In this backward world that has not yet been ravaged by headphones and stereos, most people can still achieve the first half of "deaf and clear", and Kraft is no exception.

He felt like he was hearing something, though it was so imperceptible that it even led to the suspicion that it was an auditory hallucination from being in silence for too long.

It was as if someone was dragging heavy sacks on the snow, inferior fibers or something grinding tiny crystals, the soft layers of snow shattered by a strong external force, and then the space was squeezed, and countless ingenious snowflakes broke and collapsed into rigid snow blocks—that's what he heard.

If it didn't feel wrong, the voice was passing less than five meters out of Kraft's window, and in the darkness of Kraft, a well-nourished lad who couldn't see, it moved forward with decisiveness and force.

This makes it difficult to convince oneself with a plausible reason, such as interpreting it as a man who came home late, or a thief with heavy loot.

No, of course it can't be. Kraft's hand was already pressed on the hilt of the sword, and although the Otherworldly Man who lacked movement now occupied half of the soul, the other half, who had controlled this body for more than ten years, was able to complete the difficult action of moving the sword from the scabbard to the neck of someone else in an instant.

Maybe he wouldn't react so violently for a while, but the scabbard alone would stun an untrained adult head-on.

The voice, the slight to almost auditory hallucination, didn't change. It's like wandering in place, not going far. It's continuous and low, unreasonably reminiscent of a train whizzing past you, and you'll hear a constant roar before the strings of carriages all leave.

Kraft traced in his mind the owner of the voice, which must have been as slender and huge as a train, but which could move softly through the snow, and those who did not see its body could only imagine its form from the long rustling sound.

The content constructed by hearing and gratuitous imagination is so out-of-the-box that it is closer to nonsensical dreams than objective reality, almost making him suspect that he is half-asleep and half-awake, and that the low-powered brain mixes vague information with subjective content without analysis, and comes to the conclusion that a train is quietly walking in front of him.

But he knew he was awake, awake enough to feel the cold wind creeping through his mouth and nose, passing through the barrier of lips and teeth, swirling between the arches of the pharynx and palatine, and then swallowing into his throat.

Too late to be scraped away by the cold air currents pre-warmed by the nasal cavity to scrape away the thin moisture on the mucous membranes, the sensitive nerves faithfully transmit signals to the brain. In the cold, the body's emergency mechanisms come into play, and the activated catecholamine hormones secreted by the adrenal medulla excite his circulatory system, and blood is pumped down the arteries into the Willis ring, which then circulates throughout the brain, ensuring the proper functioning of this fragile organ.

So is it possible that there really is a long, quiet behemoth passing in front of him, but intuitively only making an imperceptible sound?

Then it even avoided all obstacles, and in the messy village, it didn't run over even half a plank or a dead branch. It roams freely in the snowy nights, and the infinite darkness is the sea where it moves freely.

In this sea, the low walls of rock and clay are no different from the void, and it is not the snow that rubs against it, but something more subtle and abstract, light, but able to support the massive body to act with its will.

Kraft didn't understand how he had learned this from the sound of the tiny voice, or if he didn't even have to think about it, the sheer amount of bizarre content was contained in the voice.

He felt that his mind had never been more active, whether it was wielding an iron sword or writing an answer that he had already known by heart, it could not be compared to what he was now. It was a hammer forging red-hot metal, thoughts splashing like sparks, and the boiling soul made it difficult for the skulls that humans had evolved over thousands of years to hold.

As time passed, the already full mind was filled with more information, and it was not usually thought of things being turned out of the water, and countless contents rolled by like a marquee—the thin layer of gray matter trying to find something in the limited information store to describe what was learned from this voice, thus creating the illusion that thoughts were like electricity.

This process is completely out of the control of the subjective consciousness, which is like standing in front of an open dam, watching everything that two souls know rush out.

The network of cross-linked neurons has chosen the word "scale" among countless words to describe the epidermis that rubs against the subtle substance, the shell of fragments made up of unexplainable content, which is able to come into contact with the slightest concept, allowing the lengthy subject to take place meaningful activity in space.

And the subject to which the "scales" are attached far beyond the reach of consciousness, developing from the known to the unknown in the depths of darkness.

The "sound" it travels in is the peeling debris produced by the friction of the "scales" with the fine matter, and when it leaves the body, it begins an irrepressible decay, falling from the space of another concept in which it is located, towards the space that can be realized by human beings who overlap it, and finally disintegrating into information suitable for existence in this world.

This information spreads like a diffuse sonic vibration, giving out a final roar before annihilation, but only souls beyond ordinary people can access this information under special circumstances, passively comprehending the existence of the source before the poor watery organic tissue protected by the hard calcium salt dome boils.

And now, this small, fortunate individual who was an accidental mixture of two souls, because of the double increase but not the expansion, touched a subtle passing line, and was able to "hear" the unimaginable in his two barren and uninteresting short lives. He could not describe it in human language, only to define it as an indescribable being that transcended reality as he knew it.

On the verge of madness, he grasped the meaning of the stone pillar patterns he saw during the day—those things fell from a higher plane, changed and twisted as they fell, and came into this world.

And the recipient cannot understand its true meaning, and depicts it with the elements that exist in this world, describing it as a giant serpent in the night, which winds endlessly, and its body is submerged in endless darkness.

Kraft was in a hunched fantasy, everything around him was so far away that he didn't even know if he was still standing in front of the window. Until a hand was on his shoulder.

…………

"Kraft, you're not going to stand here all night, are you? Kraft?"

Vision returns in an instant, and the pupil sphincter contracts violently in the rare sunlight. In the weightlessness of his senses, Kraft found himself leaning forward rapidly with the thrust of his left shoulder, and the white ledge enlarged at a frightening speed in front of his eyes.