The World Beyond Dark

Umihira never believed in limits. Not of science. Not of space. And certainly not of time.
For years, he had obsessed over the idea that the universe was layered like onion skin — each layer a different world, a different version of reality. His latest invention, the Dimension Phase Stabilizer, was designed to let him glimpse those worlds. Not visit. Just see.
That was the plan.
But plans are fragile when the laws of reality are pushed.
As he calibrated the machine for a routine scan, a strange pulse shot through the air. Sparks erupted. A high-pitched screech filled the lab. Umihira reached for the kill switch — and then everything went dark.
He woke to cold soil and a silent breeze.
Umihira blinked. The sky above was pitch-black, but it didn’t feel heavy. It shimmered subtly, like a fabric woven from ink and moonlight. There was no sun, yet he could see. Trees with glowing veins lined the horizon. Creatures passed, strange but elegant — none hostile.
He stood up, brushing dust from his coat, heartbeat oddly calm. This world felt… peaceful. Too peaceful.
“Where am I?” he whispered.
Suddenly, the crunch of footsteps shattered the silence. Soldiers — tall, armored figures with glowing weapons — appeared, their eyes fixed on him.
“Stop! You’re not allowed here!” one shouted.
Umihira’s heart raced. He turned to run, but the forest twisted unnaturally, paths disappearing behind him. Panic rose.
Then, from the shadows, she appeared — a tall woman with calm eyes and a steady gaze. Without hesitation, she grabbed his arm.
“This way,” she urged, pulling him through a narrow gap in the trees.
The soldiers shouted and chased, but Otara moved with uncanny speed and confidence. She led Umihira into a hollow cave, hidden behind thick vines glowing softly.
They crouched in the dark. Umihira gasped for breath.
“Who are you?” he asked, still shaken.
She looked at him, eyes steady but distant. “I’m not who you think I am.”
“Shruti?” he whispered.
She shook her head. “No. My name is Otara.”
Something inside him twisted. She looked exactly like Shruti — his first love from seventh grade, the girl who had nervously confessed to him on a crowded school ground, where everyone else was lost in their own world, but she had her own brave moment just for him.
But this woman was different: strong, silent, self-dependent. No nervous laughter, no shy smiles.
Over the next hours, Otara helped Umihira navigate the strange world — a place of glowing trees, silent winds, and eerie calm. She fought off a beast made of glass and light, moved like a shadow that belonged to the forest, fearless and precise.
He asked her again and again: “Are you really not Shruti?”
Her answers were always ambiguous — a long look, a silence, a soft “I don’t know you.”
His mind twisted in questions. Had Shruti crossed into this world? Was Otara the same girl who once loved him — or just a stranger who wore her face?
He remembered a secret he’d never known — Shruti had once told him she wanted to travel to the past, just to experience the happiness they once shared again.
Then came the trial.
The Noxians — the natives of this world — revered peace and balance. Umihira’s arrival had disturbed that fragile order. They dragged him before a glowing court carved into the mountainside. Otara stood silently among the judges.
“Speak for me,” Umihira begged her. “Tell them I mean no harm.”
Her eyes met his — cold, unreadable. “I do not know you,” she said.
The verdict was death.
At the peak of a glowing spire, Umihira faced a blade of white energy descending slowly. Closing his eyes, he thought of Otara — the girl who looked like his past, yet was a mystery in the present.
Was she Shruti? Or someone else entirely?
Then — a blinding white flash.
He gasped awake.
His hands trembled on the control panel of his lab. The machine hummed softly, as if nothing had happened. The clock read 3:42 PM — the exact time he had begun the experiment.
No time had passed.
In the days that followed, Umihira searched desperately for Shruti. But she had vanished years ago — no messages, no social media, no records. Friends barely remembered her.
But he remembered.
The nervous confession on the crowded school ground. The shy smiles. And now, Otara — the strong, silent woman in the dark world who may have been Shruti… or not.
Years passed. Umihira became a celebrated scientist, but the mystery haunted him.
Was Otara really Shruti?
Or was she a stranger from a dark world hiding secrets light could never reveal?
And, most hauntingly —
Was the world called “Dark” because it kept hidden the people who no longer belonged to the light?
Umihira sat at his desk late into the night, the hum of the Phase Stabilizer filling the room like a heartbeat. His eyes traced the patterns of Shruti’s old notebook — her handwriting, fragile yet determined, filled with sketches of stars and impossible equations.
“If only I could reach her,” he whispered, fingers trembling as they brushed a folded photograph — Shruti, smiling shyly, the sun catching her hair in a way he hadn’t seen in years.
Then the machine pulsed again — a low glow emerging from the screen. This time, not a flash, but a whisper: a call. And a single word appeared on the panel…
“Come.”
Not a command. A plea.
Umihira’s breath caught. He glanced at the machine — the dials were shifting on their own, slowly aligning into a configuration he hadn’t programmed. The hum deepened, now more like a distant song echoing from the mouth of a cave.
He hesitated.
He had sworn never to activate the stabilizer again — not after what happened the first time. But this… this was different. This wasn’t just data. This was a message. Someone — or something — was reaching out to him.
His fingers hovered over the activation switch.
“Shruti,” he murmured. “If it’s you… I’m coming.”
With a breath, he flipped the switch.
The lights dimmed. The machine surged. The floor beneath him vibrated like the skin of a living drum. Patterns flickered across the air — geometries he couldn’t name, colors he couldn’t describe. Then—
Silence.
