than their size should have allowed as they spun around their center axis.
They surrounded her on every side, passing above and below, gliding alongside her and then vanishing into the distance. Their movements felt purposeful, as though they were silent companions in her passage through the expanse, visible only to her as she was carried deeper into the unknown.
Before she fully understood what was happening, her movement slowed abruptly, as though she had collided with an unseen barrier. The sudden resistance startled her, breaking the rhythm of the current that had carried her so far. She lowered her gaze, and beneath her stretched an endless green expanse. From within it, a single enormous orange eye stared upward, unblinking, its vast head extending far beyond what she could comprehend within her field of vision.
Bricks began to emerge from the surrounding depths, rushing forward and locking into place with precise intent. They assembled rapidly, rising and shaping themselves into a gateway that closely resembled the one that brought her here. As the structure took form, strands of living plants wove through the gaps in the stone, curling and stretching as though they had always belonged there.
When she drew nearer, the surface of the gateway seemed to change. The stone darkened and weathered before her eyes, fine cracks spreading across it while patches of moss and age settled into its surface. What had just been newly formed now carried the weight of years.
She allowed herself one final glance at the strange and shifting environment around her, before turning toward the gateway and stepping through.
The transition was immediate and violent. It felt as though the ocean she had just crossed rejected her presence, surging against her and forcing her out with overwhelming force. Her body lurched forward uncontrollably as she was thrown through the opening.
The world returned all at once, crashing into her senses without restraint as she stumbled out of the portal. Sound, texture, and scent overwhelmed her in a single instant, each one sharp and insistent as reality reasserted itself. She heard high-pitched whistles sharply piercing her ears as something cried out from above, startled by her sudden appearance. She felt her feet stumble through thin blades of grass that tickled her soles, their soft touches quickly growing dry and fragile. There was the sweet smell, something rich and wet. It reminded her a bit of the sap from her trees back home, but this smelled different. Her foot caught onto something and she fell forward, her hands reaching out to brace themselves, the fingertips digging into soft and cold dirt. When she opened her eyes, she found herself in a clearing inside a forest. Trees reached up around her, their bark a greyish brown and leaves a stark green. The sun shone down past the trees surrounding her, their warm rays making Rumi‘s skin heat up.
Did Gwi-Ma do something wrong? Did she do something wrong?
This thriving place reminded her more of the realm of life rather than another dimension. But if this was the realm of life, where were the guardians?
It all seemed so familiar yet also completely foreign.
Where was she?
She heard something crumble and turned around just in time to see the gateway behind her collapse. The stone turned into dust as it was violently sucked back into the shimmering portal that had brought her here. Once the last brick was gone, the green light collapsed into an impossibly small point the size of her thumb, before disappearing with an audible pop that rang across the clearing.
And just like that, her way back home was gone.