It was not a place — rather, a feeling that seemed to peel off your skin slowly, like reality or heat. Stars hung suspended like fruit nobody dared to touch, and sand was not sand, but dust of memory, as fine as bone ash. Time did not pass there. It curled. Pulsed. Resounded back on itself. You might walk for what felt like eternities and still be standing where you started, pulse in sync with some ancient satellite's fading wheeze. No gods. No maps. Just you, the dust, and the huge electric thrum of the emptiness pretending not to care.