The "Krypt"

I ran.

The sand swallowed my feet, scorching and soft, pulling me down with every frantic step. I ran.

The wind howled, dry as bone, clawing at my skin. My breath came in ragged gasps, burning my throat, but still—I ran.

I stumbled, my knees crashing into the blistering ground. Pain flared, sharp and immediate, but I pushed forward. The sky above stretched vast and empty, the earth below cracked and endless. There was nothing. Nothing but heat, nothing but dust, nothing but the echo of my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.

The further I ran, the heavier my heart grew. This was the real world—the one I had only heard about in whispers, the one they never wanted us to see. The Krypt had always been my whole world, a perfect sanctuary for the chosen, a paradise within an endless wasteland. But now, standing on a towering dune, I saw it for what it really was.

A prison.

The Krypt wasn’t just a city. It was a gleaming wall of impossible height, stretching beyond the sky, reflecting the sun so brightly it swallowed the horizon. There were no doors. No edges. No visible way in—or out.

I turned my gaze back to the open desert. Nothing but sand in every direction. A barren, lifeless world.

I had escaped. But to what?

The furthest my memory reaches is a place that I suppose one could call a school. I remember the cold, sterile walls, the hum of unseen machines, the way the air always smelled faintly of metal. Our teacher was a graft—human in flesh, in skin, in form. But not in mind. Her brain was artificial, a perfect creation of logic and precision.

We were taught one thing above all else: our home was the most sacred, the most treasured place in all of mankind. Nothing more. Nothing less.

There were no maps. We didn’t need them. The world, as we knew it, began and ended within the Krypt’s walls. The grafts, draped in long black robes, moved among us like shadows—watchful, wise, solemn. Most of them, at least. The humans were different. They shimmered, adorned in extravagant gowns of woven gold, their hair impossibly straight, their presence demanding reverence. They belonged. The rest of us simply existed.

I remember the book.

I had been reading, lost in the words, my pulse quickening with every line. I knew it was dangerous—knew that some knowledge was meant to remain buried. But I couldn’t look away. The pages spoke of impossible things: a blue planet, its surface drowning in endless water. Vast stretches of green, sprawling in every direction. A sky so open, so infinite, that one could be swallowed whole by its depths. And fire—flaming spheres of fire burning in the darkness above.

I traced my fingers along the page, my mind spiraling. Was this real? Or was it fiction?

I shut the book. I couldn't take any more.

Later, during our lesson, I spoke with my mentor, Rasp. He was a graft, small for a male, with striking grey eyes that seemed to hold endless secrets.

I asked him a question I wasn’t supposed to ask.

"Where did you come from?"

He hesitated. His expression went still, as if calculating every possible outcome of this conversation.

“I… I came from you humans,” he said at last. “You know this. Why the sudden interest?”

I forced myself not to roll my eyes. “I know that. But—”

“Drop it.” His voice was quiet, but firm. “Focus.”

I didn’t.

“I saw a book,” I said.

Something shifted in his face—something cold and sharp. Fear. A fear so absolute it hollowed him out in an instant. He said nothing.

I pressed on.

“It spoke about… a sky. A great blue sky that engulfs the earth. What does that mean?”

His voice was barely above a whisper. “Fiction.”

Fiction. The word rattled in my skull, unfamiliar and heavy.

"What about oceans?" I continued, my voice almost desperate. "With creatures—numinous beings—what is that?"

But Rasp only stared, his grey eyes dark with something I couldn’t quite name.

One night, I woke with a realization I didn’t want to admit.

Maybe we were on Earth.

The thought twisted in my mind like a splinter, impossible to ignore. I found myself replaying every whispered conversation, every hushed voice I had ever overheard. Rasp and my mother’s maid, Lince. They thought I wasn’t listening. But I was.

Lince had raised me. A graft, like Rasp, but different. Where he was solemn, she was warm—softer, easier to reach. She and Rasp were around more than my own parents, shadows in my life more constant than the golden figures that birthed me.

I remembered the night I first heard them speaking in hushed tones. They were worried. Rasp’s voice was tight, Lince’s uncertain.

“We’re running out of resources,” he had murmured.

Impossible, I had thought at the time. How could the Krypt run out of anything? It was perfect. It was infinite. That’s what we had always been told. But now, doubt spread through me like ink in water.

I needed to know the truth.

And if there was a truth to know, Lince was my best chance of getting it.

I found her alone in the servant quarters, folding sheets with the kind of slow, methodical care only grafts could manage. I hesitated in the doorway, then stepped forward.

"Lince," I said. "What is earth?"

She froze. A single moment of stillness, so absolute I almost missed it.

"A fictional world my love." she replied. “Don’t lie to me Lince” I said, now overcome with anger. I didn’t mean to be mean or rude, I loved Lince but right now she was my only source of information. “please” I said, the a desperation I had never felt in my life.

