You still shake as though the marrow of your bones remembers a terror older than waking. Sleep clings in tatters behind your eyes, dissolving beneath the sharp wind that sweeps across the impossible plain. Your thoughts are little more than scattered embers, too feeble to gather into reason, for all your being is consumed by escape and by the certainty that, should your pace falter, the inevitable skewering awaiting you will become the final law of your existence.

Behind you echoes the metallic clamor of pursuit.

The thing that hunts you bears the familiar outline of a pitchfork, yet no earthly blacksmith ever fashioned its gleaming prongs. Each tine burns with a pale azure fire that neither flickers nor gives warmth. The haft is wrought from some living crystal, veined with galaxies that drift like imprisoned dreams. It strides without legs, crossing the lavender dust as though invisible hands propel it through forgotten dimensions.

Above stretches a firmament unlike any heaven remembered by mortal astronomers. Green suns revolve around one another in silent harmony, while rivers of crimson light pour between the stars like celestial blood. Mountains fashioned from translucent obsidian float upside down, their roots dangling into infinity where monstrous flowers blossom upon the vacuum itself.

You scarcely dare to behold these marvels.

Every glance backward reveals the enchanted implement drawing nearer. It whistles through the thin air, with a voice resembling distant choirs lamenting the extinction of worlds. Whenever its shadow brushes the ground, strange fungi erupt, bloom for a heartbeat, and collapse into glittering ash.

The landscape shifts beneath your fleeing feet. Valleys become stairways. Rivers ascend into the sky. Forests of silver reeds murmur prophecies in forgotten tongues, promising sanctuary if only you surrender your name. Yet instinct warns you that names are treasures more precious than kingdoms, and so you clutch yours in silence while pressing onward.

At last, you discover a solitary arch carved from the ivory rib of some titan that died before time acknowledged itself. Strange sigils awaken as you approach, bathing your trembling form in violet radiance. The pursuing fork hesitates, its celestial fires dimming as though confronted by an authority surpassing its own dreadful commission.

You step beneath the arch. Instantly, the universe unfolds like an immense blossom.

You behold countless reflections of yourself wandering innumerable worlds, each pursued by another impossible relic seeking to harvest the hidden essence carried within every dreaming soul. Then you understand that your flight has never been from death alone, but from the cosmic gardeners who cultivate destinies with pitiless precision.

The radiant fork withdraws into the starless gulf. Though your breathing finally slows, you know another harvester already stirs beyond the horizons of eternity, awaiting the hour when your courage again must outrun the harvest of the gods.