A True Person

“No!” the unicorn screamed, desperately veering to the side. His hooves slid across the damp earth, stumbling over roots and stones, but fear pushed him forward, not allowing him to stop. “Please, don’t…”

The sounds faded, swallowed by the predatory whisper with which a thick root erupted from the ground. The unicorn barely had time to turn, and at that very moment, a rough, slippery tentacle lashed out, striking him and piercing through him.

It was as if time slowed down when his body trembled with pain. His hind legs buckled, but he kept standing, fighting until the end. He felt the root pulling the life from him, his strength leaving his body, flowing into the resonant depths of the earth. Thoughts, emotions, memories—all turned into fading light.

Finally, the unicorn collapsed, and around him, new roots began to push up from the soil, eager and hungry. They coiled around him, covering his body with writhing rings, absorbing what was left of the creature. One more moment—and he no longer existed.

The ground around was littered with the bodies of all sorts of creatures from Equus—ponies and pegasi, unicorns and griffins, diamond dogs and many others. But there was no peace for them, even in death. At first, the earth trembled faintly, almost imperceptibly, but then the cracking grew louder, spreading across the planet.

Roots burst from the cracks in the soil, like ominous serpents, stretching toward the bodies, wrapping around them, consuming them, dissolving them into themselves. The lifeless remains became part of a vast network, nourishing something ancient and terrifying.

Across the planet, in every corner of it, the roots continued their deadly march, taking away every spark of life.

All of this was heading toward the massive tree that towered over the world. Its trunk stretched into the heavens, its branches interwoven into a thick canopy, and its roots, spreading beneath the earth, connected all of Equus into a single whole. One by one, sparks of life flowed to the tree, its roots absorbing the strength of the creatures, filling it with their sap, soaking in their energy.

Time passed, and at last, the tree was sated. It seemed as if even its leaves no longer rustled, as if the tree was falling into a deep slumber, keeping the absorbed life within itself.

In their hiding places, the few survivors crouched, hidden deep in caves, in damp and dark burrows. They trembled in fear, feeling how the world around them slowly quieted, how silence—unnatural and heavy—grew in its place, as if it no longer belonged to this place. The echoes of life on the surface were nearly gone, as if the earth itself had forgotten what life was.

Filled with power, the roots slowly began to retreat into the earth, as though dissolving into it. They vanished, leaving behind a barren, lifeless soil where not a single body remained.

Years passed, decades, centuries, millennia. Time carried on its way, leaving only shadows of memories of that catastrophe, until one day…

The dense night pressed around the ancient altar in the heart of the forest, thick as wine, concealing a temple lost in the embrace of misty shadows. This temple—or rather, its ruins—remembered a time when the forest was younger and the sun shone brighter. Now, walls without a roof barely held together, overgrown with moss and winding roots. In the cracks between the stones, resilient plants had sprouted over the years, living symbols of nature reclaiming an ancient legacy.

However, the space before the altar had been meticulously cleared, and the patch free of grass and weeds bore numerous ancient symbols carved into the stone in an intricate pattern. This was a complex array, where those who understood could see a refined ritual geometry, something both majestic and ominous.

The air quivered, saturated with magic and tension, as if every particle held a secret. The silver horns of the unicorns gathered before the altar emitted an ethereal glow, reflected on the mossy walls. Their dark garments—tight cloaks adorned with symbols of the moon and stars—had bright sparks that looked like living eyes. Each of them, surrounded by shadows and ancient magic, stood still, filled with determination and unwavering devotion.

“We must free the Lady,” came a hoarse, strained voice from the eldest cultist, known as Midnight Veil. His gaze shone with fanatic resolve. “Our queen suffers on the Moon, and we must break her chains, release her from the bonds of harmony and fate itself!”

He looked slowly around at the gathered, each word fueling their faith.

His words were met with approving murmurs from the unicorns and thestrals.

“You all know the prophecy: in four years, the seal will fall, and the Mother of Night will be freed from her confinement. But our Lady’s triumph will be shadowed by enemies, servants of deceitful ‘harmony’—the Elements of Harmony,” he pronounced the last phrase with barely concealed disdain.

The mention of these enemies stirred a wave of resentful murmurs among the assembly. Voices rose above the forest: curses upon harmony, its guardians, and everything associated with it. Some praised their Lady aloud, calling her the Mother of Night, the Queen of Dreams and Stars, known to many as Nightmare Moon.

“We’ll destroy those fools!”

“Cursed be the false harmony!”

“Our Lady will be free!”

“Glory to the Mother of Night! Glory to the Mother of Night!”

The shouts grew louder, rising like a wave, until Midnight raised a hoof, calling for silence. The noise subsided, and all eyes turned back to their leader.

“Your faith is strong, and our Lady will honor it,” Midnight said with a restrained smile, revealing a sphere glowing with a faint blue light. “The Mother left us this: an artifact containing a fragment of her power. With it, we shall shatter harmony’s chains and pave the way to her freedom.”

