The Empty

“I always assumed the unknown would feel thrilling. I didn’t expect it to be so quiet—or for it to stare back.”

I blinked against the brightness, shielding my eyes until they adjusted. The air hit me next—thinner than what I was used to, noticeably cooler than the Hobart summer I'd left behind seconds ago. A different sky. A different world.

Gone was Meeting Room 4B. Gone was the frosted glass, the humming air conditioning, the distant murmur of colleagues discussing stakeholder requirements. I stood on red dust beneath an open sky, and the silence was so complete that my own breathing sounded intrusive.

I turned slowly, taking in what surrounded me.

A vast plain stretched toward horizons painted in gradients of ochre and rust. The flatness was interrupted only by rock formations jutting at irregular intervals—worn smooth by wind or time, their shapes suggesting broken columns or scattered bones. Fine dust coated everything. It rose in small clouds with each step I took, then settled again with the unhurried patience of particles that had been settling for a very long time.

No birds. No insects. No distant traffic or aircraft. Nothing moved except what I disturbed.

Behind me, the portal still shimmered against the emptiness—a vertical rectangle of swirling colour that looked wrong against the muted landscape, like a television screen left on in a power outage. Its light was already dimming, the rainbow hues retreating into themselves. I watched it for a moment, reassuring myself it remained. My way back. My anchor to everything I understood.

Then a voice that wasn't a voice cut through the silence.

"Welcome to Clivilius, Nathan Cowdrey."

The words didn't reach my ears. They appeared in my mind fully formed, as though I'd always known them and was only now remembering. The same quality I'd experienced in the meeting room—CLIVE, according to Seth's letter. An artificial intelligence that administered an entire world.

I spun around, searching for a source I knew I wouldn't find. "Who's there?"

My voice died almost immediately. No echo. No reverberation. The dust-laden air swallowed sound the way dark fabric absorbs light. The effect was disorienting—as though the landscape were actively refusing to acknowledge my presence.

I forced myself to move. Standing still felt worse than walking into the unknown. Each footstep left a perfect impression in the dust, and I found myself glancing back at the trail I was creating. Evidence that I existed. Proof that something was happening, even if I couldn't understand what.

The terrain shifted gradually as I advanced. The flat plain gave way to gentle undulations, then steeper rises. Ahead, I could make out a darker line against the horizon—a edge of some kind, a boundary where land stopped.

Cliffs.

I approached cautiously. The rock here was different from the formations on the plain—darker, almost scorched-looking, with edges that seemed unnaturally sharp. The cliff face dropped away steeply, perhaps fifty or sixty metres, to a sea I hadn't expected.

The water was slate grey shading to deep green, its surface moving in slow swells despite the utter stillness of the air around me. Mist clung to the water's surface in patches, obscuring portions of the view, revealing others. The colour reminded me of photographs I'd seen of Scottish lochs or Norwegian fjords—cold northern waters, nothing like the turquoise Australian coastline I knew.

Far below, something moved.

I went still, watching. Shapes beneath the surface—dark forms that could have been rocks if they hadn't been drifting. Fish, perhaps. Large ones, moving in loose schools through the grey-green water. Closer to the cliff base, I could make out what looked like beds of something attached to the rocks—filter feeders of some kind, their movements too subtle to track from this height but visible as a general rippling, a collective response to currents I couldn't feel.

Life. There was life here. Not on the land—the plateau behind me remained as barren as when I'd arrived—but in the water, something had established itself and flourished. The realisation was oddly comforting. This wasn't a dead world. Just an empty one, waiting.

I knelt at the cliff's edge, brushing away the fine red dust that covered everything. My fingers met something unexpected—smooth and cool, unlike the rough rock I'd anticipated. I cleared more dust, revealing a surface that caught the diffuse light with a faint gleam.

Glass. Or something like it. A patch of vitrified material where the cliff met the sea air, its surface reflecting my face in distorted waves. The temperature difference was striking—noticeably colder than the surrounding stone, as though the material retained some memory of the water below.

I ran my fingers across it, trying to understand. Natural formation? The interaction of salt spray with whatever minerals comprised this rock? It felt manufactured somehow, too smooth, too deliberately placed. But there was nothing overtly technological about it. Just strangeness I couldn't categorise.

The voice returned, softer this time.

"This place is yours. Saint Phillis. Build wisely, Guardian."

I sat back on my heels, processing the words. Saint Phillis. A name for this desolate expanse of cliff and dust and empty silence. Mine. The concept seemed absurd—ownership of a landscape that felt older than human civilisation, that had clearly existed for millennia without any need for my presence.

Guardian. Seth had used that word in his letter. A Guardian Group comprised of five individuals. I was meant to choose four others to share this responsibility I didn't understand, to build something in a place that offered nothing but potential.

I looked back toward the plain, toward the fading shimmer of the portal. My footprints were the only marks on the landscape, the only evidence that anything had disturbed this place in what might have been centuries. The weight of that settled over me—not just the responsibility CLIVE had articulated, but the sheer emptiness that would require transformation before it could become anything at all.

Build. The word seemed almost cruel. Build what? With what materials, what knowledge, what help? The government position I'd left behind—was it still waiting for me? Would time pass the same way here as there? Could I return, gather supplies, bring others? The questions multiplied faster than I could formulate them.

Seth's instructions echoed in my mind: Choose wisely. Every decision has consequences.

I thought of my brother Josh. Solid, methodical Josh, who approached problems like puzzles to be solved rather than obstacles to be feared. If anyone could help me make sense of this, it would be him. But how could I possibly explain what I'd seen? What I was holding in my pocket—four more Portal Keys, four more potential Guardians?

The sea below continued its slow movement, indifferent to my presence. Shapes drifted through the mist, living things going about whatever lives they led in these alien waters. Somewhere across that grey expanse, there might be land. Other settlements. People who had been here longer, who understood what I was only beginning to glimpse.

I stood slowly, brushing dust from my trousers. The gesture felt ridiculous—maintaining office hygiene in a place that had never seen an office, that existed outside everything I'd known until twenty minutes ago. But the familiar action steadied me. Normality as anchor. Routine as survival.

I turned the Portal Key over in my palm, studying it with new respect. This small object had torn a hole in my understanding of reality. It had brought me here, to this impossible place, and apparently bound me to it in ways I couldn't yet comprehend. Seth had trusted me with this. Had believed I was capable of whatever came next.

The portal still shimmered faintly, my connection to Tasmania, to my desk and my colleagues and my ordinary Wednesday afternoon. I could step back through. Pretend none of this had happened. File the experience away as stress hallucination and return to stakeholder meetings and system requirements.

But I knew I wouldn't. Couldn't. Seth was in danger—his disconnected phone, his haunted eyes, his cryptic warnings about darkness and prophecy. Someone named Luke Smith needed to be found, stopped, for reasons I didn't understand. And this place—Saint Phillis, empty and waiting—had apparently been allocated to me whether I wanted it or not.

The designation "Guardian" settled into my thoughts like a word I'd always known but never spoken. What was I meant to be guarding? And against what?

I took one last look at the cliff edge, the glassy surface, the grey-green sea with its hidden life. Then I walked back toward the portal, my footprints the only human marks on a landscape that had waited, perhaps for thousands of years, for someone to stand upon its shores.

I would return. With supplies, with plans, with people I trusted. But first I needed to understand what I was dealing with. I needed to find Seth. I needed to learn about CLIVE, about Luke Smith, about the darkness Seth had warned me of.

The portal swallowed me in rainbow light, and the empty world of Saint Phillis faded behind me—patient, silent, expectant.

Waiting for me to decide what it would become.