I was slowly tiptoeing forward with a sword in my hands, waiting for it to strike an invisible wall and bloom into a tree. There was not a stranger moment in my life than this one. When I asked Flic to teach me how to traverse the Void, I did not expect that she will ask me to poke the air in front of me with a weapon and wait for some sort of anomaly, which she only described as a "sword splitting into a branching tree."

"Are we close yet?" I asked while slowly shuffling one foot in front of the other. The sword was shaking in my hands.

"We should be, which is why you need to be very slow. The moment it starts to fragment, you need to stop," she replied and watched me from behind.

"What does that even mean? How can it just... fragment without getting destroyed?"

"You'll see. It's hard to explain and you know the rules - no thinking. So for now, just keep going."

I was starting to feel sick of this place. Everything about the Void was bizarre, strange, and more than deadly. It was a place where mortals were not supposed to exist, therefore, its rules simply couldn't make sense to our minds.

I took the last step forward and nearly got a heart attack. There was no sound or other indication of what would happen. Within seconds, other blades started to grow out of the one I was holding, and then other ones from the newly grown. Now I finally understood what Flic meant, and it was just as hard to describe as she claimed. It indeed looked like a small tree made of steel blades instead of branches. That was, at least, until I dropped it.

"Stop!" Flic shouted at me. "See? That was it."

"Yeah... I... Okay!" I couldn't bring myself to react in any other way. I've never seen anything like it.

"Okay, now slide it forward once more. You can keep it on the ground so that you don't have to hold it all the time," she instructed me further.

I did as she asked and the blade once again sprouted into the giant metal tree, but it simply didn't stop. The illusion kept going and going, growing alongside the invisible wall of the Void's Room.

"That's... wow..." I gasped as I watched it stretch for what seemed like miles.

"Cool, huh? Anything that crosses between the rooms is, for a very brief moment, present in all the rooms at once. What you see here is like an image of the blade entering all the possible Rooms."

"That's hard not to think about."

"Then just focus on something else. Look! Ground! Firm, solid, and simple, just how our brains like it."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm watching the boring floor. But what now? We know where the wall is, so why not just cross?"

"Because we need to wait for the Rooms to shift. Once that happens, we'll know that it's safe and that we will be able to return back here later."

"Right, you mentioned that this place always changes."

"Yes. But don't worry, it's gonna shift soon. Time really flies by here. Even though there is none. That's quite a paradox."

"Don't think about it!"

"Hey! Don't fucking give me lessons! I've been living here for far longer than you!"

"Right right, sorry."

We sat there for a moment, but the silence between the two of us was driving me crazy. The fact was that outside of information about the Void and stories of our past lives, we had nothing to talk about. So to at least somehow fill in the time, I decided to ask for one more explanation.

"Say, Flic?"

"Hmm?"

"How does crossing the invisible threshold actually drive you crazy? I mean... What sort of crazy? Are we talking about hallucinations? Schizophrenia? Or some new mental illnesses?"

"No, mental illness is not madness. This thing works differently. It doesn't drive you mad. It makes you do it to yourself."

"That sounds like nonsense."

"Not at all. Just like the blade, for a brief moment, you are in all the Rooms at once. Hmm... Imagine a sheet of paper. On one side, it's yellow, on the other, it's green. If I flip it around, you will always see either one or the other colour, right?"

"Yeah? And?"

"And what do you see if I turn the paper only halfway, with the edge facing you?"

"I see only the edge?"

"No. You see everything behind the paper. And that's what the walls do. For a minuscule fragment of a second, it shows you the entirety of the Void. You see it as the Residents do. Like a map where you know each and every label. But after that moment of knowledge passes, you are back to your limited mind. You no longer comprehend the layout of the Void, yet you remember knowing it. The sudden loss of so much knowledge causes immense panic, grief, and an insatiable desire to experience it again. And all those emotions drive you crazy. Like an instant and deadly addiction to information."

"Wow... Well, that's lovely."

"Nothing about the Void is lovely. You should know that by now."

"Hmm... I don't know. I bet there is a Room with a giant flower in here somewhere."

"Cool. Let me know when you find it."

Our conversation would most likely continue if it wasn't for the sudden change in our surroundings. The tree of blades that formed itself all over the single wall of the Room, has, for a brief moment, shattered to pieces, only to reassemble a second later.

"I'm guessing that was the shift?"

"Yup! That's our cue. Let's head out, or we'll never make it back to those doors of yours in time."

"Cool. So... How do we cross without all that knowledge overload?"

"You close your eyes."

"What? Seriously? That's it? No crazy illusions or things mortal mind can't understand?"

"Nope. This part is really simple. If you don't see the line between the Rooms, you can't obtain all that crazy knowledge, and you won't go nuts. Now come on. We still want to get back here before the next shift," she waved at me to follow her, closed her eyes, and disappeared into the wall of blades. I sighed. Part of me still remembered those nasty feelings from my first crossing, and the idea of even the slightest risk of feeling them again was not adding to my courage at all. Nevertheless, I simply couldn't back out now. I was pretty sure Flic would not shut up about it, so I picked up the sword, closed my eyes, and walked forward.