A surge of elation swept through the crowd. The eyes of the fanatics blazed, some whispering prayers to their Lady, falling into a trance.

“I see you’re eager,” Midnight smirked, turning to a mare unicorn standing nearby. “Silent Shade, is the inspection complete?”

“Yes, we checked all the symbols as you instructed, Primus,” she replied with a deep bow.

“Excellent. Let us begin,” declared Midnight, looking at the gathered. “This will mark the dawn of a new era, the end of harmony! Bring forth the sacrifices, for they are honored to serve our Lady.”

With these words, the devoted cultists dispersed, preparing for the ritual’s final stage. In the nocturnal forest, a tense anticipation hung in the air, and the ancient altar seemed to come alive, anticipating what was soon to unfold.

A sweltering summer day had long since given way to the coolness of night. The heat seemed to dissolve into the air, like an echo of the past, making room for a fresh, almost awakened space of the night. The asphalt, scorched by the sun all day, was beginning to release its accumulated warmth, exuding the smell of heated stone and dust.

Along this deserted road, under the faint light of sporadic street lamps, walked a slender man with short dark hair. His steps were light and confident, like those of someone unaccustomed to delay.

At first glance, he might have seemed quite young, but meeting his gaze made it clear: he was over thirty. His eyes—dark, with a piercing gleam—seemed to hold endless roads already traveled and dreams of new ones yet to be discovered.

The backpack and rolled-up sleeping mat on his back easily marked him as a hitchhiker, one of those who had taken to the roads this summer. Perhaps, an onlooker might wonder what had brought him here, alone in the middle of an empty road, serene yet solitary, as clouds loomed in the distance, promising rain.

But the man seemed to need neither questions nor explanations. He walked, smiling slightly, as if he held within himself the answer to everything this summer night's sky might ask. Sometimes he listened to the music in his headphones, oblivious to the distant, barely discernible, yet relentless rumbling of thunder. His gaze was fixed ahead, beyond the horizon, where the night merged with the sky, fading into the endless dark.

His faithful companions—the backpack and sleeping mat—seemed to be the only witnesses to the freedom he felt in that moment. In the cool darkness of the night, under the open sky with the faint taste of an impending storm in the air, he was free and happy, as if each step was carrying him toward something long awaited.

“What’s happening?!” Midnight Veil shouted anxiously, his voice cutting through the rumble of the ritual chamber.

“The ritual is spiraling out of control! We’ve lost our connection to the artifact!” Silent Shade yelled hysterically, panic evident in her voice. “Something is warping our magical arrays!”

An ominous light flared over the ritual circle, and the magical symbols on the floor began to flicker in a mad rhythm, pulsing in sync with the tremors in the very fabric of space. Once orderly and precise, the symbols now sparked and danced in chaotic frenzy, creating horrific distortions that caused the walls and floor to ripple like thin fabric tearing under an invisible force.

The ritual, intended to free their mistress, wasn’t just fraying—it was becoming a storm of chaos, tearing everything around them apart. There was irony in that, considering their queen's future plans, but the cultists had neither the time nor the mood to appreciate it.

“We have to stop this!” Nightfall shouted, his voice almost breaking. In his tone, barely audible over the thunder of magical waves, there was fear, revealing the desperation of those who had called forth this catastrophe. “It’s gone too far! We’re all going to die if we don’t stop it!”

Attempting to contain the ritual, the cultists tried to restrain the surging magic, but… it was futile. Thousands of meticulously inscribed runes on the floor began to spread like streams of liquid fire, each second making them more uncontrollable.

Loud cracks and magical explosions filled the air, tearing through the space; everything around them hummed ominously, and then wormholes started opening up throughout the room.

They blinked into existence and vanished unpredictably, swallowing everything within their reach. The screams of those being sucked into these all-consuming rifts were cut off with a sickening splat, as they were crushed into shapeless masses.

For others, pulled into the less stable rifts, it was instant—a flash, and their bodies disintegrated into dust—their ambitions dissolving into the void.

“What is this?!” Midnight shouted in horror, looking around wildly. His eyes darted from one side to another, unable to focus on any single source of the danger, as it came from everywhere.

“Wormholes! They’re appearing from nowhere!” Silent Shade screamed desperately. Her face was frozen in terror—everything they had built was crumbling before their eyes.

The unicorns, barely able to orient themselves, scrambled to dodge magical explosions and spatial tears, but the chaos grew like an avalanche. Wormholes appeared faster and faster, merging into swirling vortices of darkness. Rift after rift swallowed them with merciless brutality, and one by one, the cultists disappeared, leaving only emptiness behind.

In front of the altar stood the last one left, somehow miraculously untouched. His eyes were wide open, his voice barely audible above the crashing waves of magic.

“We failed…” Midnight Veil whispered, weakened and hollow. “Why? Why…”

But he received no answer. A new rift flared beside him, instantly constricting his body like a steel vice. His silhouette twisted, compressed into a bloody lump no bigger than a seed, and then it was sucked into the portal, devouring his life and desperate scream.

