After adjusting his mood, Jeming stared at the distant sky.
The massive space rift stretching across the sky, like a pitch-black maw tearing through the heavens, hung silently at the edge of the Ship Plane.
The rim of the rift flowed with unstable streams of purple-blue energy, occasionally erupting with bursts of annihilating sparks—high-energy particle streams from the friction of two high-dimensional spaces forcibly interfacing.
His breathing unwittingly quickened.
His lungs expanded, contracted, then expanded again.
The sound of air rushing through the trachea amplified in his eardrums, rough and heavy like an old bellows.
It wasn't until this sound abruptly intruded into his consciousness that Jeming was startled awake.
Had I... just zoned out?
He looked down at his own hands.
The skin shimmered with an abnormal reddish hue, as if molten lava was slowly coursing beneath.