For a brief moment, there was a feeling of weightlessness. So short that you would barely pay attention to it, yet long enough for you to notice it.

"Can I open my eyes now?" I shouted, hoping that Flic is nearby.

"Yeah. But don't get freaked out."

I have to give it to Flic, she did warn me, but I still couldn't help but feel shocked about what I saw. Even describing it hurts my head as I desperately try to recall it. It was like a cave made of silver metal rings, so densely packed together, they would form solid walls and ground, but interlinked and organized, so that a pattern could be seen in them. The whole place was well lit up, even though I couldn't see a single light source. And then, in front of us, were five tunnels. Three were on the ground floor, and two were situated inside the wall above them. Each was glowing bright orange from its depths.

"Man, Void is so freaky," I remarked.

"Yeah. And we're totally fucked."

"Huh? Why?"

"You said that you walked forward when you came to me, right?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, there are essentially two types of rooms. Those that look like big landscapes but are actually smaller than they seem. Like the one we came from. But then there are also these ones. Usually bigger rooms with multiple pathways leading to all sides, twisting and curling. Simply said, this place might not even lead directly forward."

"Oh... Well, why not just go back and wait for another shift with a better Room then?"

"Yeah, we'll have to do that. I don't want to get stuck in here and lose the way back to the home Room."

"Why is that Room of yours so special anyway? If there's pretty much nothing in the Void, then why stick to just one place?"

"Ah, shit, that is hard to explain. Well, obviously, there's the fact that it has an actual hollow building, so a better hiding spot should a Resident come travelling by. But it's also the first place I went to after I won the Grand Game. When that was all done and dusted... well, I guess I was just looking for anything to even remotely call home. So I settled there. Brought a few of those cubes and other things that weren't nailed down from other Rooms. Guess you can call it decorating."

"That makes sense. I guess I wouldn't want to just roam this place aimlessly either. It's nice to have a place to return to."

"Yeah, definitely. So, shall we go back then? There is nothing else for us here."

"Sure, let's head... back..."

I stood there, stuck in one place like a marble pillar. Fear wrapped around my heart and strangled it as hard as it could while still keeping me alive. There should have been nobody else in the Void. The chances of meeting anything else living, if it could even be called that way, were incredibly slim. So you can imagine my fear when I saw a humanoid silhouette in one of the tunnels.

"Shut your eyes!" Flic shouted at me and started dragging me backwards. I couldn't even protest before I felt us crossing the Room threshold.

"What the... hey!" I couldn't bring myself to formulate a whole sentence.

"Shut up and keep running. Close your eyes when you see me disappear!" Flic shouted and kept running back towards her home with the sword pointing in front of her.

"What was that?" I asked, trying my best to stay close to her.

"A Resident." Those words were like cold, sharp steel running across my back.

"What?! Are you sure?"

"No, but we can't risk it. If it's a survivor, good for them. If not, we need to get off our asses and run!"

I watched as she approached a giant pit behind the central building where she lived.

"Umm... Flic?"

"Just keep running! It's not a pit! Gravity will change when you get too close to the edge. Just keep going!" My heart skipped a beat, yet I still followed her, knowing that there was simply no way I could survive on my own. Before we would 'leap' over the border of this apparently safe hole, I quickly glanced over my shoulder. The creature was there. A dark silhouette was watching us from where we came.

"Fuck!" I cursed.

"What?"

"It's definitely a Resident. It's following us!"

"Then we just need to keep going. If we cross enough Rooms, then maybe we'll just have a chance at escaping."

"But your home..."

"Screw my home! It's not worth my existence!"

As she said those words, I finally understood what she meant by the change of gravity. When we ran into the pit, the force holding us down changed direction and we were suddenly running alongside the hole's inner wall.

"Is it still behind us?" Flic asked me after a while.

"No," I replied after a quick glance behind us.

"Cool! Then we might still have a chance. We will not get tired here, so just keep running until I tell you to stop, okay?"

"Right!"

We kept going for a while. The trip down... or maybe even forward, was long. A proof that the Rooms were indeed uneven. We must've made it at least ten times as far as was the distance between the main building and the walls, before finally, Flic's sword, which she always kept pointing forward, once again sprouted into its tree form.

"Now!" she shouted and I closed my eyes. After a moment, I felt the quick effect of the crossing.

When I opened them again, I wish I had never done that. In front of my face, so close that I could feel my breath reflecting off of it, was another face. Totally black, shaped roughly like that of a human, but with many small antlers growing out of it and towards its back. The front was not any prettier. It was as if there were several headbands wrapped around the creature's head, but partly sunken into its flesh, or even into one another. Each such headband was then sporting a set of eyes of various sizes, with a total I could only roughly estimate. They were darting all over the place, inspecting my every detail. And then finally, from its non-existing mouth, came a voice.

"Don't be afraid. We can be friends."