PROSE – CONCEPT ART – DOUBLE EXPOSURE

In the heart of the Hollow Mountains, where the air hummed with silence and time forgot to tick, a being older than wind sat. Encased in a sphere of shimmering energy—neither glass nor light, but something between—the Oracle meditated above a chasm that pulsed with ancient fire.

He had not spoken in centuries. He didn’t need to.

The mountains around him were carved not by water but by will. Their jagged silhouettes, emerald-tipped and layered like echoes, were born from his breath. Each ridge was a memory. Each peak was a vow. He had once been flesh, bone, and fire. Now, he was purpose wrapped in the illusion of form.

To the outside world, he appeared as a man—if a man could be sculpted from starlight and storms. His robes flowed like liquid fog, and his long, tangled beard bore streaks of silver like splotches of moonlight left behind by the gods.

Pilgrims had tried to reach him, climbing in silence, their mouths dry from reverence or fear. None returned unchanged. Most didn’t return at all.

Inside the sphere, reality bent. Time curled inward like smoke. The Oracle sat cross-legged on a throne of molten stone that neither burned nor aged. Beneath him, streams of liquid light cascaded into the void—knowledge pouring endlessly into the earth’s soul, never wasted, never full.

He was more than a seer. He was a medium between worlds—the silent conduit through which forgotten truths passed. Not a messenger, not a prophet, but something more elemental, something that watched as stories ended and began again.

He waited—not out of impatience but design. Somewhere, someone would be ready to ask the right question. Not about destiny or death. Those were too easy. But the one that mattered. The one that cracked the world open.

Until then, he breathed. And in that breath, universes whispered.