In a quaint village nestled between rolling hills and winding rivers, there lived a man who spent his days perched upon a weathered wooden chair on the front porch of his modest cottage. His eyes, a mirror to the vast expanse of his thoughts, gazed blankly into the distance as if searching for something just beyond the edge of his consciousness.

The man's mind was a void, a vast emptiness that seemed to swallow up any stray thought or fleeting emotion that dared to cross its threshold. He sat there, unmoving, a solitary figure against the backdrop of the bustling village around him.

Neighbors passing by would stop and exchange fleeting greetings with the man, but he hardly registered their presence. His mind was elsewhere, lost in the labyrinth of his own thoughts and memories.

Some said he was a dreamer, a man who had wandered too far into the recesses of his own mind and had lost his way back to reality. Others whispered that he was haunted by ghosts from his past, memories that clung to him like shadows in the fading light of day.

But the man paid them no mind. He remained on his chair, a silent sentinel guarding the threshold between the known and the unknown, his gaze fixed on a horizon only he could see. And there he sat, lost in the vast emptiness of his mind, a solitary figure in a world that seemed to have forgotten him.

A stranger once entered the village, having travelled far. They were clad in robes of thick animal fur to protect them from the cold they had endured over their long journey, the collar turned up to keep their head warm.

None could see the stranger's face, although the stranger saw all.

The stranger traversed the hills, identifying the lay of the land. The paths of the wind. The movement of birds, rats, and other creatures of the meadows.

Until one day the stranger was no more a stranger.

The man had watched the stranger from the first day until the last. He was the only one who knew where the stranger had travelled from. Where they had planned to go to once they had left this valley. And where they now resided.

The stranger had crossed from this reality to the next, and now viewed the world from inside the man's head. Along with other strangers that had wandered into the valley of no return. All those who had been lured to this hamlet with the desire of solving the riddle.

A prison not of this man's making, that was certain. Unnatural. Four posts surrounded the man's head, with a ceiling above. The chair was his cell. It was now the prison for the stranger too.

This must be the key to the mystery that had lured him, and obviously all the other souls within.

The question asked in all corners of the land: why did adventurers travel to this quiet village, never to be seen again?

Now the stranger knew what, if not how or why, but could tell no-one from the village. Nor from their home town.

Unless they could find a way back into the real world. The world of colour, taste, and smell.

Within the man, human senses had been negated, and the stranger had noted that most of the trapped souls had lost the will to live. Only able to hear and see in shades of grey, they had given up on their humanity and were now mere automatons going about their days performing useless tasks for no reason and no-one. Repetitive actions that brought them a comfort, but not an escape.

The stranger did not wish to become one of them. The first task would be to see if there remained any other with the strength of will to journey beyond the windows to the beyond, and invite them to travel into the labyrinth that had trapped the man's soul.

Salvation beckoned from the heart of the labyrinth. Wails that masked the answers to the questions. Shadows that cloaked the path back to the world. It was where the stranger must go. To combat the emptiness and release them all.