When Night got back to his house he was completely prepared to get a stern talking to from his mom, but to his surprise it was the complete opposite. When he opened the door he could see his mother sitting at the table in a puddle of tears. Her long hair was draped over her face and it was slightly damp from the waterfall coming from her eyes.

  She looked up and immediately ran over to Night and hugged him tightly with tears streaming down her face, “Night! Thank god you decided to come back! I was so worried about you!”

  Night couldn’t help but feel bad for what he’d done to his mom. She must have believed that she might never see her son ever again. Since his dad was rarely home, it was Night who had to be there for her and take care of her, she must have felt hopeless when he stormed out.

  A few tears rolled down Night’s face, “I'm sorry for worrying you mom. I was going to go to the barrier, but… Some friends of mine came and stopped me. I changed my mind, I don’t need to know anymore.”

  She looked at him with a smile and said, “You finally made some friends! I'm so happy for you Night!”

  Night tried to fake a smile, “Yeah I did, and tonight I’m gonna go and spend the night at their house! Oh, I should probably ask you first, is it okay if I do that?”

  Night’s mom wiped her tears and said in an encouraging tone, “Of course it's okay! Just make sure to be back by tomorrow. You could even invite them over here afterwards, I’ll welcome any of my son's friends!”

  “Thanks mom! I’m probably gonna leave soon so I’ll just get to packing my bag.”

  Night walked to his room with a fake smile on his face, and when he stepped in his room it instantly faded. He felt horrible about making up such a lie, but he knew that it would be for the greater good… hopefully.

  ~~~

  Night was walking through the village with his duffel bag over his shoulder. He had left his mom with a warm smile, and he made sure that he said ‘I love you’ before departing. He felt horrible for deceiving his mom, but he would definitely make it up to her soon.

  Night eventually came up to the familiar alleyway and discreetly turned down it while making sure nobody was looking. It was a little past noon which meant that the streets were now a lot more sparse with people, this made it a lot easier to move around sneakily because he wouldn’t be watched by people on all sides of him.

  He got to the end of the long alleyway, which felt a bit colder than usual, and ran out into the clearing of azure grass and iridescent flowers. In the distance the white light from the transparent barrier was shining dimly across the expanse of flora that surrounded it on both sides. For some reason the barrier looked a little brighter now, it might have just been because of the time of day and the sun’s position, but the change was noticeable enough to cause Night to stop for a second before stepping up to it.

  Night was now standing just a few feet away from the barrier, he was standing so close in fact, that he could see the seemingly millions of runic symbols which made up the transparent barrier. Night decided to take a closer look this time around.

  At first it seemed like the runes were moving in completely random directions, they swirled around, intersected each others paths, and some even combined to create completely new runes which would separate just seconds later into their singular forms.

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  As Night continued to stare at the mesmerizing runes, he began to see their pattern. As complex as the rune’s movements were, they were not completely untraceable. Night found out that it was possible to track a single rune throughout its entire cycle. The rune would finish its path at the exact spot where it started, and then it would begin again. The runes continued in their complex dance forever, never changing their route in the slightest.

  Of course, Night had no clue what these runes meant, so the revelation that he had was not of significant importance to any of his endeavors, at least for now.

  ‘I wonder if I could learn what these mean? Maybe there's a book in the village about it. I’ll look into that later though, I mean it's not like this barrier is going anywhere.’

  Night took one final look at the runes while still deciding if he wanted to step forward through the embrace of the barrier. He hesitated for a long time while contemplating all the possible outcomes of his decision. Even though he brushed it off earlier, he was still wary of the so-called danger which was seemingly waiting for him on the other side. Night wouldn’t admit it, not even to himself, but deep down he was scared to step through.

  After a while of standing there he pulled up the courage and just walked slowly through the barrier. The barrier felt like absolutely nothing as he walked through, there wasn’t even any resistance on his body. It was as if he was just walking through a regular patch of air. The only thing that was interesting was that it was completely silent in the middle of the barrier. It was as if he walked into a slice of another dimension where sound had never existed.

  Night emerged from the other side of the barrier and stared in awe at the landscape in front of him. He stood completely still on the undisturbed ground of the Azure Plains and just took it all in. The slight warm breeze, the sound of birds singing in the distance, the sweet scent of the iridescent flowers in the air, it was all just so peaceful.

  At least it was peaceful for about ten seconds until Night’s grueling screams interrupted the serene beauty of the plains. Night fell to the ground in agony as seething pain rushed through his veins. His back glowed with the red hot radiance of flowing lava. It felt as though his entire body was being torn apart and reassembled over and over again as he was simultaneously being burned alive by the rushing lava which replaced the blood in his veins.

  In an instant, the pain was gone. All and all it had only lasted for about a second, but to Night it seemed like time had slowed down and he had been suffering for multiple minutes. He stayed still while laying on the ground, his entire body was dripping in sweat, but he felt completely fine.

  His body was unaffected, there were not even any cuts, burns, or scratches on it. It was his mind that was affected the most, the pain was now an afterthought.

  ‘What did I do? What happened to me?’

  Night’s mind became jumbled with thoughts, ‘What did I cause? Was this the danger? No it can’t be, it's not detrimental enough. Wait… will this keep happening to me? When will it happen next? Please… I can't deal with this forever. I’ve got to go back, I can't stay out here any longer. They were right… Mom was right… Why would I ever doubt her.’

  The anxiety set in quickly, rooting itself into Night’s brain and into every single one of his thoughts, ‘This land is dangerous and the barrier was there to protect us. I’ll just go back in and I’ll be alright… I hope.’

  Night got up from the ground in a labored movement, he wasn’t physically hurt, but his head felt a bit cloudy from the stress. At first he walked toward the barrier, and then he started running. He closed in on the barrier, ready to enter back into the warm familiarity that was his village.

  But instead of going directly through the barrier, his head smacked the barrier with a loud thud. He fell backwards and landed on his back with a pained screech. It had felt as if he banged his head against a solid wall of steel.

  His ears rang as his head was beating with pain. Laying on the ground, he held his hands against his head with a pained expression. Through the fuzziness of his mind he could only make out a single thought. The thought was more painful than all the suffering that he had gone through since stepping through the barrier. This thought embodied all the anxiety which had been pent up through this relatively short excursion into the outside world.

  ‘Am I trapped here?’