Tolera

Imagine a planet.

A planet much like our own, with oceans, mountains, forests, and countless forms of life. Yet it possessed a peculiar feature that set it apart from any world we had ever known.

One hemisphere was buried in eternal night. The other basked beneath a daylight that never ended.

On the sunlit side stretched an immense landmass. Its lush forests, crystal-clear waters, colorful flowers, and astonishing creatures seemed to gather every beauty in existence into a single place.

Its name was Tolera.

Everyone who saw Tolera called it paradise.

Flowers filled the air with intoxicating fragrances. Fruits offered flavors that lingered long after a single bite. Exotic creatures shimmered with colors that seemed almost impossible. Even the air itself felt enchanting.

It carried molecules capable of influencing the human brain's dopamine system, producing extraordinary sensations of pleasure and happiness. These substances did not merely make people feel good. They overwhelmed the mind with euphoria so intense that ordinary happiness became almost meaningless.

Anxieties faded. Fears lost their power. The wounds of the past seemed to disappear. Those who entered Tolera experienced a happiness unlike anything they had ever known.

All of it came at a single cost.

Their lives.

Tolera killed you.

The moment you set foot on the island, its influence began to take hold. Your mind filled with indescribable pleasure, and within a few hours, your body surrendered to the overwhelming effects.

Yet death was not the end of the process. It was the beginning of something else.

Your body returned to the earth, and in its place grew plants that released clouds of intoxicating, pleasure-inducing dust.

And every new plant made Tolera more powerful.

A paradise nourished by the dead.

A graveyard toward which people willingly walked.

---

Twelve great islands and eight smaller ones surrounded Tolera. Each was home to communities with different traditions, beliefs, and ways of life.

Some had advanced technologically, developing powerful ships and weapons. Others were ruled by warriors who constantly sought opportunities to expand their territories. Some had grown wealthy through trade, while others had fallen under the influence of intoxicants and an endless pursuit of pleasure.

There were islands controlled by dark cults, and others inhabited by peaceful communities that preferred to remain isolated from the outside world.

No matter how different these societies were, they shared one terrible problem.

Tolera's effect on men.

Men experienced at least twenty times more pleasure from the island than women did. It was not simply a stronger feeling of happiness. It was an irresistible attraction, one that could shatter a person's will and make almost everything else in life seem insignificant.

Many men who learned of Tolera eventually began to regard reaching it as more important than anything they had ever cared about.

Some called it madness.

Others argued that pursuing happiness was among the most natural rights a person could possess.

Yet most of those who traveled to Tolera never returned.

And so, approximately a thousand years before the events of this story, the peoples of the twenty islands reached a common decision.

The Fedailes would be established.

---

The Fedailes were a brotherhood composed entirely of men, united by a single purpose: to build a colossal wall around Tolera.

They did not intend to conquer the island. Nor did they seek to destroy it. They wanted only to prevent anyone from reaching it.

When construction began, no one fully understood the horror that awaited them.

The first Fedailes carried stones, dug foundations, and raised the walls. But Tolera's allure was stronger than stone and mortar.

Some men would suddenly stop working. They would lift their heads and gaze beyond the walls, their faces settling into expressions of indescribable serenity.

Then, ignoring every warning, they would climb the walls and throw themselves into Tolera.

Those who remained took their places.

Another stone was laid. Another row was raised. The wall grew, inch by inch.

But every death made their task more difficult.

Each Fedai who fell into Tolera became the source of new plants, which released even greater quantities of pleasure-inducing substances into the surrounding air. The island's attraction grew stronger with every passing day.

At first, only a handful of men succumbed to its influence. In time, even the most determined among them struggled to resist. Newly arrived Fedailes sometimes found themselves inside the island before they had even reached the wall.

The higher the walls rose, the more men died.

And the more men died, the harder it became to build the walls.

Humanity had become trapped within a cycle of its own making.

Still, they refused to surrender.

For centuries, they carried stones. They raised walls. They replaced the dead.

Eventually, entire communities emerged whose sole purpose was to produce and train future Fedailes. In these societies, boys were raised from an early age to fulfill their assigned duty. Their lives, their choices, and their futures were dedicated to a single cause.

Standing against Tolera.

And dying there, if necessary.

At last, after centuries of relentless labor, the walls were completed.

Tolera was enclosed behind an immense barrier of stone.

For the first time, humanity had drawn a boundary around the deadly paradise.

But no one could guarantee that their victory would last forever.

---

A thousand years passed.

Time wore down the walls as it wore down everything humanity built. Some sections collapsed. Others fractured under deep, spreading cracks. Vines crept through the gaps between the stones, covering the ancient structure. The pleasure-inducing plants that had once grown only within Tolera began reaching beyond its walls.

The danger no longer belonged exclusively to the other side.

One day, a Fedai decided to try something different.

He would burn Tolera.

He set fire to the island. Plants caught flame, towering blazes rose into the air, and smoke spread across the sky.

The man believed he had finally found a way to end the curse.

Then the wind changed.

Smoke drifted across the walls.

The substances carried by it produced sensations of pleasure many times more powerful than those released by the living plants.

Fire had not weakened Tolera.

It had intensified its influence.

Once again, humanity's attempted solution had become part of its own catastrophe.

