Yet in another location, absolutely nothing around except for sun baked powdery ruddy dirt of the Australian outback, not even a spot of brush was visible, no roads whatsoever paved or even just a dirt road visible, no footsteps visible in the thick blankets of settled dirt across the cracked earth. All that stood there was…a home: a single floored home, sections of walls broken down and crumbled, roof more hole than together, windows free of glass for so long that the edges of shards left in the frames were covered in thick blankets of spiderwebs, the house…long, long sense abandoned and left to the elements to the extent that it was all, but reclaimed by nature though there was no nature to reclaim it…the home softly creaked as the heat baked the wood. Not even someone lost and abandoned to wander the outback till they die would risk walking into that house for a moments respite, spiders and snakes were the only creatures to find that home a place to reside. Through the broken open doorway one could wander into what used to be the living room where nothing existed…but a vast open sinkhole, the floorboard cracked and broken as they fell into the bottomless pit, whatever furniture seemingly ripped closer and into the pit.

            As the darkness grew deeper and darker as the pit fell into the deepest, darkest recesses of the earth the stone and dirt seemed to…change and shift to something, not crystalline or even metallic, but almost fabric like and smoky, the walls giving way to endless curtains of diaphanous silks and satins of the deepest, darkest black possible, falling so far downwards that looking upwards you could barely even see light above, all you could see was night sky above even with the sun beating just outside of the pit’s edges. Screams…so, so many screams pierced the air and they were not the light-hearted screams of surprise or screams that melted into laughter like that of the Halloween world, these were…bloodcurdling, cold and haunting screams that echoed endlessly. Mirror start coming into view, mirrors as small as one’s pinkie nail to so massive they could cover a skyscraper’s face dangling from chains that seemed to just hang there with no point of anchoring, the mirrors just freely hanging and suspended in the darkness, tunnels of mirror reflected mirror stretching and warping the world of the sinkhole before it opened into a massive city: everything made of shards of mirror and diaphanous vaults of shifting black silks and satin, no light visible except for a few dull blue lights along the rippling fabric streets making the world softly tinted blue by the way the light was twisted and spread far further than the small street lights should have provided. The edges of the horizon were not stone, but tectonic sized vaults of fabric softly waving as if in a silent nonexistent breeze that shifted to stalactites of black shards of mirror and needle like shards of obsidian as fully inverted was…a castle. A castle of carved obsidian, shards of mirror and shifting fabric hanging there, fully inverted with tall, thin, twisting towers pointing down towards the shifting city below, bridges arched towards the ground as people walked about the halls and paths of the castle: upside-down by the view of those outside of the castle, but fully proper in the eyes of those within the castle, however as you looked…the castle would shift and twist: towers collapsing in on themselves giving way to various wigs and projections, stairways splitting and curving outwards before curving in on themselves and growing into towers in this way where you could never perceive the castle proper.

            “That is interesting…very…very interesting” a slow, methodical and slightly wistful voice said as a man stepped out onto a balcony overlooking the city, he looked…very akin to the woman of golden sand, but instead his skin was icy pale that faded to black over his limbs, just the black made of shifting black glassy sand, chest length dark gray hair of shifting ashes and sand, clad in simple, sleek robes of matching shifting sand of grayscale, hair melting into robe as sand seemed to sprawl off his head forming into his own hair, skin having that same luster to it, but a dull quicksilver tone and not a vibrant gold or a luscious opal. Long, sharp black claws like needles adorning his extended looking fingers, pitch black eyes without white to them and a mouth of all sharply pointed piranha like teeth, adorned thickly in black jewelry and dark makeup adorning his face making the dark circles under his eyes far more prominent, black lipstick affixed into a permanent smile, sharpening and lowering his hairline’s widow’s peak and making the scowl his brows were frozen in that much more angry looking. “Well, this will do her good” he added turning and sweeping his robes around him as he walked back into the castle, “She’s not been around a lot of people like herself…if any of the others were contacts and by the seal on this, I know they were…it’ll do her some good to have friends her age.” He added looking at the letter with a worried and slightly concerned sigh. “But why are they contacting all of us?” he asked himself as if the mirrored corridors he walked through would give him answers and not just reflecting his reflection indefinitely upon itself making him an army of himself with his countless reflections. As he walked, one reflection moved independently of him before long hands reached out of the mirror which rippled like water as a figure of similar dark grayish toned sand pulled and crawled in an arched crabwalk out of the mirror.

            “Fucking nightlights” they snapped to themselves as they stood before bowing their head towards the tall man, he was shorter than the golden woman, but still very…very tall. “Your highness.”

            “It’s alright, nightlights were built to keep those like us at bay. Nightmares are not things people like to have…but it is our duty to enact upon the world.” He said, folding his hands in the sleeves of his robes hiding the letter, every movement he had was beyond silent, almost as if him moving made so little sound it sapped the sound of things around him. “And people that do seek out us…they are not without their reasons…and they’re never good reasons.” He added, voice methodical and calculated in his articulation, but…not a haunted tone, but more of a pitiful and understanding one at the brunt of those whom sought out those of his people.

            “Sir? Is…is something wrong?” the figure asked

            “It’s alright, just a…small matter to attend to with my daughter.” He said with a kind smile.

            “Do you know where she is? It’s not often she has duties to attend to”

            “I don’t at the moment, but…well, you know my daughter, she is not one to venture out on her own for long.” He responded with a soft laugh, looking towards the figure by entirely inverting his neck so his head was facing the wrong direction before his head snapped back forward as he looked down towards the letter. Cobwebs adorning the corners, a wide navy ribbon around it with a cobalt wax seal depicting a spider brushed over in a dark bronze tone, he knew who bore that mark…and it concerned him greatly.