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As he focused his mind, Hector could feel something different. Something he’d never felt from meditating before. Slowly, hesitantly, he concentrated harder, allowing his thoughts to be consumed by this world of empty space.

In a way, it was absolutely terrifying. Floating. Forever. Nothing to hold onto. No destination. Neverending darkness. And the more time he spent focusing, the more of it he could sense. A vast ocean of nothingness. This was a pocket dimension? Wasn’t it supposed to be tiny? It felt gigantic beyond reckoning. Or was his mind simply playing tricks on him? Maybe this one remaining sense of his was wrong, somehow. It wasn’t like his normal senses were infallible, either.

If it weren’t for those three other souls there, Hector was sure he would have begun panicking a long time ago. They were his only anchors, the only things keeping him from being completely overcome by this unfathomable place.

Yet still, he lost time. And he could sense himself losing it, too. The strange, disjointed progression of his own nebulous thoughts was how he could tell. Sluggish, fast, sluggish again, then even slower. On and on in varying patterns and speeds.

At length, however, he sensed something else. A glimmer. A crack. In the distance. So far away. Farther than normal sight could have told him, surely.

Then, another one. Another crack. This time in the opposite direction and just as far away.

Then another. And another. And still another. Then five more. Then ten. Dozens. Hundreds? All cracks but all different, too. Each one rippled, pulsed, echoed. Thousands. Maybe even millions. Far too many to count, at least. And they were everywhere around him. Closer than seemed possible. On top of him. Phasing through him.

Where had they come from? Had they been there the whole time? Something told him they had, something in his one sense. Like he’d been looking through a window this whole time without realizing there was glass there. But now he could see the glass. Now he could tell.

This wasn’t emptiness. This wasn’t just space.