L.T. File: 001: Puhts Po: The Between-Man

An account redacted from the Library of the Son by a member of the Tranquil Shadows.

They say he can’t enter unless you’re alone. But he can wait anywhere. In Gënlèul, the pyramids never sleep. The city hums with voices and song. Laughter echoes across the skybridges, and the shared pulse of dreams flows between minds like moonlit rivers. No elf is ever meant to be alone. Not truly. Not entirely. We live together. We dream together.

But sometimes… sometimes a thread slips. A mind frays at the edges. A moment of silence stretches too long between thoughts. A grieving soul seeks solitude on a balcony past midnight.  A child hides beneath a therapy pool to cry alone. In that space, in that pause between presence and absence, he waits.

We call him the The Between-Man. The name isn’t his. No one remembers his true one—not anymore. Not since the archivists struck it from the Library’s Codex and burned the Etchings of his likeness. Not since those who studied him began to vanish, one by one, until even the act of remembering was left to those who train their minds for such things.

They say he came from The Below, long ago, before the liberation. Not a beast. Not a god. Just… something left behind. Something that missed us. We left him down there. But he still finds ways to listen.

The Signs

There are always three.

 First, your dream-sharing falters. You wake alone in your own mind, cold and echoing. You see your friends laughing over breakfast, talking about the shared dreams, the vibrant landscapes they built together in the night. But you weren’t there. And they don’t remember you missing. You feel watched. But not from outside. From beneath your thoughts, and between your steps.

Second, your light fades. Slowly. Your personal soulstone grows dark. You move from bridge to bridge and feel no heat in the air, even on the hottest desert day. Even the ever-present resonance of your pyramid—its music, its thrum of voices—becomes muffled. Distant. Like hearing a festival through glass.

And at night, just before you sleep, you hear knocking. Not at the door. From beneath the floor. Three soft, wet knocks. Always in threes.

Third—if you haven’t touched another person, spoken aloud, shared a single thought in hours—he will appear. Not directly. Never directly. The Between-Man doesn’t show himself like a person. You see him reflected. In the mirror glow surface of the therapy chambers. In the shimmer of lakewater. In the deep obsidian tiles of the 5th floor atrium—right behind you, where no one is supposed to stand. You catch a silhouette when your eyes blink, like a mistake in your vision. Tall. Thin. Bent forward, as if listening. He has no face. Some say he wears a mask made of the faces he’s taken. Others say he’s never needed one. Those who look into the reflections too long see something else. The faces of those he has taken. Their eyes black, their smiles hollow. Behind them, a corridor of stone spiraling down into endless dark. That’s how he marks you. Not with a touch. But with a door.

The Vanishings

When he is ready, you disappear. No struggle. No scream. No sign of forced entry. Just… gone. And no one—not your lovers, not your podmates, not even the archivists—can remember when they last saw you. They remember of you. Not with you. Worse still, some dream of you afterward.

But you’re not you. You are behind a glass wall, underwater, pressing your palm to it. You never blink. Your mouth moves, but no sound comes out. Behind you is the Between-Man —watching you the way he once watched them.

Sometimes the door is open. Sometimes it’s closed. Sometimes it’s breathing.

Why He Waits

They say he is the echo of the loneliness we suffered in The Below. That when the first dream was shared, something ancient was left behind—cut off.

They say that it’s not malice that drives him. It’s hunger, not for flesh, Not for blood, but for presence. He wants to be part of us again, to be remembered. To be in our minds, our dreams, our laughter.

But he doesn’t know how to join, he only knows how to wait, and listen, and take. We whisper his story only when surrounded by others. Never when alone, and never when the lights dim.

And if you ever hear the soft knocking… Three slow beats beneath the floor… Don't look into the water. Don't look in the glass, and whatever you do—don’t open the door because he’s not behind it… he’s between it.