ON THE OTHER SIDE | AETHER

ONE

In front of you was a path above the clouds. Pillars sprouted from below. You stared at the door just a few steps ahead. It was completely white aside from some striking gold accents. The sky was a bright, mellow blue; when you looked above, there was no sign of the sun or moon.

You stepped forward, surprised by how real the ground felt. You could feel the indents of the bricks below your feet. The path was warm and curiously comfortable. Was this what people called a lucid dream?

You extended your arm and placed your palm on the door. Your fingers briefly traced the design before you pushed it open. A blinding light appeared yet your eyes didn't close. No, instead you felt as if you had begun to float. The light didn't hurt, only causing an odd sense of peace.

☁

What you didn't know was that you were floating in the space between two sides, and neither really wanted to take you in. You began to feel a falling sensation.

The serenity you felt when you opened the door didn't last for long. Limbo didn't take kindly to newcomers, especially ones from your world. Panic began to set in, but you couldn't feel your body flail. As if you were nothing but a head, or perhaps a soul.

One of the sides compromised, seeing a use to your presence in their world. But they only agreed to let you in at an unknown price.

How awful it felt to be so unwanted.

☁

Your eyes fluttered open, and a blue sky stared back at you. Immediately, you felt cold. It bit at your flesh, vying for your full attention. The temperature was vastly different from the path you were just on. Your arm twitched and your eyes shifted to it.

It was covered in so much red. Must be blood, you thought as you began noticing your surroundings. White snow. Leafless trees. Utter silence. You sank into the frozen mush, shivering when a gust of wind passed through the air. You blinked and your eyes burned.

Then, it caught up with you.

Like the crack of a lightning bolt, immense pain crashed into your head. You gasped and reached for your throbbing head. One second, you were barely conscious, and the next you were aware and feeling every sensation that seared through your body. What kind of lucid nightmare was this?

There was an aching cycle spinning around your head, sending another bullet of pain into your brain every few seconds. You felt like your brain was being turned into mush. It was hard to think. Hard to notice where you were and what was happening.

Desperate to find anything that would soothe it, you dug your hand into the snow and grabbed a handful of it. You pressed the snow into the side of your head. The small relief it gave you allowed you to take notice of a mask half-submerged in the snow.

Its color was a steel gray. A red line passed through the right eye hole. You recognized that mask from somewhere. As you stared, your mind struggled to place exactly how you knew what it was. You picked it up. It was cold, seemingly made out of metal.

Underneath where the mask had almost been buried, another metal-looking item protruded from the snow. You dug it out and your mind finally clocked where you had seen the mask before. The item had a spherical shape, a metallic ribbon-like shape at the bottom, and three orbs lining the top.

This was a vision, you realized. And the mask you were still holding was worn by members of the Fatui. As you held the vision, you noticed it had no element in the center. It was a foggy gray. The owner of this vision was dead.

An Inazuman vision and a Fatui mask... It was an odd pairing, but most things in dreams didn't make sense. You frowned, conflicted with how real your surroundings felt. This must be a dream. Genshin Impact was a video game. There's no way this wasn't a dream.