They called it Project Veil.
A team of twelve scientists stationed in a subterranean research complex beneath the Norwegian tundra. Officially, they were researching quantum field inversion—but the real aim was far stranger:
To prove the existence of other realities—and reach them.
Dr. Lena Voren, the lead physicist, had dedicated her life to this. Her theory: that consciousness is a veil, and beneath it, lie realms we were never meant to see.
Not metaphors. Not myths.
Places.
Things older than time.
Things that waited.
---
The device was called the Null Array.
A ring of superconductive nodes capable of generating what Lena described as a "cognitive aperture"—a rip, not in space-time, but in perception itself.
They'd tested it on rodents at first. Monkeys next. All results were inconclusive until one test subject—Subject K-9—began to mimic the speech of the research team.
It had never been taught to speak.
Its voice sounded like them. All of them.
Sometimes in unison.
Sometimes in whispers.
Then it began carving symbols into the walls of its cage. Symbols no one could translate.
Dr. Klempt, the linguist, said they were phonetic placeholders—for sounds that shouldn't exist.
Still, they proceeded.
They were scientists, after all.
Curiosity outranked fear.
---
On September 3rd, at 03:03 AM, they activated the Null Array at full power.
The chamber went still.
No light. No hum. Just absolute silence.
Then, the Veil responded.
It did not burst or shimmer. It folded.
Reality creased—like a page bent backward.
The walls stretched. The cameras froze. And something stepped in.
It wasn't visible in the traditional sense.
It was negative space, a silhouette of hunger wearing the suggestion of a shape. When it moved, it didn't disturb the air—it rewrote it.
Dr. Nash, the neurologist, screamed first.
He collapsed, eyes black, whispering:
> "We are no longer alone in here. But we are still… edible."
---
The team scrambled to shut down the Array.
But the controls were frozen.
Worse, the power grid wasn't responding. As if the creature's arrival had redefined what "off" meant.
Lena tried to issue an emergency lockdown, but the system denied her.
Access revoked.
Even their own biometric data was being rewritten in real time—names turning to glyphs, retinal scans morphing into mirrors.
Two researchers, Dr. Yun and Dr. Patel, tried to flee through the main corridor. The lights went out.
When they returned five minutes later, they had no eyes.
Not missing—just never existed. Smooth skin where memory used to be.
They didn't scream.
They just said, in one voice:
> "We have been edited."
---
With traditional instruments failing, the team used analog tools to observe the anomaly. Cameras failed. Sound recorders recorded only static prayers.
So Lena turned to the old observatory mirror—an untouched piece of polished obsidian kept as a backup.
What they saw in it wasn't the lab.
It was a cathedral of flesh, suspended in black void.
Columns made of knuckles and jawbones, ceilings of muscle stretched thin by unseen tension.
And at the far end: a mass, hovering.
A shape that twitched like it was remembering how to exist.
And around it—thousands of smaller silhouettes, bent in reverence, faces buried into their own chests.
Dr. Klempt whispered:
> "That's not its body. It's its name."
---
One by one, the team began to change.
Dr. DeVries stopped speaking altogether. He scratched open his own neck and, somehow, kept moving.
He communicated only in gurgling laughter.
Dr. Chen began whispering numbers backwards in his sleep. When asked why, he replied:
> "I am a countdown."
> "But I don't know what happens at zero."
By day five, six of the twelve were dead or… altered.
The entity didn't stalk them.
It observed.
It watched them adapt, allowed them to choose their own method of breaking.
That, Lena realized, was the experiment.
They hadn't summoned it.
It had summoned them.
---
The Journal
Lena's logs became more erratic.
Handwritten only—computers no longer recognized her touch.
> Day 6: Time no longer flows correctly. I watched Nash rot in reverse. He said goodbye before he remembered who I was.
> Day 7: I saw myself walking into the lab this morning. I hadn't left my room yet.
> Day 8: The Veil is not just a barrier. It's a tongue. The Null Array didn't open a door. It taught us to be tasted.
> We are flavor.
> We are syntax.
---
On the ninth day, Lena stood in the observation room, alone.
She stared into the obsidian mirror.
This time, the mass at the center moved closer.
Not physically.
Conceptually.
Its presence thickened the air. Her lungs filled with something that wasn't breath.
And it spoke.
Not in words.
But in absence—filling her mind with ideas her body rejected.
She bled from her nose, eyes, fingertips. Her skin tried to peel itself off.
And still… she listened.
Because she understood now.
They hadn't unlocked an alternate dimension.
They had peeled back a metaphor. A thing buried in language, belief, perception. Not a place, but a rule so ancient it had once been god.
And now, it was awake.
---
Lena made one last recording.
A cassette tape. Analog. Shielded in a lead box.
> "If you're hearing this, I failed."
> "We weren't explorers. We were incantations. Words that called something by daring to define it."
> "And it came to answer."
> "There's nothing to contain. It's inside now. Not just the facility. Us. It wears our thoughts like clothing."
> "It will not kill you. It will make you speak it. Understand it."
> "And once you do… you'll want others to know, too."
> "Do not listen. Do not remember."
> "Do not name it."
When the recovery team arrived six days later, the complex was silent.
No bodies. No power. No signs of life.
Only the Null Array, humming gently.
And the obsidian mirror, perfectly clean.
They found the lead box beneath a floor panel.
Inside, the tape.
The officer in charge played it once.
And wrote one word in his notebook:
> "BEAUTIFUL."
---
Epilogue: A Note from the Reviewer
The contents of the recovered recording have been classified by the Department of Dimensional Research and permanently sealed.
All team members assigned to Project Veil have since exhibited identical symptoms: loss of sleep, decreased speech, heightened self-harm.
Three have gone missing.
Two left behind mirrors that now reflect rooms that do not exist.
The last repeated a single phrase before cutting out their tongue:
> "We are the veil now."
End