The portals continued to blink in and out of existence, obeying some monstrous logic of their own, as if defying the local order. With each collision of wormholes, the world shattered into fragments, sending out waves of spatial disruption that deformed the surrounding terrain.

Finally, at the heart of the ritual circle, three wormholes flared simultaneously. There was no explosion; everything seemed to collapse into a single point, and in an instant, without a sound, everything within a hundred-meter radius simply vanished.

An absolute silence fell, as if the world, stunned by the chaos, paused in mute astonishment. And then, as if snapping back to reality, the air rushed into the void with a deafening clap, followed by the earth itself, collapsing rapidly and filling the gaping chasm.

Nature, silent and eternal, seemed to have been waiting for this moment, immediately beginning its work.

The night was enveloping the world in a thick, dense veil, turning the road stretching into the distance into a mystical bridge leading to the unknown. The man stopped, and his footsteps fell silent, leaving only the faint whisper of the wind in the air.

He took off his backpack, exhaling wearily, and carefully set it down by the roots of an old tree standing by the roadside. His headphones and phone landed gently on the fabric, as if releasing him from the sounds of the everyday world.

He stretched his arms upward, feeling the cool night air seep into every cell, filling his body with a long-awaited freshness. The sky above stretched like an endless ocean studded with stars, in whose shimmering he saw his own reflection, lost among the dusty lights and mirages of eternity. The chirping of night insects blended with the gentle rustle of the wind, creating a harmony capable of lulling any traveler who had stopped here, in the heart of the night.

A faint, delightful smile touched his lips, and he was ready to melt into this peace… if not for a strange sound that sliced through the quiet.

The sound, barely perceptible, was like a whisper—thin, muffled, but persistent—and, even stranger, it seemed to come not from outside but from within his own mind. An unsettling thought of a hallucination or even a stroke flickered through him, but a sudden flash of light overhead distracted him, making him quickly look up.

There, in the inky darkness, a sphere glowed, like a drop of pure, cold light cutting through the night sky. It grew brighter, drawing closer with astonishing speed, and just as it seemed that its radiance would eclipse the stars, it shot downward, straight toward the earth.

Soundlessly, with a faint sigh of the night air, the sphere touched down in a small clearing nearby, raising a gentle cloud of dust and strange ripples that spread through the area like waves on water.

Unable to resist the sharp pull of curiosity, the man walked slowly toward the place where the sphere had fallen, his steps becoming more cautious, his heartbeat quickening. Ahead of him, a small clearing opened, and at its center, within an uneven crater, glowed an oval portal.

The man froze in shock, unable to look away from the alien world pushing through the portal’s depths. Light spilled onto the trees, casting bright, almost sunny shadows, illuminating unfamiliar plants and birds on the other side. The forest bathed in light appeared magical to him, and yet something eerie lurked at the very edge of the portal.

Its surface pulsed constantly, shifting as if one force was fiercely trying to tear the space apart, while another struggled to keep it stable. These distorted lines, appearing and vanishing at unimaginable speed, created the impression that someone had momentarily disrupted the fabric of reality.

The man stood still, captivated by the spectacle before him. He was as unmoving as a rock, but inside, a storm raged. The portal was an invitation to the unknown, a chance he knew he couldn’t pass up. His thoughts clashed and collided, trying to make sense of his feelings.

The portal presented an opportunity he couldn’t ignore. His mind raced, analyzing the situation, weighing all the risks and possible rewards.

A desire, long buried deep within his mind, began to rise, like a fire finally allowed to ignite.

What if what he longed for lay beyond that threshold?

Some things, no matter how hard you try, simply can’t be attained on Earth. Reality was indeed beautiful in its cruelty. But what about another world? What if his chance awaited him on the other side of the portal?

Of course, there was also the other possibility—instant death. But that didn’t bother him. How long do people live, anyway? Eighty, maybe a hundred years? It’s as fleeting as a dream, ending in an instant. He didn’t want to die, but he also wasn’t afraid of death.

Lost in thought, he suddenly noticed the portal was shrinking, and the longer he hesitated, the faster his opportunity was slipping away. Four meters, then three, then two. He had only minutes, or even seconds—any longer, and the chance would be lost.

The man froze, a cold fear replacing the heat within him. Conflicting thoughts and a paralyzing survival instinct gripped him as a voice inside shouted, “You’ve been fine without it; why do you need this portal?”

But then his face cleared, freed from doubt. A hoarse laugh escaped him, sounding bold and desperate, full of a freedom he hadn’t felt in years. He laughed at himself, at the world, and at life itself.

“When was the last time I felt this alive?” he thought, inhaling the air from the portal, filled with strange scents and boundless mystery.

Laughing, he stepped toward the portal, a defiant grin spreading across his face, and his green eyes sparkled with a resolve he hadn’t felt in years.

Without another doubt, he leapt into the portal.