We thrived in vibrant silence. Gone was the harsh glare of the sun. Gone were the sharpangles of sight, replaced by the aura of echolocation. Shadows draped their capes upon every contour of our world, caverns connected by hundreds of tunnels, and we lived under – or perhaps within – a curtain of darkness. 

But despite our tranquility, rumor had it that catastrophe was bound to decimate ourcivilization: The Eschaton, The End. For centuries, people called it a folktale, a scapegoat forthe elders whispering their warnings. I, for one, suspected otherwise. 

I woke up from a short nap, and gazed into the mirror of my bedroom. A pair of large androunded pupils frolicking in a sea of white, staring back. My skin: pale, smooth, and hairless. My jaw, bone and brawn, jutted out from my cheek. 

My ears were two finely tuned instruments, which could detect the subtlest of vibrations—what was that? The annoyed click of my father? Not again, I thought. I rubbed my eyelids, packed my bag, and set out for work. 

I strolled through networks of caves, intricately woven together in a fabric of shadowytunnels. With my spindly hand, I grazed black walls adorned with lichen murals and rockymosaics, absorbing their touch with my fingertips. Echoing in the distance, the clicks of myFather grew more frequent, more impatient. 

I picked up the pace. Sprinting beside the underground currents of air, I hurried to the town library, where my father served as the chief librarian. 

“You’re not very early,” my dad said, as I arrived panting. Our language was a symphony of clicks, whistles, and finger movements to depict an idea or statement, rich in rhythm andexpression. 

“I know, I’m sorry,” I grunted. “How long will this take?” 

“As long,” Dad said, “as it needs to.” 

I sighed, and began to work. Our library contained every scripture known to our people. At first, I found the nature of restocking grueling, but it wasn’t long before I settled into a passive, meditative flow. Yet, as I reached for another book, a familiar voice hissed from behind— 

“It’s coming…so soon…,” a hooded figure murmured. “Eventually, the Eschaton! Write it down! Write it DOWN!” 

It was an elder. She shuffled past the store’s entrance. Her skin was a folded sheet ofwrinkled curtains, dotted with darkened stains in a pale purple tapestry. She hunched over, but as she drew closer, I leaned in, drawn to the sound of her speech resonating underneath her shrouded hood. 

“Soon, tomorrow, maybe the next!” she rasped again. 

This particular elder had wandered into the library months ago, and returned every weeksince, murmuring the same sentences again and again. She was always rambling, invading my subconscious, a shadow that never seemed to go away. 

I clicked, trying to locate my father; only to realize he had left to do an errand. I hesitated—recalling countless instances of what he would say: 

Son, don’t interact with the elders. Their stories are nothing but lies! The only stories thatmatter are the ones recorded in this library. 

I grunted, then sighed, then tried my best to usher the elder out. 

“Excuse me, ma’am—” 

“It’s coming! The arrival, so soon, it’s coming!” she whispered intently, her raspy voicecackling with speech. 

“What is it? What’s coming?” 

“The books! It’s in the books! You must have read it. How have you not…?!” “Read what? ” 

“It’s horrid, terror! Doom shall be brought upon those who write it down! Prepare yourself, adolescent, as the Tales of the Unlit and the sunlit world will never brush past one’sfingertips, printed on paper, with ink of fire!” 

I froze. Her sequence of clicks was none like any other I had heard. Her voice was a melody of rusted wind chimes, and now she grasped my palm. Surprisingly, her touch was warm. 

“One day, a young explorer named Moriya,” she began, “ventured beyond the familiar caverns! Guided by incandescent moths and the rhythmic whispers of the earth, she found an opening, a crack in the world’s shell. Hesitantly, she stepped through. And she was the first to discover the Outside!

“A blinding blaze assaulted her, a million needles pricking her skin. A screech escaped her lips—the world, awash in a colorful glare, stretched before her, searing the lens of her eyes, petrifying her skin to the texture of bark! Moriya stood upon the purview of two worlds, the echoes of secluded caverns and the scorching pulse of the present solace!”

I waited for her clicks to stop reverberating around the library. Then, I waited some more as I absorbed her story, the way a stone furnace absorbed heat. 

At last, I asked, “How do you…know all of this?” 

She smirked. She lifted her hood, and underneath the tainted purple skin where her eyesshould have been was nothing but burnt flesh. 

“I am Moriya,” she whispered. 

… 

I ran back home without bothering to restock the last books. I drape myself in a quilt andshut my eyes, praying for peaceful sleep. 

When I awoke, a hot pain stabbed directly through my eyelids as they fluttered open. Myvision blurred, and the familiar incandescent glimmer of my home was a distorted, energized abstraction. The fabrics of society seemed…distraught. I rubbed my eyes and I felt bumps upon them, as if someone had carved letters onto my very eyelids. 

The blaze was all I could remember, and it still burns to this day.