Chương 115: The Vortex of Oblivion

The Vortex of Oblivion is a colossal tornado of staggering scale — an entire region of Oblivion, stretching from the ground itself all the way up into the upper atmosphere, blotting out the sky completely for hundreds of kilometers in every direction. Inside this titanic vortex, thousands of flying islands spin endlessly. Each one follows its own unique, chaotic spiral, yet despite everything, they never collide with one another.

Time within them is distorted, and each individual island carries its own strict limit dictating how long one can remain there — on some, Players begin to forget themselves after as little as two hours, while on others the anomaly is far gentler, allowing them to stay for entire days, sometimes even weeks.

Because the islands move at different speeds, crossing between them is only possible when a given island's frantic motion finally settles: it's in that brief lull that Players must decide — move on to another patch of land, if time allows, or linger a while longer, wringing out every last hour the island has to offer. A special relic helps Players with this — the Time Chronometer.

It unerringly adjusts to the distorted time of whichever island one stands on and displays exactly how much time remains before that Player is claimed by Oblivion. At the very top of this immense storm, right in the Eye of the Storm, an absolute, deathly silence reigns. There, on a motionless island, stands a magnificent Dark Castle, built entirely from black obsidian gleaming with an oily sheen.

Within its walls lives the Immortal King — the true ruler of the hurricane, who feeds on memories and time carried to him by the relentless, furious wind sweeping up from all the lower islands. Legend has it that the Immortal King was once a mad tyrant, consumed by his hunger for power. A thorough egotist who valued nothing above his own single life, he grew terrified of the old age and death looming on his horizon.

In pursuit of eternal youth and boundless, unchecked power, the King struck a horrifying, unthinkable bargain with the devil, coldly sacrificing his entire once-thriving kingdom in the process.

The devil claimed the souls and the time of every last one of his subjects, transforming what had once been peaceful lands into a raging, never-ending hurricane, and in return granted the tyrant himself an obsidian citadel at the very summit of this man-made chaos, where he now feasts in complete, absolute solitude, forever devouring memories that were never his to take.

Lloyd looked up one last time, to where thousands of islands still ceaselessly spun, weaving together into one dizzying, boundless pattern that seemed to stretch to the very edge of the visible world, and settled in to wait patiently for one of them to finally drift close enough to his own island, frozen at the edge of the cliff.

The wind here, right at the platform's edge, felt far stronger than it did farther inland — it whipped at the hem of his black outfit, snaking under his collar, forcing him to squint and hunch his shoulders.

Somewhere high above, the Vortex itself let out its low, unbroken roar, that endless, howling current of air, as though breathing with its own colossal lungs, while at the cliff's edge small stones kept breaking loose from the island's surface, swept up at once by unseen currents that carried them swirling through the air like a swarm of agitated insects.

The sky overhead remained the same dense, leaden expanse, without a single gap, save for the occasional flicker of something distantly resembling lightning far off near the Vortex's peak, quickly swallowed again by the thick blanket of clouds. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Lloyd stood motionless, hands in his pockets, watching the slow but inexorable dance of stone giants around him, something he'd long since grown accustomed to.

A few nearby islands drifted past without ever coming close enough to cross onto — their paths carried them off to the side, away from his own island frozen at the edge of the abyss — and he simply watched them go in silence, continuing to wait patiently for the right moment.

Somewhere behind him, from deeper within his own island, came the faint rustle of leaves on the sparse, twisted trees bending under the gusts of wind, and beneath his feet, fine gravel kept crumbling loose, tumbling off the cliff's edge and vanishing without a trace into the bottomless gray void below.

Off in the distance, far below, amid the swirling gray haze, the shadow of something large slipped between two distant islands, moving so fast that Lloyd never quite managed to make out its shape — whether it was one of the local flying beasts or simply a trick of light and shadow within the endless currents of air. He watched the vanishing silhouette almost without thinking, but it dissolved quickly back into the depths of the vortex, leaving behind nothing but a fleeting, uneasy feeling.

A little higher up, at a considerable distance, another island drifted by, noticeably larger than the rest, its surface covered with something distantly resembling the ruins of an ancient city — broken columns and crumbling walls visible even from this far away — but this island, too, passed on by without ever drawing close enough for Lloyd to even consider crossing.

He gave a small shrug, adjusting the strap of his backpack, and went on waiting, eyes tracing the familiar churn of stone and green overhead, occasionally glancing toward the horizon, where particularly dense, dark clouds were gathering, promising, by the looks of it, another surge of stronger wind. At that very moment, one of the nearby islands suddenly began closing in fast.

A massive slab of stone, its edges dotted with sparse, twisted shrubs, hurtled toward him at a terrifying speed, slicing through the air with a low, vibrating hum that resonated as a dull tremor somewhere deep in Lloyd's chest. He tensed instinctively, even though over the past week he'd watched this exact scene play out dozens of times and knew perfectly well how it always ended.

The island drew closer and closer, until it seemed as though only a couple of centimeters of empty space separated them — Lloyd could clearly make out every crack in its rocky surface, every root of the twisted little tree clinging to the very edge of the drifting platform, every tiny fleck of mineral glinting along the stone's broken face.

But, as always, the islands never actually touched, as though some invisible, powerful force stubbornly refused to let them, holding between them the thinnest, most intangible boundary imaginable — one that could neither be seen, nor explained, nor grasped in any way at all.

Taking a slow, deep breath, Lloyd clenched his fists, then resolutely stepped forward, crossing without hesitation through the narrow strip of emptiness separating the two islands — onto new, still-unexplored ground, ready to meet yet another day of endless, exhausting hunting.