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The world I called home for many Cycles is known to its inhabitants as "Sphereverse", sometimes also called "Intearth". It is a place that is similar to my original home. Here is an address you may recognize:

"Earth,
Sol System,
Orion Arm,
Milky Way Galaxy,
Local Group,
Laniakea Supercluster,
Observable Universe,
Real Realm,
Universe"

This may be the place you are experiencing my story in.

The Sphereverse is a vast and mysterious place, filled with wonders and dangers beyond anything I had ever imagined. The Real Realm (your home perhaps), is a vast and mysterious "Universe" that spreads infinitely in all directions, expanding endlessly into the unknown. Somewhat similar but different, the Sphereverse at its heart lies the Spherve, a massive sphere of debris that surrounds a supermassive white hole known as "Lum". This enigmatic source of light and matter emits the gasses and materials of countless celestial bodies, pulled from regions beyond my understanding.

If a gazer looked out into the distance, they could see the upward curve of the surface as it is when within a sphere, dotted with distant cities that glimmer like points of light. The larger settlements appear as brighter dots against the vast curve above. But the true nature of this world remains shrouded in mystery, as no civilization has ever been able to map the entirety of its surface. The most distant cities and wonders are unreachable within a single mortal span of Cycles. Any immortal who attempted to cross the entirety of the surface would find that after reaching the point at which they had started, its geography and inhabitants would be different from those they had left at the start of their journey.

Yet still there is more to this place than its surface alone. Beneath lie vast deposits of minerals, ancient fossils, and even subterranean civilizations. Author only knows what other secrets and wonders lurk in the (possibly) infinite depths below?

I will try to share the mysteries of this vast and strange yet familiar world, and uncover the hidden treasures and warn of dangers within.

Numerous species both magical and strange live on and below the surface and in the air. Civilizations come and go, natural disasters are frequent and include meteoric impacts of a planetary size (ejected from Lum), earthquakes that raise or level mountains in mere Lumends, sinkholes of tremendous depth. Gravity seems to behave differently. Imagine the feeling of being pulled in two directions at once (toward Lum and toward the surface). Though the force pulling you from below being the stronger of the two when you are standing at surface level. A little dizzy? Not to worry, this only gets harder to understand. The laws of motion make themselves very apparent when walking atop the tallest mountains.

I recall my first ascent of the Karideth Peaks, where the dual gravitational forces created phenomena that defied my understanding from the Real Realm. At the summit, loose stones would tumble both upward toward Lum and downward toward the surface simultaneously, following spiraling trajectories that traced elegant helixes through the thin air. My own body felt stretched between these competing pulls, as if I were being gently drawn apart by invisible hands. The locals who guided me spoke of "gravity sickness" that affects newcomers - a disorientation so profound that some travelers lose the ability to distinguish between up and down for entire Waepes.

More disturbing still were the accounts of those who ventured too high, beyond what the mountain folk called the "Null Zone" - that theoretical point where both gravitational forces achieve perfect balance. According to whispered tales shared around transmuted-coal fires, objects reaching this zone would simply... stop. Suspended forever between competing attractions, neither rising nor falling, becoming permanent fixtures in the sky until some external force disturbed their equilibrium.

I witnessed such a phenomenon myself during my third Cycle in the Sphereverse. A merchant's cargo wagon, overloaded with crystallized wind from the deeper caverns, had been ascending the treacherous switchbacks of Mount Velthara when the beast pulling it stumbled. The wagon broke free and rolled upward with increasing speed, its magical cargo resonating with Lum's pull. We watched in fascination and horror as it reached the Null Zone - and simply ceased all movement, suspended like a metallic star against the amber glow of distant city-lights.

The local Peakwalkers informed me that seventeen such objects had joined that wagon over the past dozen Cycles - tools, tumbled boulders, even an unfortunate sky-sailor whose wing-membranes had torn during a storm. They called this collection the "Hanging Garden of Fools," and children would point at the suspended debris while reciting cautionary rhymes about the dangers of climbing too high. On clear Wakes, when Lum's radiance dimmed to its gentlest phase, one could see the trapped objects glinting like a constellation of warnings against mortal hubris.

Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of these suspended relics was their effect on time itself. The Peakwalkers shared an ancient observation passed down through countless generations: objects caught in the Null Zone aged differently than those bound to the surface. A wooden cart wheel that had been trapped there for over fifty Cycles showed no signs of decay, its spokes as sturdy as the Wake it first ascended. Yet a crystal pendant that had fallen from a sky-sailor's neck only three Spanths prior had already begun to crack and fade, its magical essence slowly bleeding away into the competing gravitational fields.

