A strange tremble shook Garinor all of a sudden. His last thoughts suddenly went out of his mind and everything went blank. He couldn’t see his surroundings, nor hear any of the things that had been going on nearby a moment before.
A wild force tore at his body, whipping him around from one place to another. He felt as if he were falling off a cliff but simultaneously catapulting into the sky. It was the most exhilarating and the most frightening experience of his life. He couldn’t take air into his lungs, for the forces pulling and pushing at him were too strong.
He let his body go limp and focused his attention into his mind. He wanted desperately to know what was happening, who he was, why he was here, what this was. He wanted anything. Something.
After a long, slow, and painful time, the winds ceased. Garinor lay huddled on the ground and he pushed himself upright. When he opened his eyes, he slammed them shut again and rubbed them frantically. He peered again, but the scene had not changed. He tried rubbing his eyes again, but it wasn’t helping.
Finally, he admitted that he couldn’t change what was around him and so he stood up fully and then opened his eyes wide.
All around him, Garinor was surrounded by a white void. There were no shadows anywhere, no source of light. The brilliance shone through him as if he didn’t even exist. Above him, below him, to his left or right, there was nothing to see but a vast and empty whiteness.
Also puzzling, there were no sounds. His mind buzzed with the loss of everyday noises that were usually present. There was no hubbub of voices, no buzzing of insects, no whispers of breeze. He was masked in total silence.
In this sightless, soundless void, he couldn’t remember his purpose. He didn’t know who he was. He forgot his own name. Everything that had happened to him was wiped clean entirely. He had never experienced any joys or hardships. He had never had any adventures. He had known no people. He had never seen animals. Nothing existed for him. Nothing at all.
Garinor wasn’t even thinking these thoughts. He couldn’t think them. He didn’t know there were even things such as people or homes or life. He didn’t know what a breeze was, or light, or motion. Everything was gone to him. The entire world, his entire existence, was being erased.
Into the white void something finally appeared. Black shapes. Detached, but together somehow. They flew toward him and surrounded him on all sides. Many of the shapes repeated, sometimes in the same pattern, sometimes very different. Sometimes one shape showed up three times in one cluster but then not in the next.
If Garinor had any sense at all left to him, he would have recognized the shapes as words. The words were all around him now, surrounding him, enshrouding him, blotting out the white void, leaving him in only the all-encompassing darkness of the black letters.
They swirled around him and kept him from moving. Had Garinor’s mind not been erased, he would have been terrified by the enclosing darkness. And if he remembered how to read, he would have tried to see what the words were saying. If he knew how to hear, he would have realized that an eerie voice was reading the words aloud.
Although they were all now meaningless to Garinor, the words were as follows:
“To the omnipresent adventurer, you have violated Garinor’s universe. You, who have been this boy’s conscience, have now broken him to pieces and wiped his existence from the world. For you turned to this page when you were not asked to. You broke the laws that bind Garinor’s existence together. You severed his soul into a million pieces. Look, adventurer, at what you have done. By ignoring the rules and by turning to these pages that were never meant to be read, you have ended Garinor’s adventure prematurely. Forever, now, he will exist in your mind in this white void, this prison of words, for the magic of the world has faltered by your actions.
“Close, now, this book and consider what you have done. When you are ready to repent and mend your ways, open this book again and begin Garinor’s adventure once more from the start. May this horrible end to the boy’s life be thus erased.”
The voice echoed and faded away, but Garinor never knew.