Salts of the red-forest burned when ingested, but Durun had more in mind. He craved an escape from the world and a vision into another. The frog-toed Gurun said the fire-salts connected you to the spirits, and Durun spent months watching them ingest the fungal powder. Despite his admiration for their spiritual rites, the young sun elf craved the abyss: the void.

Weeks later, depressed and impotent, Dunu finished carving the forbidden runes into his grandmother’s desk. Peeling back from his craftsmanship and taking a moment to bask in the glory of his calligraphic scripture, he couldn’t help but feel a fleeting sense of undeserved pride. Wielding a devilish grin, he began filling the carved lines with fire-touched grains of forest salt.

As the incantation began to breathe life, Durun nervously readied his straw. He mouthed a kiss through the mystical mist to a picture in the corner, and whispered aloud, “Forgive me, I must do this.” Then with hastened fervor, he took the straw to his nose and snorted the enchanted powder.

The world went crimson and Durun entered the abstract.

At first, the voices were too much, but a single melody focused on him. With tears dripping, he looked up to see his grandmother, once again, singing his cherished lullaby. With each note, the faceless souls around her began to shrivel and shrink. Siphoning the burning aroma of helpless ghosts, her ethereal form gained mass, and the partially formed spirits around her turned to gas. Then they were gone.

Each tooth in memaw's broken jaw stretched out toward an opposing destination. Words broke through their infernal prison and danced with the room's cycling winds. The twitching voice hovered on each word, as it whispered, "Do you remember that song? I used to sing it to you when you were a boy. You would beg until I gave in, which I always did. And after, do you remember? You would come to me, and rest your weary head in my lap."

Pitifully sobbing he pressed toward her. Each step through his rapidly shrinking bedroom was a step out of time. The normal ordinary pace from his desk to his bed rapidly became an endless track. As he worked to lift each leg, he felt the weight of entire temples upon him his shoulders. Buckling under the weight, he cracked. Collapsing to his knees in a fit of fury and screamed out to the corrupted spirit, "Please, I can't fucking do it. I can't be alone again, but…"

The final words felt like sand in his throat, and he choked on them. Collecting himself, Durun took a deep breath and inhaled the remaining demonic fumes. The smoke was enough to re-tether him to the beyond, but just for a moment. As the vision and euphoria faded to oblivion, he mustered the strength to roll into bed. With vomit-soaked lips he finished the thought, "this is going to kill me."

As his vision faded, he could feel the deathly cold, yet tender, hands of his lost caretaker. Her fingers twisted through Durun's knotted and unkept pale white locks, and she murmured in ancient elvish. Unfortunately, her unhallowed kisses disrupted each step of what should be a simple sentence, prolonging her excursion to the living realm. A prolongation which transferred great suffering to her decaying kin with every soul-piercing word: "It. Will. Be. All. Over. Soon."