---

By the time a thousand years had passed since the walls were completed, the planet's male population had declined dramatically.

The islands responded to this shortage in radically different ways.

On some, men were enslaved and traded like commodities. On others, they were regarded as sacred beings, even as creatures possessing divine powers. They were worshipped, granted privileges denied to ordinary people, and permitted to have nearly anything they desired.

Elsewhere, men and women enjoyed equal rights.

On certain islands, men were forbidden from living there altogether. Only a handful were permitted to enter each year, solely for reproductive purposes.

Tolera had done more than kill people.

It had transformed societies, shattered moral systems, and reshaped the future of humanity.

Now, a thousand years later, the walls needed to be repaired once again.

Rumors spread that the Fedailes would be reassembled.

Negotiations were underway between the islands. Everyone understood the danger, but this time, even finding enough men to rebuild the walls was uncertain.

The brotherhood that had once been created to save humanity was preparing to rise again.

No one yet knew who would be sacrificed this time.

---

The Dreamer of Kronos

One of the twelve great islands, Kronos was renowned for its maritime trade and advanced ships. Unlike many of its neighbors, men and women enjoyed largely equal rights there. Nevertheless, women held the reins of government.

Kronos's harbors were crowded with ships from distant shores. Vessels brought spices, exotic goods, and stories of lands no map could fully describe. In harbor taverns, sailors spoke of storms, lost treasures, and voyages from which no one had ever returned.

Some nights, as lanterns trembled across the water, people told stories about men who had supposedly returned from the planet's dark hemisphere.

Some believed those stories.

Others dismissed them as nonsense invented after a few too many drinks.

Dominik had grown up listening to them.

As a child, he wandered through the harbors, absorbing every tale told by the old sailors. Each new story opened a door in his imagination, revealing lands he had never seen. While other children wondered what they might become when they grew up, Dominik imagined himself sailing across unknown seas.

By the age of twenty-one, his dream had not changed.

He wanted to acquire his own ship, assemble a crew, and explore the planet's dark hemisphere.

But a formidable obstacle stood in his way.

None of the explorers who had ventured into the dark hemisphere had ever returned.

Except one.

Old Pomer.

At seventy-eight, he was the only known explorer to have traveled into the darkness and come back alive. Yet when he returned to Kronos, he had lost the ability to speak.

He could neither describe his journey nor answer the questions people asked him.

Drawing was the only thing he could do.

And his drawings contained images that were difficult to forget.

They depicted a dark continent, an immense and desolate land where light never seemed to reach. Black trees stretched toward the sky, and between them wandered creatures of extraordinary height.

They had no faces.

Their pitch-black bodies resembled shadows rising out of the darkness itself. In some drawings, they walked among the trees. In others, they stood in the distance, apparently watching Pomer.

No one knew whether the old man had truly seen them.

Many people mocked him. Some claimed he had discovered nothing and was simply inventing stories. Others believed that whatever he had witnessed had shattered his mind, leaving him physically alive but forever changed.

Dominik did not agree with them.

He did not believe Old Pomer was a liar.

There was something in the drawings, something difficult to explain in words, that made them deeply unsettling. It seemed as though Pomer did not draw because he feared forgetting what he had seen, but because he could never forget it.

Dominik admired him.

And he believed him.

---

For now, Dominik owned no ship.

He had no crew, either.

He worked as a dockhand, carrying heavy loads and saving every coin he earned. Each day, he worked toward the possibility of owning a vessel of his own.

The others laughed at him.

Some insisted that the dark hemisphere was nothing more than a myth. Others found it ridiculous that a twenty-one-year-old young man could imagine himself important enough to uncover the world's secrets.

Dominik listened.

Then, the next morning, he returned to the harbor.

Because sometimes, being laughed at is not enough to make a person abandon a dream.

Sometimes, something far greater is required.

Dominik did not yet know what that something would be.

But he was about to find out.

Rumors that the Fedailes would be reassembled were spreading through the streets of Kronos. If negotiations between the islands succeeded, men could once again be sent to repair Tolera's walls.

Dominik could be among them.

Before he even acquired his own ship, the future he had dreamed of might be taken away from him. Instead of exploring unknown seas and undiscovered continents, he could find himself repairing the crumbling walls of Tolera.

He would carry stones, clear the vines, and eventually succumb to the island's deadly allure alongside the other Fedailes.

Perhaps no one would ever remember his name.

No one would know that he had once been a young man who wanted to explore the world, who had dreamed of discovering the secrets of the dark hemisphere.

All that would remain might be a single plant growing at the foot of the walls.

Dominik had no intention of accepting that fate.

Not yet.

There was a world waiting to be explored. There were questions hidden within Old Pomer's drawings. And Dominik wanted to discover what awaited them on the dark continent, the place from which no one had ever returned.

Perhaps he would find an answer there, something capable of changing all the stories he had ever heard.

Perhaps he would become one of the first people to reach that distant land, only to fail to return.

No one knew.

Not even Dominik.

But his story began here.

Because some paradises kill you with happiness. And some darknesses strip away everything you thought you needed to survive.

And Dominik was about to set sail into the world between them.

This is the story of Dominik.

And of the truths hidden in Tolera's shadow...