The second my foot crosses the threshold, the world stops making sense.
I stumble, blinking hard as the air thickens into a taste deliciously viscous and golden. It's not a slap of sensation, it's warm syrup being poured over my skull, dripping into every crack in my skin. Coating and seeping until my knees nearly buckle.
Because it's not just light or scent or sound. It's all of it. All at once. Everything is more. More color, more breath, more life. The air has weight here, that cradles rather than crushes. I inhale and it's rain and ripe fruit older than memory.
It's a garden.
No, that's not right. Calling it that is calling the ocean a puddle.
This isn't rows of tomatoes and ceramic frogs in sun hats. This is creation unleashed.
The flowers loom, towering like gods, their heads heavy and swaying. Petals curl in on themselves, ribbon candy dipped in oil, shimmering with colors I have no names for. Mauves that burn gold at the edges, blues so deep they go violet, then vanish. Some shift when I look directly at them, pulsing and breathing, resenting the attention I'm lavishing on them.
Burning starts behind my eyes, the sting of unspent tears blurring my vision. I blink it away hard and fast, not wanting to miss a single second of this moment.
"What the fuck…" I whisper, swiping at my face.
Caelum walks a few paces ahead of me, his silhouette carved in perfect arrogance against the pastel sky. Rose gold, washed peach, misty purples bleed across the horizon, melting at the edges, swirling wet ink on silk. But there's no sun. I crane my neck, squint against the impossible light. It's just a glow, soft and sourceless.
He doesn't look back. Just strolls forward on a nature hike. What I should do is plant my feet and demand answers with every ounce of the bite I've got left. What I actually do is swing my arms gently by my sides, and let my legs carry me down this trail that my body seems to recognise.
A rustle to my left stops me mid-step. Heart hammering, my head whips toward the sound. Something darts into the underbrush. A creature peers out from behind a blue fern that glitters like it's dipped in stardust. It's about the size of a rabbit, if rabbits had smoky fur and eyes of obsidian marble. Six eyes to be exact, all blinking in sync as it stares directly at me.
My stomach flips, because on some awful, ancient level of my brain, I know I've never been here. I know that, that's real. But whatever is buried deep in my bones whispers that I've seen this place. In dreams I forgot the second I woke up, in that stretch of night when the veil between real and unreal gets too thin.
I think I've been dreaming of whatever this is my entire life.
Trying to soak in every inch of the glorious visage around me, I keep pace with him, letting him lead me further into this unknown utopia. The trees and brush start to thin as we move forward, further and further away from the red door, from the only reality I've ever known.
The garden melts into a wild stretch of meadow, the shift so smooth it feels like walking through silk. One moment I'm brushing past towering petals the size of dinner plates, the next my boots are sinking into a sea of gold and green. Ankle-deep in soft grass and wildflowers, the kind that only exist in ancient books or fever dreams.
Everything's blooming. Twisting gently toward the light that doesn't have a source. Daisies the size of fists, stems so thick they look like bone. Flowers that hum when I pass too close, vibrating in a way that isn't sound but sensation, being touched without being touched.
And the air? It's warm and clean, my lungs pull it in as if they've never known how to breathe before. Every breath makes me feel more alive and less human. Inside, in a locked place where my emotions live, I know I should be afraid.
What scares me, is I'm not.
He comes to a stop at the bottom of the small dip, right in the middle of the stretching meadow. Hands in his pockets, face turned towards the sky, he looks like a completely different person here. Somehow even more beautiful, glowing with life.
Slowly, he lowers his head and without looking at me, nods, signalling for me to look over to our right.
My brain takes a few seconds to catch up with what I'm seeing. The cottage sits high on the crest of the hill, wrapped around a courtyard, cradling whatever sits at the centre. It's massive, three stories at least, but still manages to look soft. Plucked straight from a fairy tale, white stone walls dappled with creeping ivy, round archways, windows that glow gold behind fogged panes. The roof is uneven and shingled in moss, the kind of imperfection that looks designed.
This is a home.
And that breaks something in me.
Because I want to laugh and scream at the same time. Because I've slept in alleys with rats for company, in condemned buildings that stank of piss and rot, on train station benches pretending I was anywhere else. I've never lived in a place. Not really. And now I'm staring at the kind of house that little girls dream about when they still believe someone might love them enough to keep them safe.
My throat closes.
We stand there, silent as this strange place buzzes and hums around us.
"What are you?" My tone leaks bitterness.
He turns, framed by the strange sky, eyes still glinting with the same cruel amusement that's been driving me slowly insane.
"I'm Death," he replies. The answer to everything and nothing.
Then he gestures to the house.
"Welcome home, pet."