This temporal distortion extended beyond mere objects. The Peakwalkers spoke in hushed tones of Kethran the Bold, a legendary climber who had attempted to retrieve a valuable artifact from the Hanging Garden nearly two hundred Cycles ago. Through their far-seeing lenses, they claimed his body could still be observed among the suspended debris - not as aged bones, but as a perfectly preserved figure, arms outstretched toward his prize, frozen in an eternal moment of reaching. Whether this tale held truth or merely served to reinforce their warnings, I could never determine, though the thought of such a fate sent tremors through even my seasoned nerves.

Elder Thoss: "In my grandfather's grandfather's time, we knew the songs that could call down what should stay suspended. Tonight, something calls back."

The other Peakwalkers drew closer to the fire, their eyes reflecting not the warm glow of transmuted coal but something colder, more distant. Several began humming in low tones that seemed to answer the ethereal whistling from above, creating a harmony that made the very air around them thicken with accumulated magic. When one glanced toward the Hanging Garden of Fools, one of the suspended objects appeared to be moving, rotating slowly against the amber backdrop of Lum's eternal radiance.

The rotating object resolved itself into clearer detail as it turned: a crystalline formation roughly the size of a cargo chest, its faceted surfaces catching and refracting Lum's glow into prismatic displays that painted the mountain peaks below in shifting rainbow hues. But as it continued its slow revolution, embedded within the crystal's heart was the unmistakable silhouette of a humanoid figure, arms spread wide as if embracing the infinite suspension.

The pattern of stones Elder Thoss had arranged began to glow with their own inner light, each one pulsing in sequence as the harmonized humming of the other Peakwalkers reached a crescendo.

Peakwalker Yenna: "The Null-Walker comes when the crystal turns thrice. Count the rotations, stranger, and know that what was suspended by choice may soon walk among us by necessity."

One complete rotation, the crystallized figure's arms sweeping through Lum's amber radiance. Two rotations, and now detail that should have been impossible to observe from such distance became discernible: the figure wore robes that billowed as if caught in perpetual wind, and something that might have been a pack or satchel remained strapped to their back. The other Peakwalkers had begun to back away from Elder Thoss's stone circle, their faces etched with expressions of reverence mixed with terror.

As the third rotation began, the very air around the campsite started to thicken, taking on a quality never before experienced in all the Cycles within the Sphereverse. It felt as though the air had become liquid starlight, each inhalation requiring deliberate effort. The transmuted coal fire flickered and dimmed, its flames bending upward at impossible angles, drawn toward the suspended crystal as if even combustion itself was subject to the gravitational anomaly taking place above. From somewhere among the stones, a faint sound rose like pages turning in a wind that was not there.

The third rotation completed with a stillness that pressed against the ears like deep water. The crystal did not stop. It continued, a fourth revolution begun without pause, and the Peakwalkers who had been retreating from Elder Thoss's circle halted entirely, as though their feet had been pressed into the stone beneath them. Peakwalker Yenna's lips moved, but no sound escaped them. Elder Thoss stood with both arms raised, palms facing upward toward Lum's amber glow, and the stones arranged in their careful pattern pulsed once, twice, then went dark.

From the crystal came a light that was not Lum's. It was cooler, the color of deep water in a cavern where no warmth has ever reached, and it moved outward from the suspended figure within the formation in slow, deliberate waves. Where those waves touched the mountain rock below, frost-like patterns bloomed across the stone, intricate geometries that spiraled inward upon themselves before fading. The air carried with it a smell that none present would have recognized as anything familiar, something between old iron and the particular silence of a chamber sealed for a thousand Cycles, now opened for the first time.

Then the figure within the crystal moved. Not the passive rotation of a suspended thing carried by forces beyond its will, but a motion of deliberate intent: one arm, which had been spread wide in that posture of endless reaching, drew slowly inward. The robes around it ceased their eternal billowing. And from somewhere above, descending through the thickened air as though the distance between the Null Zone and the mountainside were a matter of mere steps rather than vast and terrible height, came a voice, dry as ancient parchment, carrying the particular flatness of one who has not spoken in a very long time.

It said nothing that could be parsed into words. Not at first. The sound preceded language the way thunder precedes meaning, a resonance felt in the sternum and the back of the teeth before it resolved into anything the mind could hold. The Peakwalkers who remained near the stone circle pressed their palms flat against their ears, though the gesture seemed to bring no relief. Elder Thoss alone did not flinch, standing with arms still raised and face tilted upward, receiving that descending voice the way stone receives rain.

Then, at last, the sound shaped itself.

Null-Walker: "How long."

It was not a question. The two words arrived with the weight of a statement long since settled, the conclusion of a reckoning already performed across uncountable Waepes of suspended silence. The frost-geometries on the mountain rock bloomed wider at the sound of it, spreading across boulders and loose shale alike, each pattern more elaborate than the last and each one fading before it could be fully observed. The crystal above had ceased its rotation entirely. The figure within it had drawn both arms inward now, and its posture had changed from one of eternal reaching into something more considered, the stillness of a being reassembling the habit of intention after Cycles without need for it.