Umihira opened his eyes.
He stood in the same dark forest, the one from before. But this time… something had changed.
The trees were taller, their glowing veins pulsing in rhythm with his own heartbeat. The air shimmered with tension. And ahead of him stood a figure — tall, cloaked in mist, face hidden beneath a hood of woven light and shadow.
“Otara?” he called.
The figure turned.
Not Otara. Not Shruti.
A third face — familiar and foreign. A blend. As if both women had fused, creating someone new.
“You shouldn’t have come again,” the figure said — voice layered, like two echoes overlapping. “This world is breaking.”
He stepped closer. “Who are you?”
“I am what remains,” she said, lowering her hood. “Of memory. Of guilt. Of possibility.”
Behind her, the forest began to decay — glowing trees dimming, paths collapsing into voids. Something was eating away at the world itself.
“You came for answers,” she said. “But answers carry a cost.”
“What cost?”
She looked at him — truly looked — and for a moment, he saw both Otara’s strength and Shruti’s sadness in her eyes.
“You must choose which world you belong to,” she said softly. “This one… or the one that forgets.”
A low rumble split the air.
Reality was collapsing.
And Umihira had only moments to decide:
Return to the world he knew and forget what he saw… or stay, and become part of the world beyond dark.
The world around him trembled — not with fear, but with finality.
"Choose," she said again. Her voice was quieter now, as if even sound feared being erased.
Umihira looked back over his shoulder. Behind him, the place he'd come from — his lab, his city, his name — shimmered faintly like a half-remembered dream. Fading. Fleeing.
He turned back to her — to the woman who was not Shruti, not Otara, but something forged from both: memory and mystery fused by the dark. Her face was lit by the flickering trees, and he thought, for one moment, that time itself paused to watch what he would do.
"I don't know what this world is," he said. "Or what you are. But I know what I lost."
She tilted her head, curious.
"Then why come back?"
"Because the world that forgets… forgot her. And I never will."
He stepped forward.
The ground cracked beneath his feet, not violently, but like old stone surrendering to age. Behind him, the portal home — if it was home — blinked once, then collapsed in on itself, leaving only darkness.
"You’ve chosen," she whispered.
Umihira nodded. "I have."
And with that, the forest stilled.
The decay halted. The trees pulsed again, stronger now, as if fed by his decision. From the shadows, figures emerged — silent watchers of the in-between — neither Noxian nor human. They bowed their heads.
She stepped toward him, placing a hand on his chest. "You are now bound to this place. It will remember you, and you will remember it. There is no going back."
"I don’t want to go back," he said. "But I want to know… who were you? Shruti? Otara?"
She smiled — gently, distantly — and placed a small crystal in his hand. "I am who you made me. From memory. From longing. I am not either of them. But I carry both."
He looked at the crystal — glowing faintly, pulsing with warmth.
"What is this?"
"A seed," she said. "Plant it. Where the world ends. And maybe, just maybe… light will grow."
She began to walk away, vanishing between the trees.
Umihira stood alone, the seed of light in his palm, and a forest full of shadows ahead.
For the first time, the dark felt like home.
Umihira stood in the stillness, the glowing seed cradled in his palm.
The forest had quieted again, yet the silence felt heavier this time — not peaceful, but expectant. He turned, searching for the woman. She had disappeared into the dark, her pale silhouette swallowed by trees that no longer pulsed with light.
“Wait!” he called.
No answer.
He stepped forward, then again — faster now — pushing through twisting branches and strange vines that clung to his coat like fingers of smoke.
“Otara!” he cried. “Shruti! Please—don’t go!”
Still, no answer.
He ran. His boots pounded the glowing soil, breath ragged in his throat. The trees blurred, turned to shadows. The forest was folding in on itself, shifting unnaturally — each path unraveling the more he chased.
Then — he saw her.
Far ahead, standing still beneath a dying tree, her back to him.
He screamed her name with every breath in his body:
“Shruti! Otara! Whoever you are — I don’t care anymore!”
“I loved you!”
She turned — slowly, gently — and in her eyes was a sadness deeper than space, wider than time. Her lips parted, as if to speak…
But she didn’t.
Instead, she stepped into the shadows between two trees — and was gone.
“No!” Umihira roared. “Don’t leave me again!”
He ran after her, hand outstretched. “Please, I love you! I should’ve told you then — I should’ve never let you go!”
And then—he crossed the threshold.
The air turned thick. Sound died. The glow beneath his feet dimmed to black.
He was inside the forest now — not the one he entered, but something older. Endless. Watching.
He called for her again.
And again.
But no one answered.
Years passed. Or maybe seconds. Time did not move here. It only watched.
Umihira became part of the forest — not a tree, not a ghost, but a presence. Wandering endlessly through the same twisted groves, chasing memories that never waited, never answered.
The glowing seed in his pocket never sprouted.
And the forest kept him.
No one ever found Umihira again.
But on some nights, when the wind cuts through the forest like a knife, it’s said you can still hear a voice — calling out the names of the same girl, over and over:
“Shruti…”
“Otara…”
“…I love you.”
And then nothing but silence.
Forever echoing in
the world beyond dark.
And sometimes, if the night is still enough, you might hear more than just his voice.
You might hear the forest whispering back — not with answers, but with echoes of the same questions he took with him:
Was she ever real?
Why him?
What was the world beyond dark really hiding?
No one knows.
Only the forest does.
And it keeps its secrets well.

12 B
Air Force School
Kanpur