The return flight felt endless, and Lucas Hernández couldn’t stop thinking about what he had witnessed in Undría—the country that didn’t exist. He had arrived as a journalist, sent to cover a story of corruption in an obscure African nation, a place no one had ever heard of, save for a handful of rumors and reports that no one seemed to take seriously. No one knew anything about Undría—not on maps, not at international conferences. And now, with his camera resting by his side, he wondered if it had all been a dream. A nightmare from which he might never awaken.

  The city he arrived in was a mosaic of ruins, but not the kind of ruins one might expect. These weren’t the remains of buildings shattered by war or earthquakes. No—these houses and structures seemed to be decaying slowly, as if time itself had begun to rot them from the moment they were built. The walls crumbled for no clear reason, collapsing into a nauseating gray dust, as though the place was suffering from a disease eating it from the inside out. And the windows—some broken, others covered with torn fabric—looked hollow, as if the homes themselves were staring out into an infinite void.

  The streets bore no names, no signs, no defined paths. Only trails of broken earth and overgrown weeds, as if life had never truly found a reason to exist here, dragging with it the remnants of what might once have been a town or a city. The sun—if one could call that grayish light “sunlight”—lacked the warmth and brilliance of a normal day. It was a cold, muted light, incapable of fully piercing the shadows that crept between the buildings.

  And the people… the people were the most disconcerting part of all. They didn’t seem human—at least not in the way one would expect. Every face Lucas encountered held an eerie quality, something lifeless, as though the people were no more than walking shadows trapped in human flesh. Their eyes showed no emotion—not even awareness. The inhabitants walked the streets like figures from a nightmare, utterly lost, trapped in their own routines, completely devoid of purpose. Some dragged their feet. Others simply stood still, staring into the distance without truly seeing it, as though the country had stolen from them every last trace of inner life.

  The most disturbing of all was a man Lucas found standing by a broken fountain in a deserted square. His eyes, vacant and fixed on an imaginary point, didn’t move—not even slightly. When Lucas looked closer, he saw something seeping through the cracks in the man’s face, as if his flesh itself were trying to disintegrate. But the man didn’t move. He didn’t react. He didn’t seem alive, nor truly dead, but something in between—something forgotten by time, no longer part of any natural cycle of existence. As Lucas approached him, he felt a pressure in his chest, a kind of suffocation, as if the presence of that man were a doorway opening onto an abyss from which there was no escape.

  The landscape was littered with small figures emerging from the shadows of the ruins—children and adults walking with their eyes fixed on the ground, completely oblivious to the presence of outsiders. As if they were all entranced, as if the place itself had stolen their capacity to think or feel. On a nearby street, a child in tattered clothing stared at Lucas. He didn’t move a single inch. His gaze remained fixed—not with curiosity, but with an unsettling emptiness, as if the boy were waiting for something. Or perhaps watching him, waiting for the right moment to do something. To show Lucas that he, like all the others, was no longer human.

  And then there were the voices. No cries, no wailing—only whispers. Low murmurs that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. The empty streets were full of them, as if the very walls were breathing and whispering secrets no one should ever hear. The sounds were faint, distorted—and yet perfectly clear. As if the country were trying to communicate through whispers, yet never managing to form anything coherent. As if whatever remained in Undría could no longer speak in words, but only in a mass of incomprehensible sound slipping through the ruins.

  At the farthest edge of the city, Lucas found what appeared to be a church, though the structure was grotesque. It had no doors—only a great endless arch that led into darkness. And inside, though there was no light, something was watching him. At first, Lucas thought it was just shadows. But as he moved closer, he saw human figures standing still, watching him with those same empty eyes. People… dead? He couldn’t tell. But the worst part was that Lucas couldn’t look away. Though the figures didn’t move, they called to him with their emptiness. In the darkness, he felt the pressure of a force wrapping itself around him—a pressure that filled his mind with strange thoughts, dark desires. As if the very earth of Undría were trying to drag him into its depths.

  Lucas raised the camera, unable to stop himself, and began taking pictures—as if the machine could somehow capture the very essence of the horror he was witnessing. But it didn’t. The photos came out empty, as though the camera had decided not to reveal what he saw, what he felt. As if the images resisted being taken. As if the country itself refused to be known. Perhaps because not even he—or anyone—could truly comprehend what was happening.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  The sun never really set in Undría. The light that filtered through the gray clouds seemed to belong to no one. The country was a suspended place, out of joint, a hole in the world that never should have existed. And as Lucas walked through its streets, each step brought him closer to the same feeling he had experienced when he first arrived: that he wasn’t alone. Something was watching him—something that didn’t want to be seen, but would never stop lurking.

