Chapter 6

In this backward world, untouched by headphones and speakers, most people could still achieve the first half of “keen hearing and sharp sight,” and Kraft was no exception.

He felt he had heard something, though it was exceedingly hard to detect, even making him wonder if it was an auditory hallucination born of prolonged silence.

It was like someone dragging a heavy burlap sack across snow, low-quality fibers or something else grinding against tiny crystals, the soft snow layer fracturing under immense force, then space being compressed as countless intricate snowflakes shattered and collapsed into dull blocks—he heard exactly such a sound.

If his senses were not mistaken, the sound was passing no more than five meters from Kraft’s window, advancing with decisive force in the darkness where even this well-nourished youth could not see.

It was hard to convince himself of any reasonable explanation—for instance, that it was merely a late-returning villager or a petty thief burdened with heavy loot.

No, that was impossible. Kraft’s hand was already on his sword hilt; though the alien occupying half his soul lacked physical training, the other half, which had controlled this body for over a decade, could execute the high-difficulty maneuver of drawing the blade and placing it at another’s throat in an instant.

He might not yet act so violently, but even the scabbard alone could deliver a solid blow to stun an untrained adult.

That sound—the faint, nearly hallucinatory sound—remained unchanged. It seemed to linger in place, not retreating. Continuous and low, it inexplicably evoked the image of a train roaring past, its cars in sequence, the unceasing rumble persisting until the last carriage had vanished.

Kraft imagined the being behind the sound in his mind: it must be long and massive, like a train, yet able to move silently across the snow; those who had never seen its form could only conjure its shape from the endless rustling.

The content built by hearing and unfounded imagination was too bizarre, closer to a nonsensical dream than objective reality; it nearly made him doubt he was caught between sleep and wakefulness, his low-power brain blending vague sensory input with subjective content without analysis, arriving at the conclusion that a train was quietly strolling before him.

But he knew he was fully awake, awake enough to feel the cold wind entering his mouth and nose, passing through the barrier of teeth and lips, swirling between the soft palate and hard palate, then swallowed into his throat.

The unwarmed airstream stripped away the thin moisture on his mucous membranes; sensitive nerves faithfully transmitted the signals to his brain. In such cold, the body’s emergency mechanisms activated: catecholamines secreted by the adrenal medulla stimulated his circulatory system, blood pumped through arteries into the Circle of Willis, circulating throughout the entire brain to ensure the fragile organ functioned normally.

So could it be possible that a truly long and silent colossal entity was passing before him, yet paradoxically emitted only a barely perceptible sound?

It had avoided every obstacle, traversing the chaotic village without crushing even half a plank or dry twig. It moved freely through the snowy night, the boundless darkness its ocean of unrestricted motion.

Within this ocean, walls of rock and clay were as void as empty air; what it rubbed against was not snowfall, but something finer, more abstract—light, yet capable of supporting its immense body as it moved by its own will.

Kraft did not understand how he had deduced all this from such a faint sound—or perhaps no thought was needed at all; the vast, bizarre content was inherently contained within the sound itself.

He felt his thoughts had never been so active—not when swinging an iron sword, nor when writing solutions long memorized—nothing compared to this. It was like a hammer striking red-hot metal, thoughts spattering like sparks, a boiling soul too intense for the human skull, shaped by millions of years of evolution, to contain.

As time passed, his already full mind filled with more information; things he had never considered surfaced from beneath the surface, countless fragments whirling past like a carousel—the thin layer of gray matter struggled to find words within its limited storage to describe what the sound revealed, creating the illusion of thoughts racing like lightning.

This process was entirely beyond conscious control; consciousness stood like a man before a dam’s gates, watching everything known by both souls surge forth.

The interconnected neural network selected the word “scales” to describe the skin rubbing against the minute substance—a segmented shell composed of inexplicable content, capable of contacting the most subtle concepts, enabling the lengthy Zhuti to engage in meaningful activity within space.

The Zhuti to which the “scales” adhered far exceeded the reach of consciousness, extending from the known into the dark unknown.

Its movement’s “sound” arose from fragments sheared off by the scales rubbing against the minute substance; these fragments began irreversible decay the moment they left the Zhuti , falling from another conceptual space into the human-perceivable space that overlapped it, finally dissolving into information compatible with this world.

Such information continuously spread, like expanding sound waves, emitting a final hiss before annihilation—but only souls surpassing the ordinary could, under special circumstances, perceive this information, passively comprehending its origin before the fragile, water-filled organic tissue protected by the hard calcium-salt dome boiled over.

And now, this tiny, accidental amalgamation of two souls, due to doubled input without expanded capacity, reached a subtle threshold of density, enabling him to “hear” things unimaginable in his two meager, dull, brief lives. He could not describe it in human language, only define it as an ineffable, reality-transcending existence.

On the edge of madness, he grasped the meaning behind the carvings on the stone pillars he had seen by day—those things had fallen from a higher plane, twisting and warping as they descended into this world.

Those who received them could not comprehend their true meaning, instead depicting them using elements from this world—as a colossal serpent in the night, endlessly coiling, its body vanishing into boundless darkness.

Kraft drifted in his frenzy, everything around him receding; he did not even know if he still stood before the window—until a hand rested on his shoulder.

…………

“Kraftko, have you been standing here all night? Kraft?”

Vision returned in an instant; under rare sunlight, his pupil sphincters contracted violently. In a sensation of weightlessness, Kraft realized his rigid body was tilting forward rapidly, propelled by the pressure on his left shoulder—the white windowsill loomed before his eyes, expanding at a terrifying speed.