Version History

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.

*The rest of the journal seems to have been torn out*

Yet beneath the torn binding, I discovered fragments of text pressed into the journal's back cover - impressions left by a stylus pressed too firmly against the missing pages above. By angling the leather toward Lum's light and tracing my fingers across the indentations, I could make out scattered phrases: "...the Deepmost Markets where currency flows upward..." and "...heard the Singing Stones of Vorthak before the great subsidence claimed..." and most intriguingly, "...she who walks between the Nulls has promised to show me the path to..."

The final fragment proved too faint to decipher completely, though certain letters suggested references to "crossing zones" and "the price of suspension." Whatever knowledge this traveler had gained during their latter Cycles in the Sphereverse, they had deemed it significant enough to press their stylus deep into the parchment. The very fact that these impressions survived while the actual pages had been deliberately removed suggested someone - perhaps the traveler themselves, or another who found this journal - considered such information too dangerous to leave intact.