“Lince, I need to know, please”, now with a calmer demeanour. “I want to keep you safe. That’s all I’ve ever wanted”

“I know.” I replied. “Just…is it real?”

She nodded. A tear running down her cheek as if she had just murdered her own child. Perhaps she did, because I was now torn between rage and confusion, already planning an escape to see the earth for myself. How could they do this? How could they compel us into believing we were the most supreme beings when in reality we were not living but simply surviving in a dead planet, fighting its undeniable fate upon us.

I didn’t want to act harshly, without careful consideration. I took my time, planning a way to just get out. My father, he is an architect of sorts, I’m sure he will have a map of some kind. The next day, I did something I never thought I would do in a million years, I conversed with my father for more than 5 minutes. Hilarious, I know. I asked him all about his job, even learnt new things about him. He didn’t treat me with an ounce of suspicion. I felt bad for him, he seemed quite desperate to talk to someone, anyone. This is the state of most humans. We seemed to have convinced ourselves that we didn’t require real connections, real conversations or even a real world to live. Which may be true, but I don’t call that living, I call that just existing.

would rather die in a barren land than live in a world devoid of love and emotion.

I would rather take my last breath beneath an endless blue sky than beneath a ceiling of artificial light.

I would rather face the vastness of my own insignificance than remain lost in the comfort of ignorance. Perhaps that’s what makes life so beautiful, the fact that truly in the grand scheme of things we’re all insignificant and anyone to believe otherwise, I don’t know where to admire or laugh at their obliviousness.

Hence, every day I spoke to my father, even laugh with him as he cracked silly jokes. Maybe he wasn’t that bad, he was human after all. Despite my many attempts of trying to ask him for a map with subtle questions, treading cautiously so as to not arouse suspicion, I gave up.

I explained to him all that I had discovered, all that I had seen. He slammed his fist on the table, shaking his head vigorously, its not possible, he muttered, it's not real. “Please father”, I begged. “Just give me a map, any map, any framework of the Krypt”. I continued to explain everything I read, my conversation with Lince, the rumours about our resources running out. He slowly seemed to come to terms with the reality and gravity of the information I’d laid upon him.

“Do you think….” he said his voice trembling, “I would send my own daughter out into a barren land to die? I know I may not be the best father but I do truly…love--….at least the only person…I can even associate the word love with.”

“Please. If…you love me…or anything close to it…let me do this. I want to see the ocean dad, the sky, the stars, I want to not be trapped anymore, even if that means I die, I shall die on my terms, not someone else’s…and most certainly not in this prison.”

He left the room, his footsteps echoing behind him. I sank to the floor, weeping. I stayed there for several hours, knees pressed to my chest, dreaming, wondering, contemplating. I could hear thunderous footsteps outside the room, heavy panting. It was my father. He clutched a huge chart in his hand. He stumbled into the room, shoved it in my hand and said….”Run.”

I didn’t have time to think, I ran out of the room. I didn’t know where I was running to. I saw many guards armed with electric teasers make their way to my home, where my father lay helpless. “Have I sentenced my father to death?” I thought to myself. I willed myself to continue running before they came hunting for me as well. I heard a cry of agony cut through the air. It was my father. I paused, tears flowing down my face, hands trembling, feeling weak and hopeless.

I gathered myself and shot down the road, went into an abandoned alleyway. I kneeled behind the huge dumpsters, trying to make sense of the map. The way out was so easy, hidden in plain sight. It was through a tunnel, most of us passed every day, in the centre of the Krypt. I got up, overcome with adrenaline and ran to the tunnel. I bumped into several humans and grafts who looked at me, some with disgust, some with worry.

I finally took a deep breath before I ran through the tunnel, it was dark, the air grew hotter the further I ran. It seemed endless. I was scared, what if I don’t make it out? What if I’d killed my father in vain? I finally approached a huge gate, it was humongous. A graft appeared from the shadows, and asked me a simple question. “Yes or no?”

I was confused, unable to think straight because of the heat, I was already dizzy. “Yes or no?” the graft repeated. “Yes.” I answered. The gates opened, with a deafening creaking sound as if it hadn’t been opened since it was built.

I stepped out into a dessert filled with rich orange sand.

After what seemed like days….I stumbled upon it, a the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. It stretched beyond the horizon. It shimmered under the dying sun, a thousand shades of gold and crimson and deep, endless blue. Waves lapped gently at the shore, whispering secrets in a language older than time.

An ocean.

I let out a breath—a broken, disbelieving laugh.

The sun was setting, sinking into the water, spilling colour across the sky in a way I had never imagined possible. I had read about this. I had dreamed of it. But nothing, no words, no stories, could have prepared me for the sheer, aching beauty of it.

I smiled.

I couldn’t fathom it.

I didn’t need to.

As the last of the sun dipped below the horizon, I closed my eyes.

And for the first time in my life, I knew.

The world was real.

And I was free.