  His face had gone pale. The thrill of having captured so many terrifying images had faded, replaced by a deep emptiness. Horrific scenes of death, twisted figures walking under a faceless sun, crumbling, deserted houses that seemed to whisper secrets. Horror lived in every corner of Undría. But when he boarded the plane to go home, something had changed.

  The work was done. It was time to leave that nightmare of a country behind.

  As the plane flew beneath the starlit sky, Lucas couldn’t shake the images from his mind. His hand moved unconsciously to the camera still hanging around his neck, as if hoping to find some proof of what he had lived through—some tangible hint of the dreadful truth he had witnessed. With a flick of the wrist, he began scrolling through the photos. What he saw froze his blood.

  Every image was blank. Veiled in white mist, without a single recognizable shape. He had captured the disfigured faces of Undría’s people, the oppressive stillness of the ruins, the horror and the death—and now, all he could see was a pure, blinding white. There was nothing. No trace of what he had lived. Nothing at all.

  His breathing quickened, sweat beading on his forehead. He looked at the camera again and again, as if something might change. But no. The photos were only emptiness, a bottomless abyss.

  A flight attendant passed nearby, eyeing him with a calm expression. Lucas, unable to contain his confusion, called out to her.

  "Excuse me, miss?" he said, his voice trembling. "Where are we exactly? Is… is this Spain? I mean, are we in Spain now?"

  She looked at him, her face unchanging. Leaning slightly closer, as if sensing something, she responded with calm certainty.

  "Yes, we are in Spain," she said. Her tone left no room for doubt.

  Lucas frowned, puzzled. He looked out the window, but couldn’t remember how he’d gotten there. Had he really slept through the whole flight? He couldn’t have. No—he couldn’t have. And yet, he felt disconnected from reality. The fact that he couldn’t even recall the name of the country, and that the flight attendant confirmed it so casually, only deepened his confusion.

  "But… Undría?" he muttered, looking at her as if searching for some kind of answer. "Wasn’t it… Undría? An African country…"

  The attendant looked at him, this time with a faint smile—one that held a strange patience, but also something unsettling.

  "Undría? No, sir. There’s no such country. You’re in Spain. Perhaps you fell asleep and dreamed it. Maybe it was a nightmare or something like that."

  Lucas felt the ground slipping beneath his feet. No. It couldn’t be. It hadn’t been a dream. It couldn’t have been. He remembered the streets, the scorching sun of Undría, the heavy air, the hollow eyes of its people. He remembered how his camera had captured those images—so real, so unmistakable. Why was there no proof? How could the photos be blank?

  He hurriedly checked the camera again. The white images remained—cold and indifferent. Each photo he had taken, no matter how vivid or dramatic the scene had been, was now nothing more than a reflection of absence. Had everything he experienced been a fantasy? A delusion? A dream within a dream?

  A cold sweat crawled down his back as his mind began to crumble. The flight attendant, noticing his growing distress, continued down the aisle as if nothing had happened. Yet the echo of her words rang in his head: "Perhaps you fell asleep."

  In that moment, Lucas began to question reality itself. What had really happened? How had he gotten on the plane? How could he be so sure of what he’d seen? All he had left was the camera—the camera that no longer offered him any answers.

  It was as if someone had erased every trace of his journey. But there was something else. Something in his mind started connecting dots—something he couldn’t fully grasp, but that terrified him deeply.

  As he stared at his camera, he noticed something. The images weren’t completely empty. There was something else. Something in the background, if he looked closely—something hidden within the pristine white. A figure, barely perceptible. A shadow watching him. A silent, lurking presence.

  Lucas froze. His heart began to pound as the figure in the photos became clearer and clearer. It was the shape of a man—or something else—watching him from the shadows. Something that had never been there before. Something only the camera could see.

  The child. The figure that had followed him since the beginning of his nightmare in Undría. It had followed him here. That was the truth his terrified mind had buried.

  The flight attendant passed by him once more. Lucas looked up, eyes wide with panic, searching for answers—but she merely looked back and smiled with a calm that was disturbingly serene.

  "Rest now, sir. Everything is fine," she said, with a peace so unnatural it sent shivers down his spine.

  But Lucas couldn’t rest. Because he knew something had followed him back. Something that had erased all evidence of Undría from his memory—yet lingered inside his camera, waiting to reveal itself when he least expected.