The World Inverted

Maren stepped forward.

The blue-lit cathedral shivered around her as though exhaling. The silent strangers parted, creating a narrow path to the threshold. Each footfall echoed too loudly—like her steps were being amplified by an unseen system. Her lantern flickered in glitching bursts of light, its flame stretching into strange geometric shapes before snapping back.

At the doorway, the world wavered.

One moment: sunlit grass, wind brushing green hills.
The next: a black digital grid stretching to infinity.

She lifted her hand and touched the shimmering divide.

It felt like water, then glass, then nothing at all.

The hum grew deafening.

And then—the world inverted.

Maren stumbled through the threshold as gravity seemed to peel sideways. Her lantern ripped from her hand, dissolving into blue shards of light. For a heartbeat, she fell upward, downward, sideways—she couldn’t tell.

And then she landed.