The Island of Bones

Ryan felt himself sinking, sinking endlessly. Seawater pressed in from all sides, his lungs burning with pain. His body grew heavier, colder, and his consciousness gradually blurred.

But right then, he saw it.

Beneath the deep sea, countless white bones floated slowly. Shipwrecks, corpses, fractured keels, rotting masts... They gathered in the same direction, drawn by some invisible force. The deeper he went, the more bones and shipwrecks there were, as if the souls of everyone who had ever died in a shipwreck across the entire world were sunk here.

Then, Ryan saw a portion of Black Bone.

It was not a complete entity, but merely a fraction of it.

A pale, cracked rib bone hundreds of meters long lay quietly across the abyss. Countless shipwrecks clung to it like parasites on the carcass of a giant beast. Farther away, even more massive skeletal outlines were hidden in the darkness—skulls, spines, sharp claws. Shrouded by seawater and shadow, their full form remained hidden.

Simply looking at it sent a violent, stabbing pain through Ryan's mind, his sanity screaming in alarm. This massive, twisted, and grand form forced itself onto his retinas. The massive influx of extraordinary knowledge that suddenly flooded his mind threatened to shatter his skull.

A mortal mind was never meant to comprehend such an existence.

Then, everything faded into darkness.

...

An unknown amount of time passed before a biting, chilly sea breeze blew past.

Ryan suddenly coughed up a large mouthful of seawater, his lungs greedily drawing in air once more. He gasped heavily as he opened his eyes, but what met his gaze was not a sandy beach, but bones. Endless, infinite bones.

Ash-white skulls, broken ribs, decaying human skeletons, colossal whale bones... They piled up into an island, layered on top of each other, stretching all the way to the horizon. There was no soil here, no rock—only death. It was as if everything the ocean had swallowed over hundreds of years had been washed ashore right here.

In the distance, pitch-black seawater crashed against the skeletal reefs, producing a dull, heavy echo. Thick fog rolled over, and the sky was so gray that the sun was nowhere to be seen. There was no direction here, nor was there any time, as if they had completely broken away from reality.

Ryan slowly stood up, immediately searching for his companions.

Soon, he spotted Simon. Simon lay face down in a pile of bones nearby, his chest rising and falling slightly; he was still alive. On the other side, Alvin was half-buried in bone fragments, his iron-blue right hand tightly clutching a pale rib bone, as if he had refused to let go even before losing consciousness.

They were both alive, but this was clearly no sanctuary.

On the other side of the shore lay a dozen or so sailor bodies, scattered haphazardly. These were the ordinary crew members who had survived on The Voyager. Yet, when Ryan walked over, he found that the flesh beneath their clothes had already dissolved and vanished, leaving behind only yellowed skeletons. There had been no struggle, no screams. The moment they plunged into the deep sea, their mortal essence had been completely stripped away by Black Bone.

Ryan rubbed his throbbing temples. Enduring the blurry vision from losing his glasses, he looked toward the depths of the bone island.

The wind stirred the thick fog, slowly revealing the silhouettes in the distance.

They were bizarre spires, forcibly cobbled together from rotting ship planks, rusted anchors, massive whale bones, and countless human skeletons. They stood quietly in the ash-gray mist, resembling tombstones, yet also looking like thrones.

Ryan suddenly realized that they had not escaped Black Bone.

On the contrary, they had been brought inside its body.

Or rather—its kingdom.

Simon and Alvin woke up one after another. As the two scrambled up from the piles of shattered bones and saw the ordinary crew members who had dissolved into skeletons, as well as the deformed spires pieced together from shipwreck keels in the distance, a trace of unmistakable terror flashed in their eyes.

“Dammit... Where on earth are we?” Simon spat out the bone dust in his mouth.

“Don't panic.” Alvin forced himself to stand, his iron-blue right hand touching the hard bone beneath his feet. “The Voyager is completely destroyed. I can't feel it anymore.”

“Well, I'm panicking too, and I'm fresh out of ideas.”

The three of them cautiously explored inward along the desolate ridge of piled bones.

After venturing about half a kilometer deep, the mist ahead grew even thicker. Beneath a massive bone wall forcibly stitched together from the wreckage of hundreds of ships, three massive caves suddenly appeared side by side.

The pitch-black cave entrances resembled the hollow eye sockets of a giant beast. A salty, cold breeze, carrying whispers that sounded like tens of thousands of people suffocating at once, continuously blew out of the caves along with the reversing tide. In the air, an invisible, extraordinary tension made their skin tingle.

Alvin stopped before the cave entrances, carefully identifying the marks between the bone crevices, and said in a low voice:

“The extraordinary magnetic field in this place is completely haywire; my intuition can't tell the directions apart at all. The three caves look to be about the same depth. To save time, should we split up and explore? Each of us chooses one. If anything feels off, signal immediately and pull out. This is the fastest way to figure out what's inside.”

“Sounds good to me,” Simon said, rubbing his aching chest.

Hearing his two companions' proposal, Ryan's facial muscles couldn't help but twitch slightly.

Although he had forgotten a lot of things, he still remembered what a death flag was.

What was one of the absolute laws of horror stories?

—The moment someone suggests "splitting up," the subsequent plot will inevitably involve everyone getting picked off one by one.

Ryan turned around.

“Alvin, this is Black Bone's domain.”

Alvin paused. “What do you mean?”

Ryan slowly raised his head, a faint glow emerging from the depths of his left eye as he looked into the distant fog. In his vision, an anomaly was occurring on the bone island—countless tiny fragments of Glory floated in the thick mist, some drifting forward, some flowing backward, and some even remaining completely still.

“There's a problem with time,” Ryan finally spoke. “Time here isn't continuous. Some areas are faster, some are slower, and there might even be loops. If we split up, we might simply end up desynchronized in time.”

Alvin fell silent. Perhaps they would only be apart for ten minutes, but by the time they met again, a whole year might have passed for one of them.

The wind swept across the bone island, letting out a low, howling wail. After a moment, Alvin spoke anyway, “But we have no choice. Someone has to go look for things.”

Ryan stared into the distance and nodded slowly. “I know, which is why I agree. But we must set rules.”

He pulled out his brass pocket watch from his coat; its glass face was shattered, and its hands had stopped. Time had lost its meaning here.

“The watch is useless, but the Principles are still here.” Ryan pointed a finger at his own chest. “Six hours. No matter what you find, return here after six hours. If you feel that more than six hours have passed, turn back immediately. Do not keep exploring.”

Alvin nodded. “And if we can't make it back?”

Ryan looked deep into the thick fog, pausing for a moment without saying a word.

The wind grew stronger, and the thick fog began to churn as the spires pierced the sky like countless pale fingers. The three exchanged looks and, without another word, resolutely stepped into their respective pitch-black tunnels.