The world around him breathed like a living organism.
Ethan walked with measured steps, hands still tucked into the pockets of his crimson sweater, his gaze steady as he passed beneath a colossal arch of stone wrapped in bioluminescent vines. The terrain shifted subtly here — the gravity felt strange, as though each footstep echoed slightly upward. Overhead, the sea above pulsed with alien currents, its mirrored tides casting fractured beams of light down through the transparent sky like liquid constellations.
He moved through a narrow pass lined with jagged coral trees, their branches humming faintly. A herd of glass-skinned quadrupeds darted across the rocks nearby, their translucent bodies refracting the sea-light. Ethan barely gave them a glance — his senses were spread like a fine net, drifting over the land, dipping into shadows, curling around ridgelines and burrowing through the ambient energies of the region.
